Freshly-released CIA documents show how the largest U.S. newspapers helped the agency contain a groundbreaking exposé.
Remember when the New York Times colluded with the CIA to bury a story and ruin an investigative journalist’s reputation?
The Journalist, Gary Webb, exposed the CIA’s drug importation business, which fueled the crack epidemic in poor inner city neighborhoods, and was used to fund off books operations in Central America.
He later committed “suicide” by shooting himself twice in the head.
From the article:
“On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.”