cannabisnews.com: A Gray Area!





A Gray Area!
Posted by FoM on May 27, 1999 at 18:19:51 PT
OC judge is wild card in Citizens’ Drug Inquiry!
Source: OC Weekly
In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb broke his famous "Dark Alliance" story, exposing the 1980s exploits of a gang of coke-dealing, CIA-connected Nicaraguan contras.
When the story set off a firestorm of controversy in the African-American community, mainstream newspapers such as the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times viciously attacked Webb. In May 1997, the Mercury News backed away from "Dark Alliance," and Webb retired from journalism. Meanwhile, the CIA and Justice Department conducted investigations of their own that clearly sought to discredit the reporter and his work.When read closely, however, the reports that came from those investigations only strengthened Webb’s findings. While too late to affect the mainstream media’s view of "Dark Alliance," the reports didn’t go unnoticed by activists who had closely followed the controversy. More than a year ago, they banded together to plan an independent inquiry of their own. Some suggested the grandiose goal of a truth commission similar to those undertaken in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and South Africa. Others suggested a high-profile event like Bertrand Russell’s anti-Vietnam War tribunals of the 1960s, in which U.S. politicians were brought up on headline-winning charges of crimes against humanity.The result of all this fuss was a May 22 hearing at the University of Southern California that produced no indictments and named no names but focused on gathering as much information on the casualties of the current war on drugs—civil liberties and the truth seemed to top the list—as humanly possible. The hearing drew more participants than audience members and featured what the event’s sponsor, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, described as a panel of "distinguished citizens." Click the above link to read the whole article!
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