The book is packed with information on an intriguing and eye-opening subject matter. Gary Webb cites what appears to be legitimate references adding credibility to the story's claims. The abundance of information did become overwhelming at times. Although after completing the book I found myself thinking "Right, wrong or indifferent...It all makes perfect sense. There's nothing not to believe about it."

Mr Webb's book here ties in with Rodney
Stich's Flying the Unfriendly Skies and
Bo Gritz troika of bokks during this era!

Every time the news reports a homicide even remotely connected to crack (and this would include most gang related murders, even to this day..), they should mention the international crack trade and its role. This will never happen, obviously, which is why we need people like the late Gary Webb in this country.

My only problem with the book, it goes into detail a bit too extensive for my attention span. But there's an obvious reason for this; the book is primarily written to back up his news story in which the mainstream press vilified him for, accusing him of unsubstantiated claims. The full circle detail is necessary. Fortunately, Webb is a good enough writer where even someone with no more than a high school education, like myself, can hang in there and read the entire book without resorting to skimming over paragraphs. Just when I start to say to myself, "alright, got it, we know these guys are contras, we know they're dope runners...what now?", the question is seemingly answered in the following paragraph. I don't know if a writer could have done a better job balancing the act of exhausting resources and laying all of them into full detail and making the book understandable to a lay person like me.

One of the most important books ever written on government corruption and its effect on it's citizenry. As you're reading this review, crack cocaine is still eating American inner cities alive. Rest in Peace, Gary Webb. And may your courageous reporting echo through this country as long as poor American communities suffer from this pandemic.

This book is outstanding!It's a shame that such a talented investigative
journalist had to lose his life because of it's content.

In this rather mind-boggling expose, award winning reporter, Gary Webb, who unfortunately was forced to commit himself to suicide, eventually gave his life to this cause, dots all of the "I's" and crosses all of the "T's" in this Alice in Wonderland journey deep into the bowels of the American national security run state apparatus. The reader gets a healthy dose of how bad a democracy can get when no one is "minding the National Security State." In graphic form, Webb outlines how it can happen that an administration that has declared "war on drugs" can actually end up in bed with the likes of Pablo Escobar, Manuel Noreiga, and the Ochoa brothers.

Spread out before us in excruciating and embarrassing (if not often tedious) details is a picture of what can happen when a "twisted set of means" (using the proceeds of drug sales to finance an ill-advised counterinsurgency) are put to "questionable ideological ends" (overthrowing a Marxist run government to return the much hated Somocitas to power). The book demonstrates that when this illicit "means-end" pair, are allowed to operate under the cover of secrecy; behind the shield of "plausible deniability;" and under the guise of sensible national security policy, it can literally suck all of the oxygen out of a democracy.

In an effort to return the brutal and much hated Somoza regime back to power, by supporting the remnants and holdovers of that deposed regime (a ragtag bunch of crooks, thieves, drug traffickers and murders if there ever was one), reassembled as the Nicaraguan "Contras." The "Just say no to drugs" Reagan administration, ended up in bed with the worse drug traffickers of our times.

But if being in bed with the most notorious drug traffickers in the world was not bad enough, the worse aspect of this foreign policy disaster was sacrificing a whole generation of America's inner city youth to a death sentence as a result of a nation awash in an ocean of "crack" cocaine. America intercity life will never recover from this disaster.

The Story

When the two Boland amendments, prohibiting funding for a U.S. backed "Contra army," were passed, the Reagan White House, at the suggestion of none other than Colonel Oliver North himself, sought to find financing by other more novel means; to wit: North suggested that since various national security agencies were already keeping close tabs on the drug traffickers, why not allow the drug cartels free access to our "inner city drug market," in exchange for them plowing back some of their drug profits into financing the "Contra" army? When this suggestion was made in a high level meeting, most attendees were surprised and embarrassed for North for having made such a stupid idea. However, a new clever strategy had just been born, and the wheels of the national security state began to turn. According to the book (confirmed only by Escobar himself) the then Vice President Bush met with Pablo Escobar personally and "cut the deal" that led to the "crack explosion" of the mid-80s.

The Rest of the Story

Although millions of dollars in weapons and aid from drug proceeds did eventually reach the "Contras," never was there a respectable force fielded sufficient to challenge the Sandinistas. However, in the process of destroying a whole generation of black inner city youth, fueling an internecine war between ghetto street gangs, erecting a string of more than ten thousand crack houses across the nation, and filling up the jails, adoption centers and mental hospitals, the "Contra fiasco" did make a handful of drug dealers such as LA's cocaine Kingpin "Freeway Ricky Ross, rich.

The only drawback to the book is that because of the gravity and nature of the charges against the Reagan administration, it was imperative that every detail be well documented. The main resources are court records retrieved from the many indictments, etc. As a result, getting through the book is slow and tedious. But it is well worth the extra time.

