This paper will discuss how the CIA and/or the American government played a role in the death of investigative journalist, Gary Webb. Whether it is a conspiracy or not many question how the investigative journalist died and why his death was ruled as a suicide. Gary Webb was most known for tracking down corruption and exposing it to millions of Americans. He wrote stories about corruption from county, state, and federal levels, for more than thirty four years. He is most known for writing an article titled "Dark Alliance", which “linked the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles during the Iran-Contra scandal. He found that drug dealers were smuggling cocaine into the United States and the CIA was using the money to arm Nicaraguan rebels.” (Webb, G. 1998) Webb is also known for writing his last article, written for the Sacramento News titled "The Killing Game”. The article exposes “the …show more content…
According to Webb's article, “the Army and civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey joined together in 1999 to develop "America's Army," an online computer game used to attract computer gamers into the military. According to Webb's article, the Army had been collecting player information in a vast relational database system called "Andromeda" that recruiters were able to use to look up a player's statistics if one of them showed up in a recruiting office.” (Paterno, S. 2014) "Suppose you played extremely well, and you stayed in the game an extremely long time”, military economist Col. Casey Wardynski told Webb. "You might just get an e-mail seeing if you'd like any additional information on the Army.” (Webb, G. 2004) In October of 2004, Gary Webb was found dead in his apartment. A police report says he was discovered dead with two shots to the
This paper examines the role that David Ferrie played in the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy. There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the killing of President Kennedy, and this paper seeks to show how David Ferrie fits into the theories, and how he caused the death of one of the most prolific presidents in the history of United States. Special attention will be give to the New Orleans Conspiracy, because it is one of the theories that strongly link David Ferrie to the assassination of J. F. Kennedy. Various reports and investigations by the House Committee of Assassination, the FBI report, CIA inquiry and the report by New Orleans Attorney Jim Garrison will be used to provide evidence of involvement of David Ferrie in the assassination.
The day November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, would soon become known as a tragic day in US history. John F Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, had been drumming up support for the upcoming election. Tragically, he was brutally gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald. At first glance, this assassination seems like a simple murder. A communist defector simply was angry with JFK and decided to kill him. Many people have failed to notice, however, that the CIA not only had motive to kill JFK, but they also attempted to cover up many details about Lee Harvey Oswald, and JFK in general. If the general populus continues to believe what the CIA wants them to, we will never understand who
Widely regarded as one of the most beloved presidents, John F. Kennedy is still remembered to this day. President Kennedy was involved in one of the most controversial topics in the history of the United States. Although a few presidents prior to JFK were unfortunately assassinated, JFK’s assassination is the one most discussed. Although many Americans know that Lee Harvey Oswald was the man that shot President Kennedy, no one knows what motivated him to do so. The FBI concluded that he committed the crime on his own will without ties to any groups. However, not everyone believes what the FBI tells them. One of the more popular theories regarding the President’s assassination is that CIA had plotted to kill him. In an online article, “The CIA and the JFK Assassination” written by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the author of the article discusses the theory of the CIA killing the President and how the evidence supports the theory. This conspiracy theory garners a specific audience as the text targets those who are in fear of national security, have beliefs in Christianity, distrust the U.S. government, interested in socially significant events, and value knowing the truth.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” This statement was made by William Casey, the director of the CIA in 1981. It begs the question: how exactly did the CIA plan to accomplish it’s malicious agenda on such a massive scale? In 1975 Operation Mockingbird was revealed to the public as a result of investigations held by the Select Committee in regards to intelligence activities of the governement. According to the Congress report published in 1976: “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”
The CIA’s involvement in the killing of JFK is one of the popular theories put forward by conspiracy theorists. President Kennedy was said to have told an official in his administration, “I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (McGovern, 2013, para. 3). Many of the individuals who disliked Kennedy believed he was the reason for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They also believed that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex and that he was not going after communism hard enough. The CIA was involved
The day November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, would soon become known as a tragic day in US history. John F Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, had been drumming up support for the upcoming election. Tragically, he was brutally gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald. At first glance, this assassination seems like a simple murder. A communist defector simply was angry with JFK and decided to kill him. Many people have failed to notice, however, that the CIA not only had motive to kill JFK, but they also attempted to cover up many details about Lee Harvey Oswald, and JFK in general. If the general populus continues to believe what the CIA wants them to, we will never understand who truly was responsible for his death. The CIA played a large role in John F Kennedy’s death because of the CIA’s motive to kill him, the CIA coverups in the investigation following his death, and promising unfollowed leads that the investigators have ignored.
