If you ever begin to lack cynicism about the U.S. government, ever start to let your guard down and trust national leaders, Gary Webb can provide you with an eye-opening antidote in his recent 550 page journalistic effort, Dark Alliance. Webb expands his famous San Jose Mercury News series about the CIA's role in facilitating the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S., earning huge sums for the Contra army in Nicaragua and the dictatorship of El Salvador, and helping to fuel the Los Angeles crack explosion in the early 80s. Not to mention giving the lie to the CIA's recent attempts to whitewash and deny the facts behind his expose.

After the publication of Webb's series on the CIA and crack cocaine, the CIA was forced by Congressional pressure to undertake the task of investigating itself for any wrongdoing. Not surprisingly, the agency announced that no laws were broken; yet recently they admitted that CIA agents had worked with a number of Contra drug smugglers. The Justice Department, headed by Janet Reno, has also deliberately blocked the release of a report on their role in the affair and denied any wrongdoing by the CIA in its support of drug smugglers.

At a recent talk at the University Book Store, Webb discussed the San Jose Mercury News' decision to offer a belated 'retraction' after maintaining many months of full support for his series. The head editor Jerry Ceppos blatantly caved in to pressure from government agencies and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media, apologizing for non-existent faults in the series, and failing to publish the final four installments of the seven-part series. Webb pointed out that his articles had never maintained that the CIA-Contra connection which employed Contra drug kingpin Norwin Meneses had supplied all or most of the cocaine available in the L.A. area, or that there had been a hidden plot to target solely the black community. Rather, it focused on the more obvious and egregious wrong--that the CIA, DEA, and FBI had all knowingly abetted illegal drug dealing, at an enormous cost in human lives and suffering.

In Dark Alliance, Webb more than adequately documents every original point in his series, with hundreds of references, including candid interviews and court testimony of Freeway Rick Ross, Danilo Blandon, whistle-blowing DEA agents, and quite a few involved pilots and drug distributors. New material in the book includes a description of the vast web of dealers involved both in Central America and in the U.S. outside of Rick Ross's drug ring. He expands the context of these details, too, by covering the roles of Oliver North, the Department of Justice, and the CIA in protecting the Contra drug smugglers, and detailing the involvement of current high ranking government officials. Webb's expanded account, unconfined by the space limitations of a newspaper, is so well-documented that it provides overwhelming evidence against contentions by the CIA, Washington Post, and LA Times that this is just a vast, unfounded, conspiracy theory. In fact, much of his information can be found in the John Kerrey committee reports from government investigations into the CIA/Contra drug connection in the 1980s (the sordid details somehow routinely failed to make the nightly news).

"Once you utter that three letter word "CIA," suddenly you're unbelievable," offered Webb. Many people have not forgotten this scandal, which was spread to a wider audience via the World Wide Web and talk radio. Yet, it is quite true that in many people's minds, any report about "secret dealings" by the CIA equates with such conspiracy theories as abduction by aliens, an impending one world government run by the United Nations, and government plots to mark everyone with the sign of the beast. On another level, the retraction printed by San Jose Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos has cast the story into a bin with the recent Vietnam War nerve gas story as sensationalized fiction meant to sell newspapers or improve TV ratings, or as further proof of a covert liberal media agenda. What these two separate incidents really show is how quickly major media outlets will pillory their own reporters in order to maintain a direct news feed to government agencies and ensure a continuous flow of government propaganda. It's a lot easier than doing real investigative journalism, which carries the risk of alienating not just official government sources, but also major advertisers.

Another inescapable conclusion that can be drawn from Dark Alliance is the abiding and insidious nature of secret and unaccountable intelligence agencies. As Gary Webb said, the United States has a sort of permanent government that operates independently from the elected government of legislators and the President. Administrations may come and go, but career government employees in the CIA can and do operate with their very own right wing agenda that U.S. citizens never have a chance to see or vote upon--in much the same way that career government employees do everywhere, whether it be in the IRS or the Department of Agriculture. The main difference is that the CIA has vastly more funding, can operate in complete secrecy, and is in the business of killing people and toppling governments. If that means lending a helping hand to drug dealers, then they'll gladly do that, too.