Crack in the lens: Hollywood, the CIA and the African-American response to the ‘Dark Alliance’ series

Abstract

The publication of a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury, though they did contain a complex combination of both fact and fiction, was given a significant degree of credibility by the pubic images of CIA activities portrayed in a variety of Hollywood movies. This paper argues that these movies, whether accurately portraying CIA activities or not, helped sustain racially based paranoia that took on a life of its own.

Notes

The author would like to express his thanks to Professor Stan Taylor, for sharing his considerable expertise on matters of US intelligence, and to Dr. Steve McVeigh, for providing invaluable assistance on all things Hollywood. The usual caveat applies; the opinions and any errors of fact contained within this piece remain the sole responsibility of the author.

1 N. Schou, Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (New York: Nation Books 2006) p.4.

2 Ibid. pp.1–12.

3 G. Webb, ‘America's “Crack” Plague Has Roots in Nicaraguan War’, San Jose Mercury News, 18 August 1996, p.1A.

4 Ibid. Also G. Webb, ‘Odd Trio Created Mass Market for Crack’, San Jose Mercury News, 19 August 1996, p.1A.

5 Ibid.

6 G. Webb, ‘S.F. Drug Agent Thought She Was on to Something Big’, San Jose Mercury News, 19 August 1996, p.10A.

7 G. Webb, ‘An Education in Cocaine Politics for Cal State Haywood Teacher’, San Jose Mercury News, 20 August 1996, p.11A.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Schou (note 1) p.xi.

11 G. Webb, ‘War on Drugs Has Unequal Impact on Black Americans’, San Jose Mercury News, 20 August 1996, p.1A.

12 A. Cockburn and J. St Clair, White Out: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (New York: Verso 1998) p.388.

13 Editorial, ‘This Time the Victims were Americans. Another CIA Disgrace: Helping the Crack Flow’, San Jose Mercury News, 21 August 1996, p.6B.

14 Webb (note 7).

15 CIA Press Release. Statement by Frederick P. Hitz, Inspector General CIA, before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US House of Representatives, regarding investigation of allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in drug trafficking to the United States, 16 March 1998.

16 It is also plausible to suggest that mainstream media organizations felt threatened by the ‘Dark Alliance’ series due to the role the internet played in its widespread dissemination. It was arguably the first major newspaper story to make an impact by going beyond the traditional print format. Also see Cockburn and St Clair (note 13) p. 29.

17 Ibid. p.130.

18 Ibid. p.41.

19 J. Bowman, ‘American Notes’, Times Literary Supplement, 20 December 1996.

20 Cockburn and St Clair (note 12) p.35.

21 E. Bertram, M. Blachman, K. Sharpe and P. Andreas, Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press 1996); S. Tree, ‘The War at Home’, Sojourners Magazine, May–June 2003; and D. Boyum and P. Reuter, An Analytic Assessment of U.S Drug Policy (Washington, DC: The AEI Press 2005).

22 R. Brown, ‘The Black Community and the War on Drugs’ in A. Trebach and K. Zeese (eds.) The Great Issues of Drug Policy (Washington, DC: The Drug Policy Foundation 1990) p.83.

23 J. Helmer, Drugs and Minority Oppression (New York: Seabury Press 1975) and C. Lusane, Pipe Dream Blues; Racism and the War on Drugs (Cambridge, MA: South End Press 1991).

24 S. Meyers, ‘Drugs and Market Structure: Is There Really a Drug Crisis in the Black Community’, in Trebach and Zeese (note 22).

25 Ibid. p.100.

26 P. Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X-Files (London: Routledge 2000) pp.143–67.

27 H. Kurtz, ‘Conspiracy or Paranoia?: Some Think Drugs are Allowed to Hurt Black Communities’, Seattle Times, 7 January 1990 and Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘African American World’ at <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/louisfarrakhan.html> (accessed 21 June 2007).

28 Knight (note 26) p.145.

29 Bowman (note 19).

30 See his Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs (New York: South End Press 1991) p.13.

31 Knight (note 26) pp.143–67.

32 W. Churchill and J.V. Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (Cambridge, MA: South End Press 1990) and G.D. McKnight, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People's Campaign (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998) p.142.

33 Cockburn and St Clair (note 12) p.70.

34 Bowman (note 21) and S.B. Duke and A.C. Gross, America's Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade Against Drugs (London: Tarcher and Putnam 1993) p.164.

35 J. DeParle, ‘Talk of Government Being Out to Get Blacks Falls on More Attentive Ears’, New York Times, 29 October 1990.