The study of George Tenet’s actions leading up to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan leaves little doubt about the dysfunction within our government from the appointment of officials to the decision making process itself. Tenet was appointed by President Clinton as Director of the Intelligence (DCI) in 1997, just 19 months after becoming deputy to DCI. It was noted that Tenet had never managed a large organization, worked as an intelligence officer or serviced in the military, all of which would have provided the experience and expertise needed
Jeff Leen, a journalist for the Washington Post stated in 2014, “Webb’s story made the extraordinary claim that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic... What he lacked was the extraordinary proof.”
This report from the investigation by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concerned allegations of wrongdoing and improper practices within certain sections of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Laboratory. Those allegations involved some of the most significant prosecutions in the recent history of the Department of Justice, including the World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the mail bomb assassination of U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Vance (which was referred to within the FBI as the VANPAC case). The allegations implicated fundamental aspects of law enforcement: the reliability of the procedures employed by the FBI Laboratory to analyze evidence, the integrity of the persons engaging in
Watergate, the greatest scandal of the 20th century, remains a shrouded mystery. Early on the morning of June 17, 1972, there was a break-in and several burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Office complex building located in Washington, D.C. Thus began a series of events that would shake the public’s confidence in its most visible symbol of American authority and prestige: the presidency of Richard Nixon. A seemingly random robbery at a Washington, D.C. building leads to the first presidential resignation in American history. We will discuss the following events surrounding the Watergate break-in: when did the break-in occur, how was Nixon connected to the break-in. We will also discuss the events surrounding the discovery of the tapes, the issues involved in trying to get the tapes from President Nixon and what is the "18 1/2 minutes of silence". Finally, throughout this paper we will also include Archibald Cox the first Watergate special prosecutor.
The Iran-Contra affair can be described as the type of event expected to give rise to a demonstration of public support for the president. However, this incident had the opposite effect. The public’s response to the Iran-Contra affair led to a sharp decrease in the support of President Reagan. Due to President Reagan’s role in the political scandal of aiding armed conflict in Nicaragua, the United States Congress used its constitutional power to investigate and check the role of the executive branch. The impact of this congressional oversight highlights the checks and balances the Founder’s instilled in our political government during our nation’s conception.
There are many stories of Americans spying for other countries. Some of these spies have loyalty to other countries, some are coerced into spying, and some are just in for the money. David Sheldon Boone fits the character of someone spying just for the money. Every spy have their own story and purpose of this paper is to provide David Boone’s timeline to present time. Through this timeline, I will discuss detail of David Boone’s background, indicators, materials compromised, handler, and investigation.
Oscar Danilo Blandon was another infamous crack dealer along with Ross and Meneses. “Blandon has also implied that his cocaine sales were, for a time, CIA-approved” (Webb n.p) Therefore, Blandon was also receiving help from officials from the United States in a way that was similar to Meneses. According to Gary Webb, Blandon testified, “And the people that was in charge, it was the CIA, so they didn't want to raise any drug money because they had the money that they wanted” (Webb n.p). The CIA was using the cocaine dealers for their own benefits in order to save up money for their own uses. Furthermore, the CIA did not really care about the long-lasting effect that crack would have on American
The term “Covert Action” brings with it a connotation of shadowy figures wrapped in secrecy and intrigue. It also brings with it a substantial amount of moral questions as to “what is right.” The use of covert action has been widely publicized since the early seventies, but trying to find out the truth to these events has been difficult to say the least. What is even more difficult, is historically recording these events into categories of successes or failures. These operations are difficult to dissect because of their secrecy and although events have been recorded, some facts simply aren’t apparent. This paper will seek to identify the complex issues associated with covert operations.
Everyday citizens often live unaware of their government’s inner workings. The knowing of political espionage is often too heavy of a subject to be inducted in conversation. True, prima facie, modest twists and turns of information may not be considered substantial, but this inconsideration leaves much to be uncontrolled. It is easy for political leaders to become power crazed, to not realize the massive implications that come of their actions. Only after all is said and done do the people actually realize their government is an opaque mask of deception. The Watergate Scandal substantially impacted Americans’ trust in their government.