Gary Webb uncovered a secret government backed scheme to flood the Black and Latino/Hispanic communities with cocaine and crack in the 1990's. He worked as a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. He was contacted by an informant. He is drawn in first by the fact that he is in every sense an investigative reporter.More and more the speculation becomes fact and the facts spun into a web of truth that this government can not deny.The real and the real real is that Gary Webb was harrassed by the government to the point where he could take no more. He took his own life. THIS IS A TRUE STORY.THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU KNOW TOO MUCH.DARK ALLIANCE is intrigue at its best. The characters and the consequences are are realistic because they ARE real.THIS REALLY DID HAPPEN.

I am probably the only reviewer who was a clandestine case officer (three back to back tours), who participated in the Central American follies as both a field officer and a desk officer at CIA HQS, who is also very broadly read.

With great sadness, I must conclude that this book is truthful, accurate, and explosive.

The book lacks some context, for example, the liberal Saudi funding for the Contras that was provided to the National Security Council (NSC) as a back-door courtesy.

There are three core lessons in this book, supported by many books, some of which I list at the end of this review:

1) The US Government cannot be trusted by the people. The White House, the NSC, the CIA, even the Justice Department, and the Members of Congress associated with the Administration's party, are all liars. They use "national security" as a pretext for dealing drugs and screwing over the American people.

2) CIA has come to the end of its useful life. I remain proud to have been a clandestine case officer, but I see now that I was part of the "fake" CIA going through the motions, while extremely evil deeds were taking place in more limited channels.

3) In the eyes of the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Honduran people, among many others, the US Government, as represented by the CIA and the dark side Ambassadors who are partisan appointees rather than true diplomats, is evil. It consorts with dictators, condones torture, helps loot the commonwealths of others, runs drugs, launders money, and is generally the bully on the block.

I have numerous notes on the book, and will list just a few here that are important "nuggets" from this great work:

1) The CIA connection to the crack pandemic could be the crime of the century. It certainly destroys the government's moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

2) The fact that entrepreneur Ricky Ross went to jail for life, while his supplier, Nicaraguan Blandon, was constantly protected by CIA and the Department of Justice, is a travesty.

3) Nicaragua, under Somoza, was the US Government's local enforcer, and CIA was his most important liaison element. As long as we consort with 44 dictators (see Ambassador Palmer's "The Real Axis of Evil," we should expect to be reviled by the broader populations.

4) I believe that beginning with Henry Kissinger, the NSC and the CIA have had a "eugenics" policy that considers the low-income blacks to be "expendable" as well as a nuisance, and hence worthy of being targeted as a market for drugs to pull out what income they do have.

5) I believe that CIA was unwitting of the implications of crack, but that Congress was not. The book compellingly describes the testimony provided to Congress in 1979 and again in 1982, about the forthcoming implications of making a cocaine derivative affordable by the lowest income people in our Nation.

6) The Administration and Congress, in close partnership with the "mainstream media," consistently lied, slandered witnesses to the truth, and generally made it impossible for the truth to be "heard."

7) The ignorance of the CIA managers about the "ground truth" in Nicaragua and Honduras, and their willingness to carry out evil on command from the White House, without actually understanding the context, the true feelings of the people, or even the hugely detrimental strategic import of what they were about to do to Los Angeles, simply blow me away. We need to start court-martialling government employees for being stupid on the people's payroll.

8) CIA officers should not be allowed to issue visas. When they are under official cover they are assigned duty officer positions, and the duty officer traditionally has access to the visa stamp safe for emergencies (because the real visa officers are too lazy to be called in for an emergency).

9) I recently supported a movie on Ricky Ross, one that immediately won three awards in 2006 for best feature-length documentary, and I have to say, on the basis of this book, that Rick Ross was clearly not a gang member; was a tennis star and all-around good guy, was trying to make school grades; was disciplined, professional, and entrepreneurial. He did not create the cocaine, he did not smuggle it into the country, he simply acted on the opportunity presented to him by the US Government and its agent Blandon.

10) There is a connection between CIA, the private sector prison managers in the US, and prisoners. This needs a more careful look.

11) Clinton's bodyguards (many of whom have died mysteriously since then) were fully witting of Bill and Hillary Clinton's full engagement in drug smuggling into the US via Arkansas, and CIA's related nefarious activities.

12) CIA not only provided post-arrest white washes for its drug dealers, but they also orchestrated tip-offs on planned raids.

13) Both local police departments, especially in California, and the US Government, appear to have a standard "loot and release" program where drug dealers caught with very large amounts of cash (multiple millions) are instantly freed in return for a quit claim on the money.

14) CIA Operations Officers (clandestine case officers) lied not just to the FBI and Justice, but to their own CIA lawyers.

15) DEA in Costa Rica was dirtier than most, skimming cash and protecting drug transports.

The book ends with a revelation and an observation.

The revelation: just prior to both the Contra drug deals and the CIA's ramping up in Afghanistan, which now provides 80% of the world's heroin under US administration, the CIA and Justice concluded a Memorandum of Understanding that gave CIA carte blanche in the drug business.. The author says this smacked of premeditation, and I agree.

The observation: here is a quote from page 452: " ...the real danger the CIA has always presented--unbridled criminal stupidity, clouded in a blanked of national security."

