![]() Ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium than it does about either CIA or the media. In the same year that Kill the Messenger came out, the Central Intelligence Agency released a previously classified 1997 article from its house journal titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Its author, Nicholas Dujmovic, described the controversy as a symptom of escalating “public distrust in government,” with the CIA as an innocent bystander caught in the cross fire: “In such times, even fantastic allegations about CIA - JFK’s assassination, UFO coverups, or importing drugs into America’s cities - will resonate with, and even appeal to, much of American society.”Īccording to Dujmovic, the “Dark Alliance” affair had now “largely run its course,” leaving intelligence agents to bemoan the “scant public appreciation of their dedication and hard work” among the US citizenry: Hollywood films like the 2014 Webb biopic Kill the Messenger and 2017’s American Made, with Tom Cruise as CIA pilot Barry Seal, have helped keep the allegations in public consciousness. Unfortunately for US intelligence chiefs, the accusations made by Webb and other journalists have continued to flare up in popular culture, where the opportunity to combine two movie archetypes, the spook and the gangster, seems irresistible. Webb took his own life in 2004 after his 1996 “Dark Alliance” reporting series came under intense scrutiny from the heavy hitters of American journalism, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. ![]() Webb had spent years documenting the crack cocaine trade in the United States and the intelligence agency’s complicity in it. ![]() The CIA thought it had buried a sordid story with the death of San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb. ![]()
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