The Timely Kill the Messenger Looks at the Price of Truth

On August 18, 1996 Gary Webb, then a San Jose Mercury News Staff Writer, reported that, “For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.” That line opened Webb’s three-part series “Dark Alliance,” a report that would ultimately define the rest of his life and spark years of debate.