Shame on us all. It's time to clean house.

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition
The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War : An Undercover Odyssey
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA
From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

Gary Webb proves that at the very least the US government at the highest levels knew about and protected Contra connected Nicaraguans who were smuggling MASSIVE amounts of cocaine into America and more or less created and caused the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980's. These same Nicaraguans were in most cases working for the CIA.

Don't kid yourself, the global elite control the drug trade. The CIA is just a conduit for them to do it. From what I have read the illegal drug trade is the second largest industry in the world so why should it be any surprise? Whats covered in Dark Alliance is just one of their many operations along these lines. Do some research about Mena, Arkansas and Barry Seal. Read the book Dope Inc. Read Celerino Castillo's book. Do you think its a coincidence that once the American military removed the Taliban from Afghanistan and installed a puppet government that Heroin use has went to all time highs? Gee I wonder why there is so much semi-covert US military and CIA action going on in Columbia these days? One of the main reasons new world order military forces were in the Balkans murdering Serbians was because they want to control that area because its a big drug pipeline for smuggling Heroin and Hash into Europe from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The CIA was caught smuggling Heroin into America by sewing kilos inside of dead bodies during the Vietnam war. A drug lord that totally controlled a whole region of Cambodia admitted on videotape that the CIA was who he was doing his business with. I mean what do you need to hear to know the United States government is a criminal enterprise!?!?

Gary Webb somehow managed to commit "suicide" by shooting himself in the head TWICE! Murders made to look like "suicides" are trademarks of the CIA. Webb was sniffing around and exposing a lot of dangerous people, from Crips and Bloods, to Columbian drug lords, to the highest level of the US government so it shouldn't be that surprising that he turned up dead under mysterious circumstances. Although we will most likely never know for sure who murdered him (most likely it was the cia) don't believe for one second that this guy commited suicide.

When this book was published in 1998, I bought and read the hardback edition. I found the author's argument's compelling. However, the Bush Family machine was in high gear polishing its image for W.'s presidential run, so the nation's so called free press pretended that this story of abuse of government power to sponsor terrorism at the cost of ignoring a crack cocaine epidemic here at home was less important than Bill Clinton's flirtation with an intern. The journalists who dismissed this book can not bear all the blame. Their bosses at the corporate media was chaffing under federal media ownership rules, and one of the promises which the Bush family and Karl Rove would make repeatedly all the way until W. was sworn in for his second term in 2005 was that they were going to relax those rules and give the US corporate media monopolies beyond their wildest dreams. So, the Heathers, like Ms. Connelly dutifully reported that Gore was a liar, and the book reviewers panned Mr. Webb's masterpiece of investigative journalism.

Now that we know that the second Bush administration, which is crawling with Iran-Contra figures, was willing to lie in order to deceive this nation into going to war in Iraq---a war that has cost us billions of dollars, thousands of US lives, made us less safe from terror, and cost us the goodwill of our allies around the world as well as being a convenient excuse for a deliberate administrative power grab at the expense of the US Constitution--maybe the skeptics who said "Such a thing could never happen here" to Webb's account of CIA "ends justify the means" gone wild should take off their rose colored glasses.

There are factions within the government who think that some lies to the American people are "good." Indeed, the Washington Post sank so low as to call the administration Plame Scandal "The Good Lie." Then, there are those people who believe that the truth shall set you free. Most people searching Amazon for something to read (and most people reading the Washington Post for that matter) belong to the latter group. I am saddened that Mr. Webb's life ended so tragically, but I am glad for the sake of our country that he wrote what he did. It is never too late to learn the important lesson, that it is the responsibility of the people to keep their eyes on their elected leaders, because you never know what kind of trouble they will get up to.

On December 16, 2004, Editor & Publisher reported, "Gary Webb, former San Jose Mercury News reporter, was found dead in his Carmichael, Calif. home on Friday morning, December 10, 2004. 'The cause of death was determined to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head,' said a statement issued by the Sacramento County Coroner's Office. Information and evidence gathered at the scene of death, including a handwritten note indicating an intention on the part of the decedent to take his own life, resulted in 'suicide' as the determined manner of death.

I never met Gary Webb, but my daughter Cassandra did. As a fledgling investigative reporter for the Associated Press, she conducted the last interview with him for AP just before he left the San Jose Mercury News. She had been the most junior reporter at AP's Sacramento office where all the senior reporters had personally known Webb too well to prepare an impartial story. So they sent the "new kid." After Cassandra had filed her report, I asked her what Webb was like. "Oh, he's a really gentle, cool guy -- 100% journalist."

"How's he taking it?" I asked.

"Well, I think, philosophically," she replied. "He told me that's sometimes the price good journalists have to pay for getting the truth out. They can lose their jobs."

Thereafter, Webb wrote "Dark Alliance" and gave lectures on his work and the drug smuggling into the United States that is a part of America's covert wars.

