• mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    His ex-wife said that she believed he’d killed himself.

    Webb’s ex-wife, Susan Bell, told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. “The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide,” she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.

    Here’s a story from a local paper which is the cite. Unless the details reported are purely made up, it seems like an actually pretty compelling set of facts leading to the suicide being genuine. I literally just learned this; until yesterday, I thought they killed him too.

    There’s plenty of criminal behavior by the US government adjacent to Webb and his reporting without needing to exceed what’s actually true about it.

    • Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      No, really. The other guy is playing ignorant. Telle me, for real, how much does the CIA pay you to play stupid and ignorant to defend them against the obvious.

      I mean for real, I’ll just skip the cash and take the cocaine itself. Not a fucking problem.

      • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, sure. The CIA pays me to bring Gary Webb’s name unprompted into random internet threads because they feel like promoting his story is an important part of their PR.

        I never really knew that much of the story until the other guy started arguing with me about it, so I spent some time at breakfast reading about it. I think he killed himself. That said, there’s plenty of malfeasance by the government. Among the things that jump out at me:

        • A lot of the “debunking” that other MSM newspapers did seemed a little off the mark of what Webb actually said. It’s a little unclear to me, but it kind of looks like he said that the contras dealt in cocaine, and the CIA more or less knew about it and didn’t do anything and occasionally protected them and their assets from law enforcement. But I saw several times in the “debunking” stories that someone would make a big deal about there being no evidence that the CIA itself was drug trafficking in any major way. But that’s not what Webb accused them of. He said the contras were trafficking and the CIA knew about it. And, also, the CIA released a report at some point that said, o yeah we also protected contras and traffickers from law enforcement sometimes.
        • On a related note, there was a weird little side note about the CIA’s PR response where they talked about having good relationships with a handful of US journalists which helped them in their response, because it looks a lot better if someone in an MSM newspaper is defending them as opposed to them issuing a statement directly defending themselves. Fuckin’ what? Here’s a story about it, which given the source you may or may not believe, and here’s a link to the report itself on cia.gov. Excerpt: “A review of the CIA drug conspiracy story – from its inception in August 1996 with the San Jose Mercury-News stories – shows that a ground base of already productive relations with journalists and an effective response by the Director of Central Intelligence’s (DCI) Public Affairs Staff (PAS) helped prevent this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster.”
        • It’s genuinely weird that no one acknowledges that the whole backdrop for this question is the CIA supporting terrorism in central America. It’s like, sure they’re in bed with a bunch of violent terrorists with the goal of overthrowing a democratic government, but cocaine? Everyone involved treats it as if the “cocaine” part of the equation is obviously a bombshell accusation.
        • Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          See, this is what I’m talking about. Just tell me if they’re cutting the shit too or if you got the real shebang

          • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They’re actually paying me in pure adrenochrome. I won’t say where they get it; all I can say is you should get in on this. They have openings.

            • Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              I was thinking about that but the other one said he’s got better than that schitzo and it’s from some European labs. Some analog from a khat derivative. Says it like mixing coke, X, & meth altogether but totally different a neurofunction. Something about serotonin instead of dopamine?