DANGERS OF QUESTIONING GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

It has been almost a month since he died and I haven't been able to
get Gary Webb out of my mind.

You remember Gary Webb, don't you? He's the investigative reporter who
in 1996 produced a series of stories for the San Jose Mercury News
called "Dark Alliance," on the connections between the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Nicaraguan contras, the right-wing
opposition to the leftist Sandinista regime in that Central American
nation.

The series' most explosive charge was that a contra-connected drug
gang helped fuel the crack epidemic of the 1980s in this country by
bringing in large supplies of Colombian cocaine and selling them to
black street gangs in Los Angeles, all with the knowledge and, to some
extent, the protection of the CIA.

Webb's series, and that allegation especially, touched off a firestorm
of criticism in both the government and the media. Not only did the
CIA deny his allegations, but three high temples of the American
establishment--The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The
Washington Post--all joined in knocking down Webb's stories.
Eventually, even his own editor at the Mercury News effectively
disavowed him and the series.

Gary Webb himself became radioactive within the newspaper industry and
went to work in California state government. When he died last month
at age 49, ostensibly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,
he was jobless and, apparently, hopeless.

I have a confession to make: I still think Gary Webb had it mostly
right.

I think he got the treatment that always comes to those who dare
question aloud the bona fides of the establishment: First he got
misrepresented--his suggestion that the CIA tolerated the contras'
cocaine trading became an allegation that the agency itself was
involved in the drug trade. Then he was ridiculed as a
conspiracy-monger--joked one commentator, Howard Kurtz of The
Washington Post, "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail." In the end,
Webb was rendered untouchable.

I know that I risk being marked down as something of a nut for saying
I think Webb was fundamentally right. As my friend and former
Commentary page columnist Salim Muwakkil said in one of his pieces on
this issue: "To connect the CIA with crack--a drug with race-specific
overtones--is considered a mere variation of the old theme of black
genocide and is thus deemed irrational in mainstream discourse."

But try thinking of it from a black American's point of view. The CIA
was tasked with helping the contras, a group President Ronald Reagan
had declared the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers. So
intent was the Reagan-Bush administration on assuring the survival and
success of the contras that it attempted an illegal bargain with the
hated mullahs of Iran in order to benefit the Nicaraguans.

Now, you're a CIA agent who must decide whether to blow the whistle on
some of your charges for supplementing their budget by trading in
cocaine on the side--or just turn your head and not "see" anything.
Between the contras, beloved of the president, and some black
gangsters in L.A. (we won't talk about the zoned-out, zonked-out end
users), who is the more expendable?

I am reminded here of the climactic chapters of Ralph Ellison's
"Invisible Man," in which a seething Harlem goes up in flames. It
happens not because of anything the protagonist and his cherished
"Brotherhood" do. It happens because the leadership of the Brotherhood
elects to do nothing, to cease expending any energy at all on Harlem
and its problems.

Who is the more expendable? I think Gary Webb had it figured out just
right.