Earlier, writers such as Michael Levine and Laura Kavanau-Levine who published, "The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic" or Alfred W. McCoy who wrote "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," seemed to have come through it unscathed. Maybe the C.I.A. and their domestic propagandists allow historians to "get away with it. " That was then, but Gary Webb had written about them about now. Webb's serialized exposé in the San Jose Mercury News, where his book's title originated, caused such a public outcry that his reports simply couldn't be ignored. Indeed, when Webb's stories first broke one drug gang-infested Los Angeles community became so enraged that the then CIA Director Deutsch was obliged to visit the public in a futile attempt to calm them and protect the "good name" of the CIA. He was virtually run out of town -- shown on national televison.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry, Gary Webb's comrade in arms who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, recently wrote of his fallen colleague:

"At Webb's death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he -- along with angry African-American citizens -- forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.

"But the real tragedy of Webb's historic gift - and of his life cut short -- is that because of the major news media's callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan-Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people."

Robert Parry perhaps put it best when he wrote:

"For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The American Journalism Review and even The Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb's marriage broke up.

"On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head. Whatever the details of Webb's death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb's contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons."

As others have noted, this is a profoundly disturbing book. Much of the information it contains, I had already suspected, but to see it all laid out in such graphic detail was an eye-opener for me.

The so-called 'war on drugs' is nothing but a sad joke; but to the many people who's lives have been destroyed, its no laughing matter.

This book should be required reading for all high school and college students.

Well done, Gary. You deserved a much different reward than you received.

Didn't you ever see the author's photograph of a UFO strafing a Sonoma farmhouse?

The CIA sells cocaine to finance its covert operations around the world. This is nothing new. In fact when the Contra affair was exposed, 14 people where charged with offences but several where pardoned by President Regan. In the ensuing government investigation, reports surfaced that the CIA had been involved in drug running. There was no question about that, however trying to say that the CIA knew about the drug running was another matter entirely. Obviously the CIA sponsored guerrilla outfits in Nicaragua where indeed trafficking drugs but did the CIA condone it?, Promote it?, Turn a blind eye? We are supposed to believe that they did not know about it. Are there any Skeptics in the room? Oh well if they did not know about it then call the CIA what it is - "Stupid", "Foolish" and "Incapable of being a good Intelligence service."

The problem here is that if the CIA did not know that the Contras where drug trafficking into America than what good is the CIA! If the CIA did know about it then they where indeed involved in a very illegal activity and a black operation.

Webb simply makes the connection using a US based crack cocaine entrepreneur; two cocaine suppliers with connections to the Contras and the CIA's own involvement with the Contras. The problem here is directly connecting the US based crack cocaine entrepreneur with the CIA except by default of the Contras and the two cocaine suppliers. In short, the CIA is in a very difficult position here. For those who think that this is totally fantasy then just take a look at Afghanistan and the opium production that goes on without any interference from the US government because.. guess what?.. this time they are the good guys.

Webb never really does say - "Here, look - the smoking gun!" but he comes damn near close at times. You should read this book. It does give the full low-down on this sensational story that was sadly, and grossly, underestimated by the mainstream media. It is a crackerjack of a connection to make and Webb should be commended for brining it to our attention. Draw your own conclusions. Are the CIA stupid enough to allow a crack operation to run under their own noses or did they know about it?

The Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations seems to think so. So does Webb. Sadly CNN, The Washing Post and The New York Times could not care less. I wonder why?

Gary Webb received a Pulitzer Prize for writing about the thriving Silicon Valley computer industry as a reporter for the local San Jose Mercury-News. He received a call from a woman informing him of something that sounded so incredible that he was inclined to laugh her off as a crank.

The indignation of the young woman on the other end of the line after realizing what Webb was thinking about her prompted him to accept her offer to prove her startling claim. Her comment related to drug traficking by the Central Intelligence Agency. If he wanted to learn more, she told him, just be in court the following morning.

Webb met a beautiful young woman who filled him in on some details of what was happening, after which they stepped inside the courtroom, where her boyfriend, who was serving time for drug trafficking, was part of a hearing. As the pieces of the story began to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, Webb jumped on the back of the tiger and proceeded full speed ahead.

The book's foreword was written by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a top member of the Black Caucus and representative of a South Los Angeles district. She cites her shock when she learns about the extent of gang violence and resulting death occurring in her district. Due to Gary Webb's courageous efforts she is able to learn more. Members of Nicaragua's Contras, referred to by President Reagan as "morally equivalent to our Founding Fathers," flocked into Los Angeles as well as San Francisco and launched a successful drug trade, sending proceeds back to Nicaragua for revolutionary purposes.

Webb peers into the network of the Contras and CIA, along with detailing the activities of White House revolutionary Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North. Webb's startling charges formed the working basis of much of Senator John Kerry's subsequent investigation and senatorial hearings.

