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Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

DARK ALLIANCE

Gary Webb

The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

The 2014 movie KILL THE MESSENGER, starring Michael Sheen and Jeremy Renner, directed by Michael Cuesta, is based on DARK ALLIANCE. Release date: 10 October 2014.

In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled "Dark Alliance," revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.

Two years later, he expanded those findings in his book DARK ALLIANCE. Drawing from declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrated how the government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities.

Gary Webb was an investigative reporter, focusing on government and private sector corruption and winning more than 30 journalism awards. He was one of six reporters at the San Jose Mercury News to win a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for a series of stories on the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct during northern California's 1989 earthquake. He also received the 1997 Media Hero Award from the Institute for Alternative Journalism and in 1996 was named Journalist of the Year by the Bay Area Society of Professional Journalists. He died in 2004.
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Book

Published 1998-06-01 by Seven Stories Press

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Filmstart in Deutschland: 27. November 2014

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French: Editions La Rumeur; UK: Old Street Publishing; Italian: Piemme; Turkish: Marti;

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