NP Fwd: MAPS: [] ! Message from Gary Webb, NARCONEWS

[Doug Millison]

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>http://www.narconews.com/webbletter.html
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>   Narco News 2001
>  "Why the Lawsuit?
>  To Silence Him"
>
>  A Message From Gary Webb
>
>"Make no mistake. This court fight isn't about any particular story 
>NarcoNews has done. It's about ALL of them, and all of the ones yet 
>to come. And it's a battle over the continued independence of 
>Internet journalism as well. The silencing of Al Giordano and 
>NarcoNews isn't a theoretical possibility that might happen a couple 
>years from now. It's already happening. Al and his volunteer lawyers 
>are hip-deep in it right now. And they need our help."
>
>  - Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Gary Webb
>
>  March 16, 2001
>
>  Dear Friend,
>
>  Not long after I wrote a series for the San Jose Mercury News about 
>a drug ring that had flooded South Central Los Angeles with cheap 
>cocaine at the beginning of the crack explosion there, a strange 
>thing happened to me. I was silenced.
>
>This, believe it or not, came as something of a surprise to me. For 
>17 years I had been writing newspaper stories about grafters, 
>crooked bankers, corrupt politicians and killers -- and winning 
>armloads of journalism awards for it. Some of my stories had 
>convened grand juries and sent important people to well-deserved 
>jail cells. Others ended up on 20/20, and later became a 
>best-selling book (not written by me, unfortunately.) I started 
>doing television news shows, speaking to college journalism classes 
>and professional seminars. I had major papers bidding against each 
>other to hire me.
>
>So when I happened across information implicating an arm of the 
>Central Intelligence Agency in the cocaine trade, I had no qualms 
>about jumping onto it with both feet. What did I have to worry 
>about? I was a newspaperman for a big city, take-no-prisoners 
>newspaper. I had the First Amendment, a law firm, and a 
>multi-million dollar corporation watching my back.
>
>Besides, this story was a fucking outrage. Right-wing Latin American 
>drug dealers were helping finance a CIA-run covert war in Nicaragua 
>by selling tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods in LA, who were 
>turning it into crack and spreading it through black neighborhoods 
>nationwide. And all the available evidence pointed to the sickening 
>conclusion that elements of the US government had known of it and 
>had either tacitly encouraged it or, at a minimum, done absolutely 
>nothing to stop it.
>
>And that's when this strange thing happened. The national news 
>media, instead of using its brute strength to force the truth from 
>our government, decided that its time would be better spent 
>investigating me and my reporting. They kicked me around pretty 
>good, I have to admit. (At one point, I was even accused of making 
>movie deals with a crack dealer I'd written about. The DEA raided my 
>film agent's office looking for any scrap of paper to back up this 
>lie and appeared disappointed when they came up emptyhanded.)
>
>To this day, no one has ever been able to show me a single error of 
>fact in anything I've written about this drug ring, which includes a 
>600-page book about the whole tragic mess. Indeed, most of what has 
>come out since shows that my newspaper stories grossly 
>underestimated the extent of our government's knowledge, an error to 
>which I readily confess. But, in the end, the facts didn't really 
>matter. What mattered was making the damned thing go away, shutting 
>people up, and making anyone who demanded the truth appear to be a 
>wacky conspiracy theorist. And it worked.
>
>As a result, the CIA was allowed to investigate itself, release a 
>heavily censored report admitting that it had worked with cocaine 
>traffickers, and simultaneously declare itself innocent of any 
>wrongdoing. And that's where our firebrand national news media has 
>let the matter lie to this day.
>
>Now it's NarcoNews' turn for the silence treatment. And, if I had to 
>guess, I'd venture to say that it's probably more important to the 
>folks selling us the Drug War to shut up Al Giordano than it is to 
>silence mainstream reporters who, in my father's eloquent words, 
>wouldn't say shit if they had a mouth full of it. No one can lean on 
>NarcoNews's editors, or their bosses, or its board of directors to 
>reign Al in or, failing that, reassign him to the night copy desk. 
>The only person they can lean on is Al, who doesn't take to being 
>leaned on. And they can't shut down the Internet either. So two 
>choices remain.