This is a remarkable book. My first inclination was to disregard it as another conspiracy theory. After reading it and checking some of the sources, however, I have concluded that it is accurate. Gary Webb traces the introduction of crack cocaine into Los Angeles in the early 1980's and followed its rise to a full blown epidemic by the mid to late 80's. Undoubtedly, agents of the CIA and DEA, and most certainly Oliver North and his Contra operation were aware of the source of the cocaine. Indeed, it is apparent that the White House knew and acted to protect the drug pipeline in order to keep the money flowing to the Contra organization. Ronald Reagan was clearly more interested in fighting the war on communism than the war on drugs. The hypocrisy of the Reagan administration is apparent when we realize that Reagan declared illicit drugs a national security issue and championed the most draconian drug laws written to that date. Would crack cocaine have become an epidemic without CIA support? Probably, Webb points out that the development of a similar drug in Latin America by the 1970's had been studied and scientists warned that a similar epidemic in the U.S. was imminent. Would it have happened as fast or been as bad without government protection? No one knows the answer to that question. Ultimately, there were two big losers. Inner city dwellers were hit hardest. Not only were they exposed to this incredibly addicting drug, but they bore the brunt of the government crack-down on illicit drugs. The other loser was Ronald Reagan, whose legacy of integrity and honor is destroyed in his ends justifies the means approach to government. Anyone who reads this book will never look at Ronald Reagan or Oliver North in quite the same way.

America is great because Americans are good. Gary Webb is a heroic journalist. His determination to tell this story is admirable. The research is meticulous...the conclusions undeniable.

I followed the "Dark Alliance" story from the time it was published in the San Jose Mercury News to the time it was ridiculed by the country's largest newspapers and Gary Webb was hung out to dry by his own paper. I picked up the book with an open mind but no expectation of being convinced.

I was not only convinced, I was stunned by the story from start to finish. Webb has assembled not shadowy sources leaking dark innuendos but a thorough reporting of facts taken from congressional testimony, court testimony, declassified documents and personal interviews. It's clear, at a minimum, that the US government was connected to the people responsible for a large piece of the cocaine trade. The only thing that remains uncertain is whether US officials actually participated in the drug trade directly with these people or simply forged a marriage of convenience and looked the other way. It's worth noting that a large amount of information comes from documents that are only partially declassified -- meaning that plenty of incriminating information remains to be disclosed. Years from now we'll finally see what is still being concealed, and I suspect we'll learn that the story goes beyond the basic verifiable information that Webb reports here.

For those who believed the NY Times' cursory dismissal of this story, please note the Times' record in the case of El Mozote as told in the book "The Massacre at El Mozote" by Mark Danner. The Times pulled its own Latin American correspondent off the story of a massacre by US-supported Salvadoran troops when the government went on the attack. Ten years later, the hundreds of bodies were found and the whole story was confirmed. The Times was left looking as if it had participated in the official coverup, and maybe it did. It would be no surprise to find out a similar story in this case.

Gary Webb starts with some power packed facts and unfortunately succumbs to the allure of conspiracism. What might have been the definitive work on the introduction of crack into the country by the group Ronald Reagan referred to as akin to "our founding fathers" and complicity via neglect by our intelligence and policy community degenerates into acceptance of poorly documented paranoia.

Clearly, Webb is correct that the CIA knew it's Contras were making money by dealing cocaine and drugs. His investigation into the Frogman case, and Government cover-up is first rate. But his devotion of a chapter based on the ranting of paid agitprop, L.D. Brown, destroys Webb's otherwise excellent work. Had Webb maintained his otherwise healthy skepticism, against the ranting of the Arkansas looney class, his credibility and story would have been beyond reproach.

Even with his vindication by the CIA admission that they had known of the Contra drug smuggling, and their protection of this group, Webb's story has become easily dismissible. Other problems include his failure to distinguish the Northern and Southern Contras, succumbing to the conspiracist tool of guilt by loose association. For instance, he never questions the reason that the ARDE became the bastard child of the secret war.
It's really a shame that this is the best book written on the connection between crack and the secret war. One could easily wish for a version that lacks the input of the tin foil sombrero crowd.

How did this happen to Gary webb? A prize winning reporter,a middle of the road news reporter from a conservative stable backround suddenly becomes the pariah of the press? I read this book with great trepidition,seeing the JFK conspiracy folks running around ...well, i was surprised, shocked,horrified.Perhaps i shouldnt have been...Mr Webb ahs laid out, simply, forcibly a case so damning that most simply wont look.The case he sets forth is so damning infact, that if true, and I think it is, then we need to overhaul our entire system. The absurd "war on drugs'[which doesnt really exist,except in political newspeak]is shattered by Mr Webb in the first 100 pages. 3 administrations,and countless pols either ignored or knew what was happening. Oliver North comes off none too well, though he is an easy target, and not even close to one of the important folks here. This is a searing piece of journalism,and one wonders why My Webb has been consigned to the far left by the celebrated organs of media, THe NY TIMES, THE WASHINGTO POST and The LA TIMES?. When these 3 folks stand up to criticise at once, well, i smell soemthing...where is the uproar from the 'mainstream press' ?After all, I thought the war on drugs was a family values issue. One of the most disturbing books I have ever read.

