By Robert Parry
The mainstream news media’s reaction to the new movie, “Kill the Messenger,” has been tepid, perhaps not surprising given that the MSM comes across as the film’s most unsympathetic villain as it crushes journalist Gary Webb for digging up the Contra-cocaine scandal in the mid-1990s after the major newspapers thought they had buried it in the 1980s.
Not that the movie is without other villains, including drug traffickers and “men in black” government agents. But the drug lords show some humanity and even honesty as they describe how they smuggled drugs and shared the proceeds with the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, President Ronald Reagan’s beloved “freedom fighters.”
Related Reading:
Kill The Messenger: How The Media Destroyed Gary Webb
I was told about this in the early 1990s (when Clinton was elected) by a relative. We sat in their back yard one night and he basically related the whole story that the CIA was the largest narcotics trafficker in the world. This was before Gary Webb’s story even came out. At the time I thought it was a bunch of bravado bunk but 10 years later it was revealed to indeed be the truth.
My relative did really talk about Reagan but it was Bush Sr. who was in the key player. I find it ironic that the official probe was done by a Fellow Skull and Bones member, John Kerry. It tells you in “hind sight” it was never going anywhere.
Also keep in mind that Bill Clinton was very much involved here. there is a document on the CIA FOI website where he is being recorded in a deposition for Cocaine money laundering with a company “Park O Meter”. At the end of his term he pardoned his half brother for Cocaine charges.
Yup! Lots on that in our oldie but goodie from 2005 http://solari.com/outreach/telesem/ND6r07.htm
Also, some great descriptions of the RJR lawsuit and some of the Mena, Arkansas depositions and links in the resource center at http://www.dunwalke.com
If many producers have considered telling the Contra-Cocaine truth, but failed to do a movie, why now? Beyond just the actual details, what is being presented as the greater context? The old “rogue elements” story perhaps?
John:
Excellent question. I have a lot of thoughts on that and will be addressing in the upcoming Solari Report, Narco Dollars and You – both how it got made and why it is allowed to circulate.