Publisher Description
Gary Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 “Dark Alliance” series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb’s stories.
Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb’s family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb’s editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. By providing a probing examination of the one of the most important media scandals in recent memory, this book provides a gripping view of one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of investigative journalism.
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“Gary Webb took on a historic task, to investigate a subject that is forbidden and secret. He glimpsed an essential truth, and two years later the CIA admitted even more. By then, Webb was discredited, disrespected, and destroyed by his own journalism community. His epic story, faithfully examined by Nick Schou, will never die until all the secrets he tried to probe are revealed.”
—
Tom Hayden, political activist and author of The Port Huron Statement
About the Authors
Nick Schou
is an award-winning investigative journalist with the OC Weekly who
has also written for the LA Weekly, the San Francisco
Bay Guardian, and the Washington City Paper. He
is the author of Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of
Eternal Love and its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World, The Weed
Runners: Travels with the Outlaw Capitalists of America’s Medical Marijuana
Trade, and Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed
Journalist Gary Webb. He lives in Long Beach, California.
Ray Chase graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in theater and a minor in cinema and television. He has since worked extensively as a voice-over artist. Among his dozens of audiobook narrations are Ian Douglas’ Heritage trilogy and Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb thrillers.
Charles Bowden is a contributing editor for GQ and Mother Jones; he also writes for Harper’s, the New
York Times Book Review, and Esquire. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
About Richard Ferrone
Richard Ferrone recorded over 150 audiobooks including thrillers, romances, science fiction, and inspirational novels. He won the prestigious Audie Award and was a finalist for four Audie Awards, including for Best Solo Male Narrator. He was named an AudioFile "Voice of the Last Century" and a "Rising and Shining Star." He earned many AudioFile Earphones Awards, including being named the 2011 Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense as well as the 2009 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. A science fiction fan, he narrated Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. He also narrated works by James Patterson, Walter Mosley, John Sandford, Eric Van Lustbader, and Stuart Woods.