"Dark Alliance" is a mesmerizing and excellent attempt at telling the truth concerning CIA and US government complicity in the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Dismissed as the stuff of Afro-American conspiracy theorists, author Gary Webb explores most every angle in uncovering this despicable CIA/Contra collusion and governmental abuse of power.

"Dark Alliance" uncovers evidence that the US government conspired to bring tons and tons of cocaine into African-American communities; that US government officials knew of this conspiracy but did nothing to deter or stop it for political reasons. Webb explains how the Contras were shipping planeloads of cocaine into the US to make money to buy arms for the Contra war effort against the communist threat infliltrating their scared country.

One of the more fascinating chapters is how the crack cocaine was created, franchised and marketed like fast-food to African Americans. One of the darker themes in "Dark Alliance" is the complete and utter failure of the mainstream media to cover this subject. Any journalist with access to transcripts from government hearings would have been able to piece this story together. The timidity of the mainstream press in comparison to Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" is one of this book's strongest points. It demonstrates that a government's policies, and the illegal covert actions of those who purport to uphold those policies, can have devestating effects not only throughout the world but also within that very government's backyard.

On maps of L.A., South Central is a neat grid. I wonder if someone close to Reagan looked at it and said, "By Jove, that's it. We'll milk it for drug money. Show me the statistics. Look what we can earn from putting the patriotic Nicaraguan freedom fighting refugees into California with their infinite supply of blow, teaming them up with black drug runners. My God, we don't even NEED Congressional appropriations. Ha! Ha! Those liberals think they can help people with welfare and stiff the Defense establishment? We'll get that money back for the Gipper, with our own little Trojan horse, and he can arm the Contras to the teeth." Something like this happened, as loony-tunes as it sounds. Thoroughly documented by the patient, unstinting , police-friendly work of reporter Gary Webb, who met with scorn from the Eastern press (who always dismiss L.A. as crazy anyway) and subsequent cowardice from his newspaper. But he slogged through the whole quagmire and should get a medal from the rest of us. Mr. Webb is not prone to ideological asides. Tipped off to facts about a drug dealer who had been without trial for three years, the eventual hearing in this case led him to a host of major cocaine traffickers, many Somoza supporters, all pets of one or another federal agency. Whoever wanted a San Jose Mercury News reporter to know about this does not matter. It could have been someone with Sandinista sympathies. His pursuit of the facts behind this case led him all the way to Iran-Contra affair. I don't know about you, but I think U.S. citizen crack babies are a pretty high price to pay for secret foreign escapades. What sort of political atmosphere breeds this stuff? Contempt for the poor. Contempt for the Congress, which explicitly forbade arming the Contras. Contempt. So when Webb met with Establishment contempt, it was just the same stinking wind. I don't know about you, but I am going to look at major drug busts in a whole new way. I am going to see them as theater, and I am going to try to find out who wrote that particular play.

This is a huge and complex work. Mr. Webb is understandably at pains to answer the "misinterpretations" of the story he told for the San Jose Mercury news, about drug sales in South Central L.A. going to arm the Contras. He lost his job. This book and even some governmental admissions explain that he was correct the first time. Mr. Webb is no spinner, and nothing is told in this book without thorough, at times tedious description. But we are an increasingly visual culture. A timeline would have nailed a lot of the story. The story depends to some extent on dates, but not entirely. It might take hearings to know presicely "what did he know and when did he know it". I felt Webb showed particular sensitivity in writing about the Majors, elite-trained members of the LAPD, who had their warrants burned (tip offs to the drug dealers). One scene sticks in my mind: the cops find a house stripped of evidence except for a garden hose left running in a safe. The most important thing Webb is trying to say is that nobody in Washington really planned to destroy South Central with crack. This is the defense which the Establishment seems to hope he will make, before it spits him out and forgets him. Just because there are not Nazi-like plans afoot does not mean that the "vast carelessness" of allowing cocaine traffickers to operate because they are our political friends is somehow less culpable. Officials knew what these men were about before they did what they did, and then afterwards, some went on to become citizens. By exposing this process, Webb feels he is objective. Fair enough. It is up to the rest of us to take it subjectively. It is shameful, and criminal. The entire criminal justice system needs a vast overhaul to correct the effects of this vast carelessness. Little crooks are thrown to the crowd, given life without parole (although Freeway Ross deserves a stiff sentence) while the big ones not only walk, but dine with national leaders. This fish rotted from the head, and will make us all sick. I'm not interested in turning our country into a banana republic oligarchy - but we are surely headed there if we do not act on what the rare people like Webb are telling us.

Webb's indictment is massive, well-documented, and in all probability, true. Many of us grown cynical by the horrors commited in defense of empire, are not surprised by Webb's findings. As most knowledgable readers know, collusion with narco-traffikers goes back at least to Lucky Luciano and plans to invade Sicily during WWII. Moreover, Webb's story and media reaction to it, is echoed in the more recent Tailwind fiasco of 1998. CNN broke a well-documented account of nerve gas use against American deserters during the Vietnam conflict. Reaction among its electronic colleagues was swift, uninformed, and overwhelming, causing CNN to disown the story and fall back in line, all the while the story's producers and witnesses stuck by the original account. This is the "free press" version of the party line, facts be damned. Webb faces this same dark alliance in making public his research, revealing as it is. The big slamming sound you hear is the sound of imperial managers closing ranks when the empire feels threatened. Gary Webb now knows the sound very well.

