Gary Webb (1) (1955–2004)

Gary Webb was a consummate snoop who finally got his nose into a thing that was big enough to defy coherent description. This reader is now 250 pages into "Dark Alliance" and, as I write, I'm utterly at sea regarding who's who and what's what and whodunit, etc. The thing is so big -- it involves so many people, governments, nations -- that the number of characters and places make the story too complex to follow.

Webb went ahead with it regardless. Put another way, the book reads like it was written for a prosecuting attorney and a grand jury -- and maybe it was so in fact. That would explain why Gary Webb was found dead, with two bullet holes in the back of his head, and a coroner's contemptibly ludicrous decision was that the victim was a "suicide by multiple, self-inflicted gunshot wounds."

Of one thing, I am certain: Gary Webb's treatment by his employers and fellow journalists is proof positive that the United States is no longer a free country. The American people are left to learn for themselves that two fragments of the English language are absolutely antithetical: they are "democracy" and "secret police". We can have one or the other but we cannot have both. If we persist in trying, the nation will perish with us.… (más)