Chapter 28.1: It Took Two.

Saw some sad and odd news today. Gary Webb, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, reportedly shot himself -- twice -- to death.

While it's sad in itself, the manner in which he apparently committed suicide was almost fitting in its controversy. Webb was perhaps best known for writing about an alleged CIA relationship bringing drugs to California. His paper paid thousands of dollars on his trips to Central America to establish facts in the series, which I believe came out in 1996. After the story was reported and the government pressured the paper to present its facts, the paper retracted its findings, ruining Webb's career. I expect that he swore to his death that he was right. He even wrote a book about it.

I heard him speak back in 1997 or 1998 at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference and met him briefly. He explained that there was no way to prove without a doubt that the CIA was involved; spies are too good at lying and covering their tracks to pin them down completely. An editor shouldn't have accepted that explanation, but it doesn't mean he wasn't correct.

Now that it apparently took him two shots to the head to kill himself (the report linked above does not detail where in the head the shots went, so it is indeed possible to necessitate a second shot, as grueling as that must have been), readers are left with a fading memory of one reporter's tragic career. There's a book out there for someone.