36 Knight (note 26) p.148.

37 See M. Hill, ‘Some Blacks Believe in AIDS Conspiracy’, CNN Report, 10 November 1995. Web posted 2:25pm EST at <http://www.cnn.com/U.S/9511/aids_conspiracy/> and E.A. Klonoff and H. Landrine, ‘Do Blacks Believe that HIV/AIDS is a Government Conspiracy against Them?’, Preventative Medicine, 28 May (5) (1999) pp.451–7.

38 Klonoff and Landrine (note 37).

39 Duke and Gross (note 36) p.164; C. Grenier, ‘Spike Lee Sees AIDS as a Plot’, Washington Times, 23 November 1992; and Knight (note 26) p.145.

40 J. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments (New York: Simon and Schuster 1993).

41 R. Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Knopf 1965).

42 Knight (note 26) p.144.

43 Ibid.

44 I. Scott, American Politics in Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2000) pp.119–20.

45 This is particularly the case if Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995) is regarded as political biography. The late 1990s saw Hollywood produce a number of paranoia style films including Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood, 1997), Murder at 1600 (Dwight Little, 1997), and Shadow Conspiracy (George Cosmatos, 1997) as well as Enemy of the State (Tony Scott, 1998) and Conspiracy Theory (Richard Donner, 1997). Such movies were seen to be ‘perfectly attuned to late 1990s’ cynicism over the conduct, performance and perceived betrayal of politicians to the people' (Scott, note 44, p.130). The popularity of the conspiracy genre during this period may also help to explain the attractiveness of Webb's intimations within some sections of the US populace; in this case helping to sustain a general mood of distrust.

46 A. Graham, ‘“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?” Conspiracy Theories and the X-Files’ in David Lavery, Angela Hague and Marla Cartwright (eds.) Deny All Knowledge: Reading the X-Files (London: Faber and Faber 1996) p.59.

47 H. Shapiro, Shooting Stars: Drugs, Hollywood and the Movies (London: Serpent's Tail 2005).

48 S. Prince, Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Films (Oxford: Praeger 1992) p.5.

49 Ibid.

50 D.R. Bewley-Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (London: Continuum 2001).

51 J. Walker (ed.) Halliwell's Film and Video Guide (New York: HarperCollins 1997).

52 J. Hallam with M. Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000) p.127.

53 Knight (note 26) p.148.

54 R. Kempley, ‘Panther Film Review’, Washington Post, 3 May 1995.

55 Ice-T, ‘This One's for Me’, The Iceberg: Freedom of Speech … Just Watch What You Say (Warner Brothers 1989).

56 W. Branigin, ‘Trial in Camerena Case Shows DEA Anger at CIA’, Washington Post, 16 July 1990, p.1.

57 L.K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989).

58 A.W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books 1991).

59 Ibid. pp.53–63.

60 Ibid. pp.287–8 and 426–35.

61 Lusane (note 23) p.118 and P.D. Scott, Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2003) pp.109–209.

62 Lusane (note 23) p.119 and McCoy (note 58) p.141. Also see W. Blum, ‘The CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack’, Foreign Policy in Focus, Internet Gateway to Global Affairs 1/11 (November 1996) at <http://foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol1/cia.htm> and Scott (note 44) pp.27 and 59.

63 P.D. Scott and J. Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991) pp.65–79.

64 Lusane (note 23) p.125 and M. Perry, Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA (New York: William and Morrow 1992).

65 Lusane (note 23) p.122 and US Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations. Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, 100th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, December 1988).

66 Lusane (note 23) p.122.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid. p.119.

69 McCoy (note 58) p.480.

70 F. Hitz, ‘Obscuring Propriety: The CIA and Drugs’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 12 (1999) pp.448–62.

71 Cockburn and St Clair (note 13) p.110.

72 McCoy (note 50) p.490.

73 C. Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2000).

74 J. Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (College Park, MD: Sceptre 1987) pp.202–16 and Simon Tisdall, ‘CIA Reveals Decades of Plots, Kidnaps and Wiretaps’, The Guardian, 23 June 2007, p.19.

75 M. Woodiwiss, Crime Crusades and Corruption: Prohibitions in the United States, 1900–198 (London: Pinter 1988) pp.139–40.

76 M.A. Lee and B. Shlain, Acid Dreams; The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York: Grove Press 1985) p.34.

77 Ibid. p.89.

78 Hitz (note 70) p.462.

79 San Jose Mercury News (note 13).

80 CIA (note 15).

81 J. Katz, ‘Tracking the Genesis of the Crack Trade’, Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1996, Home Edition, Part A.

82 H.L. Gates, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (New York: Random House 1997) p.xxi.