It's a little muddled in parts. The writing, though at times vivid, turns into thesis work, densely written, overly annotated and much is often over-explained. In places, it reads like the author is defending himself from an onslaught of attacks hitting him from all sides, even from those who should be allies. In this case, all that would be true.

In spite Webb's need to follow Strunk and White's Rule 17 - "omit needless words" - you should obtain this work. It is most likely the final proof that a nearly extinct creature ever existed: the investigative journalist.

It's pretty much gone now, downsized out of newspaper budgets, kicked out of editorial staff boxes by the threat of costly lawsuits and otherwise ruled obsolet by a a medium still called "newspapers" run by people who think they are competing with television.

A creature like Gary Webb can't exist in newspapers anymore. They won't let him. While much of what is in his book has been said before by the likes of Michael Perenti and others, Webb used the detached sense of an investigative journalist to track down hundreds of sources on and off the record, stacks of documents and wrote a series of stories about how the CIA created the apparatus that allowed the easy flow of cocaine and crack into the United States.

The CIA denied it and most newspapers (going on the CIA's record of honesty I guess) took their word for it and ran editorials attacking Webb.The man was pushed out of a job he did better than anyone else. He eventually quit. The CIA, by and by, eventually released statements (carried in small blurbs inside many of those same papers) confirming that at least some of what Webb wrote about was true.

So, you should buy this book. it's the stuff your newspaper won't tell you. Apperently yourr government screwing over a large portion of its population isn't "sexy" enough to sell papers.

Gary Webb has uncovered the biggest story of the past twenty years. It covers three Presidential adminstrations and uncovers the corruption of our government and the few officials who abuse the power entrusted with them. It also shows how bad modern media has gotten in its responsibility to do true "journalism." Gary Webb has gathered "hard" edvidence, organized it and made sense of lengthy and complex conspiracy of our and central american governments plan to fund a private war through drugs sales. The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The New York Times denounced his findings without a shred of contrary evidence or with just statements from the CIA saying it was a lie and they all just took the CIA's statement as fact. The major news media reporters have just become stenographers for the big, corrupt government in Washington and they will swallow anything that is spoon fed to them. The biggest loser in all of this is the American public, the people who have become addicted to drugs and the truth. But thanks to Gary Webb the truth wasn't lost but placed in a forum where the WHOLE story could be told, "Dark Alliance."

Gary Webb deserves whatever rewards come to him after completing his long committed journey into the dark world of international politics and giving it up to the reading public. To the average individual, the issues laid out and covered in "Dark Alliance" serves as one hell of a wake up call and should remind us that all we think we know and see everyday shades in comparison to the realities of a primarily twisted and dishonest American Government. The CIA's involvement in variious illegal activities throughout the world as well as in it's own back yard has been thoroughly rumoured and documented over the years and "Dark Alliance" is a thought provoking, confirmation for readers of all levels.

I have been reading books that might explain some of the behavior of the federal enforcement bureaucracies over the last decade. Gary Webb's Dark Alliance is the most useful description so far regarding the relationship between federal enforcement and drug traffic, particularly the growth of drug networks in rural and suburban mid-America.

The Webb story involves many people in many of the federal enforcement bureaucracies. With no conspiracy whatsoever, just a lot of regular people wanting to protect their jobs or their position, the incentives could have helped to trigger just the kind of "Wag-the-Dog" behavior that we have observed here in Washington over the last two plus years.

Webb's story is well written, over documented and rings true with how Washington and the money works. As an Assistant Secretary of Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner in the Bush Administration from 1989-1990, my assessment is that his story and presentation are sound.

Given the publication of White Out by Cockburn & St Clair, which describes the response of the national media to Webb's story, this story is likely to go mainstream. Indeed, it would not suprise me if Webb's story contributed to the diversionary value of various independent prosecutors and Starr, why the push behind Operation Safe Home and the Urban Fraud Initiative in time for the Year 2000 election is so strong and federal enforcement in minority neighborhoods enjoys such bipartisan support from HUD Secretary Cuomo, former Secretary Kemp, and Congress. There is a lot here beyond urban cleansing that would inspire federal officials to want to ensure that minorities looked like they could not manage money and were to blame for the drug business. (HUD's role in housing and community development provides federal enforcement teams with jurisdictional authority to swat, sanction, seize, recapture and arrest in the neighborhoods that serve as retail outlets for many drug operations.)

Democrats and Republicans, politicians and bureaucrats, and all enforcement bureaucracies in Washington are going to have a lot of feelings about this...I suspect a lot of people have been spending a lot of time and money in the swarm trying to position themselves to not take the blame when this one blows. In combination with keeping the lid on deflation, a recession and Y2K, it is a lot to manage.

