• Listen to this segment with Nick Schou

Eighteen years ago, an intrepid investigative California-based reporter named Gary Webb published a series of ground-breaking reports linking a brutal right-wing war in Central America, to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the explosion of crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. The story was published in three parts in the print and digital editions of the San Jose Mercury News, and would emerge as one of the most controversial pieces of journalism in the 1990s. He eventually published his work as a book called Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

However, it seemed as though the nation was simply not ready for such a loss of innocence. Within months, Webb’s own employer, and other papers of note such as the Los Angeles Times, began to discredit him personally, his work, and eventually his entire career. On December 10th, 2004, Webb killed himself with two shots to the head.

The problem was that the story was true. And, had Webb lived long enough he would have been vindicated as CIA involvement in the Nicaragua Contra war against the leftist Sandinista rebels emerged. The CIA’s knowledge of the drug sales used to fund that war, and the drugs ending up in South Central, also came to light. And, OC Weekly writer Nick Schou’s 2006 book, Kill the Messenger, vindicated Webb and his work.

Now, a major motion picture by the same name as Schou’s book, brings the story of Gary Webb and his fierce drive for investigative journalism onto the big screen. Academy award nominated actor Jeremy Renner plays Webb in Kill the Messenger, which just debuted in theaters last Friday. Nick Schou’s book has also just been re-released by Nation Books to coincide with the film’s release.

GUEST: Nick Schou, Managing Editor of the OC Weekly and author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb