‘The New York Times’ Wants Gary Webb to Stay Dead, by Greg Grandin

http://www.thenation.com/blog/181940/new-york-times-wants-gary-webb-stay-dead#

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

EXCERPTS:

Webb won’t be vindicated by the movie Kill the Messenger because he has already been vindicated by serious nonfiction reporters, like Schou and others. And by history itself. Webb was documenting one aspect of the blowback that we all have been living with from Iran/Contra, which is really just shorthand for Reagan’s broader set of Central American policies. Central America was the place the national security state got its groove back after Vietnam, and the repercussions are ongoing: among them, the rise of Salvadoran and Honduran transnational gangs, the drug war, which has turned the Colombian-Central American-Mexican corridor into a war zone, the 2009 Honduran coup, and this summer’s exodus of Central American child refugees.

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Schou writes that because “Webb shot himself in the head twice—the first bullet simply went through his cheek—many falsely believe the CIA killed him.” Webb was apparently depressed that he couldn’t get a job that paid enough to let him keep his house.