Bottom line, a copy of Dark Alliance is going out to a lot of folks on this year's Xmas list.

Terrific writing.Dates, times, people, facts that no one has been able to disprove.Am very uneasy to think such a coverup,created by persons in such high places,could be ignored for so long.Shame on the media giants.

Though Webb never comes right out and proves a direct link to drug running Contra supporters and the CIA the overwheming "coincidences" and collaborations certainly lead to disturbing conclusions. In a journalistic environment obsessed with zippergate the type of reporting done by Webb (which led to his being marginalized at the Mercury News) is crucial and refreshing.

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Review by Conspiracy Nation

Gary Webb, author of *Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, And The Crack Cocaine Explosion*, was the journalist with the San Jose Mercury News who caused such a fuss two years ago when his series of articles pointed to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic. So-called "conspiracy nuts" have, of course, been screaming about CIA involvement in the global narcotics trade for years, but for Webb, then a mainstream reporter, to say similar things was fairly astounding.

So, for awhile, the mass media paid attention to Webb's reports. But Webb paid a price for daring to get too close to the truth: Webb's story led the CIA to counterattack with "one of the most ruthless campaigns of vilification of a journalist since the Agency [CIA] went after Seymour Hersh in the mid 1970s." [1] Webb faced "savage assaults" from "other members of his profession." [2] "The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory." [3]

The fierce attack on Webb by mainstream reporters is a glaring and obvious clue to the fact that Webb had struck a nerve with his series, "Dark Alliance." A la Shakespeare: "Methinks they do protest too much." (A similar nerve was struck by Oliver Stone's movie, "JFK," which the press, en masse, began howling against =months= before it was even released. See, for example, Newsweek's cover story, "Why Oliver Stone's New Movie, JFK, Can't Be Trusted.")

So dewey-eyed Gary Webb just couldn't figure it out when his series on CIA complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic was so savagely attacked by his then-colleagues. (Webb was pressured out of his job at San Jose Mercury News as further punishment for daring to tell the truth -- and not back down from it -- in his 1996 newspaper series "Dark Alliance.") Webb, still a lamb in a forest full of journalist-sharks, was dumbfounded and dismayed when his then-colleagues unfairly ganged-up against him. Webb, an innocent babe, concluded that he just hadn't presented his case well enough -- hence his current book, *Dark Alliance*.

Webb figures that now, by meticulously detailing the evidence, his former press colleagues are all going to suddenly "get it." He is expecting big-time reporter/liars at such papers as The New York Times and Washington Post to read his book, have the blinders fall from their eyes, and immediately reverse their former positions.

Well, welcome to reality, Mr. Webb. It may dawn on you that, just because =you= are an honest reporter, it does not automatically follow that your former colleagues are also honest reporters. Mr. Webb, if you are reading this, here is a CONCEPT for you: (a) politicians aren't always honest; (b) policemen aren't always honest; so (c) could it possibly be that journalists aren't always honest? Could it be that many journalists "know which side their bread is buttered on?" Could it be that some of your former colleagues, even though members of the noblest of professions, would actually sell-out the Truth in return for career advancement? Something to ponder, Mr. Webb, as your well-researched book is colossally ignored by your former colleagues.

And Webb's book will not just be ignored by his former colleagues. The American couch-potato public will also ignore it, mostly because it is so meticulously and painstakingly put together. Webb is mathematical in his exactitude, slowly and carefully proving his theorem -- so well so that only a few Einsteins will be plodding enough to sort through it. Like "E = mc^2," Webb's book is not for the average reader.

What he needs is to have collaborated with, say, Conspiracy Nation (CN), in its production. We old hands here at CN could have given him some pointers, like how to add pizzazz to a story. For example, Mr. Webb, you should have spiced up your book with vague allusions to Merovingian kings, the gold from King Solomon's Mines, and the Spear of Longinus. The public -- the open-minded public -- has long since figured out that CIA means "Cocaine Importing Agency." So your book about CIA complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic is "old news" to them. They are hungry for new material and your book, while rock-solid in what it says, does not titilate and so fails to reach a wide audience.

Excellent book! The question remains, why is the CIA still in Mexico even though Central America is at peace? Ahhh yes the drug money to fund other operations! Where is the congressional oversight of these idiots? The CIA is undermining democracy in Mexico by supporting state-sponsored drug dealing and the health of Americans with such stupid policies.

Answer: Not keeping an eye on who is threatening the United States with nuclear weapons (India, Pakistan). Instead, the CIA has been protecting its "assets;" drug smugglers who brought cocaine into America's backyards through Los Angeles street gangs; according to Gary Webb. Not all of the drug money was wasted, however. Some of it trickled down to the Contras ... Ronald Reagan's so-called Freedom Fighters. Read Dark Alliance and weep for America being torn apart by the CIA. By the way, Gary Webb's reward for exposing these crimes against Americans? His career as a journalist was destroyed. Moral: exercise your First Amendment rights by writing the unflattering truth about the CIA and lose your livlihood (if not your life).