>
>They can grit their teeth and suffer Al's reporting, day after 
>aggravating day, as he exposes the ugly underside of this endless 
>war on drugs - and actually makes things happen, like real 
>journalists are supposed to do. Or they can try to make it 
>impossible for him to do his job by harassing him with specious 
>lawsuits, bedevil him with lawyers and depositions and 
>interrogatories and subpoenas, and reduce him to penury. Why? To 
>silence him. To make him go away. To keep him from looking under 
>rocks that reporters aren't supposed to look under.
>
>Make no mistake. This court fight isn't about any particular story 
>NarcoNews has done. It's about ALL of them, and all of the ones yet 
>to come. And it's a battle over the continued independence of 
>Internet journalism as well. The silencing of Al Giordano and 
>NarcoNews isn't a theoretical possibility that might happen a couple 
>years from now. It's already happening. Al and his volunteer lawyers 
>are hip-deep in it right now. And they need our help.
>
>Narco News and Al Giordano face an April 9th deadline to respond to 
>the Banamex censorship lawsuit or they will be declared in default - 
>guilty without a single fact being heard in a case where the facts 
>prove them right.
>
>A civil lawsuit is different than a criminal case: complex legal 
>issues require trained lawyers to dig through the law books on 
>procedural issues so far from the basic truths about photographs of 
>cocaine trafficking on the coast of Mexico. The bank's lawyers at 
>Akin Gump are paid astronomic fees to raise every small point of 
>process and delay the day when the facts come to light in New York 
>City court. If this case goes to trial, that's when Narco News will 
>triumph. And all of us will win with it as the real facts of the 
>corruption of the international drug war come to light in the media 
>center of New York.
>
>The hard part comes right now, in navigating the maze of irrelevant 
>process issues, as any reporter who has covered the courts has seen. 
>Narco News will either be able to have skilled attorneys get them 
>through this complicated phase or - I can see it coming - Al will 
>have to take a long trip to the law library himself, abandon 
>reporting for the coming weeks or months in order to wage his own 
>defense. Then you and I will not be able to read new reports on 
>Narco News at this key moment when Plan Colombia explodes regionally 
>and more Latin American voices are raised against the drug war, like 
>the Mexican police chief yesterday, who, if not for Narco News, 
>would never be heard by those of us who speak and read in English.
>
>That is what is at stake: Whether a skilled reporter has to retire 
>for months to become a pro se lawyer, or whether he can continue 
>reporting the facts to us. I was silenced but am not silenced any 
>more. When, the other day, the film rights to my book Dark Alliance 
>about US complicity in the cocaine trade were purchased for a 
>television movie, I wrote Al to pledge part of those proceeds to his 
>defense. In the years to come, there is no question that Narco News 
>will be proven right and will be helping the next generation of 
>reporters fight efforts to censor them.
>
>But wouldn't it be wonderful if this time the censors failed 
>entirely to take Al and Narco News out of circulation, for a year, 
>for months, even for a week? Wouldn't that be the best deterrent 
>against bankers and lobbyists from waging these frivolous lawsuits 
>against Free Speech on the Internet? I understand that Narco News 
>needs only about $13,000 more to be able to have the most difficult 
>stage of the lawsuit process - that which it faces immediately - 
>handled with professional legal assistance, thus allowing Al to 
>continue expending his energy and time in reporting to us the facts. 
>One person of means could solve this problem with a check. Two dozen 
>people giving $500 could do it. 130 people giving a hundred 
>dollarsâ*¦ you can do the math: If half of Narco News' readers give 
>one dollar each, Narco News will keep publishing. The hard part is 
>that it must be done now, today. Please join me in sending a check 
>to:
>
>Drug War on Trial C/O Thomas Lesser, Esq.
>Lesser, Newman, Souweine & Nasser
>39 Main Street Northampton, MA 01060
>
>Al often says that Narco News never wanted to ask its readers for a 
>cent, and I sense that it pains him to ask the readers who benefit 
>from his reporting to support his defense in court. That's why I'm 
>writing you. This lawsuit is bigger than the fate of one Internet 
>publication. It is larger than, but it will decide, free speech 
>issues in cyberspace for years to come. What is at stake here is 
>nothing less than whether the public knows the truth and the facts 
>about the war on drugs in our hemisphere.
>
>If we don't all act today, we will be in the dark again tomorrow,
>
>Sincerely, Gary Webb Journalist
>