GARY WEBB - PULITZER PRIZE WINNER, AUTHOR OF DARK ALLIANCE CIA-DRUG SERIES

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/121304_gary_webb.shtml

<snippit>

He reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head two days ago. His body was discovered at 8:20 AM Saturday as movers reportedly found a note on the door of his residence asking them not to enter but to call for paramedics.

Webb's August 1996 series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News pulled deep covers away from US covert operations and American denial about connections between the CIA and drugs. Gary left a bigger historical footprint than anyone who has ever touched the subject including among others, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, Jonathan Kwitny and me.

His footprint was made possible in large part for two reasons. First, his reporting was meticulous and produced hard records that could not be effectively denied. Second, prominent African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and representatives Maxine Waters and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Los Angeles and Compton respectively took up the torch lit by Gary and ran with it just before the 1996 presidential election which saw Bill Clinton win his second term just eight weeks after the stories broke. I was there at that time and it is not an understatement to say that much of this country was "up in arms".

Waters at one point vowed to make the CIA-drug connections, fully documented by Webb, her "life's work" if necessary.

In death the major press is beating him almost as ruthlessly as they did in real life. No part of the major press has acknowledged that Webb's work was subsequently vindicated by congressional investigations and two CIA Inspector General's reports released in 1997 and 1998. FTW did report on Webb's vindication and his legacy has - at least at the level of authentic journalism - not been lost.

Please see:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/RendGW.html, and
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/volii.html

For more FTW coverage of Gary Webb's life please use the search engine at www.fromthewilderness.com.

The LA Times obituary, in all of its meanness and inaccuracy is here.

Of the six obituaries I have seen on him, the one from the L.A. Times was the most brutally Soviet in its attempt to crush out his memory as thoroughly as his work. Of course the Times would have to do that. It was in Los Angeles where Webb dug up and documented the direct connection between the CIA and cocaine smuggling/trafficking as crack cocaine ravaged this city in the 1980s and the Contra war decimated Central America.


</snippit>

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-10-14/cover.asp
We wonder what new threat he posed if he was still around at this point, right?

If Webb was rubbed out (likely, not proven), I think THIS IS WHY:

HE EXPOSED HOW THE ARMY PROFILES AND TRAINS TEENS USING PSY-OPS ON THE INTERNET AND VIDEO GAMES!

Lack of not just fodder, but highly-skilled kids who can kill effectively under stress are what the BFEE/PNAC Empire DESPERATELY NEEDS TO CONQUER THE WORLD by operating the machines of war.

A sophisticated 'first-shooter' game called 'Americas Army' was developed by the US military to both train, indoctrinate, and research the young minds they need. Free on line. Very popular.

Webb had the drop on them for using cocaine money and he had the drop on their NEW SCAM-USING THE DRUG OF VIDEO GAMES TO EXPLORE AND BEND MINDS. (Of course, that's what TV has been doing for over 50 years.)

Read it and weep for both our kids and their victims:

>snip<

If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there’s no better way of finding them. It’s why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit.

>snip<

“I have to laugh when someone says, ‘Oh, the people playing these games know it’s not real,’” said Dr. Peter Vorberer, a clinical psychologist and head of the University of Southern California’s computer game research group. “Of course they think it’s real! That’s why people play them for hours and hours. They’re designed to make you believe it’s real. Games are probably the purest example yet of the Internet melding with reality.”

>snip<

Stanford University psychology professor B.J. Fogg isn’t surprised to see such dedication to a computer game.

“Video games, better than anything else in our culture, deliver rewards to people, especially teenage boys," said Fogg, who studies the effects of computer games. “Teenage boys are wired to seek competency. To master our world and get better at stuff. Video games, in dishing out rewards, can convey to people that their competency is growing, you can get better at something second by second."

>snip<

As the number of people playing Counter-Strike soared into the millions, the U.S. Army could only watch wistfully. For years, Army recruiters had diligently pursued the very same demographic-- middle-class teenage males--with dwindling success.

In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.

Combat gamers not only happened to target the right age for the Army’s purposes but, more importantly, possessed exactly the kind of information-processing skills the Army needed: the ability to think quickly under fire.

“Our military information tends to arrive in a flood ... and it’ll arrive in a flood under stressful conditions, and there’ll be a hell of a lot of noise,” said Col. Casey Wardynski, a military economist who came up with the idea for an official Army computer game. “How do you filter that? What are your tools? What is your facility in doing that? What is your level of comfort? How much load can you bear? Kids who are comfortable with that are going to be real comfortable ... with the Army of the future.”

From an Army report: “Aptitudes related to information handling and information culture values are seen as vital to the effectiveness of the high-tech, network-centric Army of the future, and young American gamers are seen as especially proficient in these capabilities. More importantly, when young Americans enter the Army, they increasingly will find that key information will be conveyed via computer video displays akin to the graphical interfaces found in games.”

With the vast funding of the U.S. government behind them, the Army/Navy team began developing a game that hopefully would turn some of its players into real soldiers. “The overall mission statement ... was to develop a game with appeal similar to the game Counter-Strike,” wrote Michael Zyda, the director of the Navy think tank. “We took Counter-Strike as our model, but with heavy emphasis on realism and Army values and training.”

An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

After two years of development, America’s Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com. That, too, was a calculation--one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn’t know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda said.

“That was a very key thing. First, they would have to be smart enough to download the game off the Internet. Then, they would have to become good at , which isn’t easy. To attract those kinds of people, that was the mission. That’s what we were looking for.”

The game does a good job separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you’re allowed to join an online game, you must undergo weapons training and send your firing range scores to the Army. If you’re a lousy shot, you can’t play. Once inside the game, it gets no easier. The virtual battlefield is enormous, and your enemy is often hidden under cover of darkness. “Newbies” are quickly cut to pieces. Unlike Counter-Strike, America’s Army players aren’t allowed to be on the terrorists’ side. Your team always looks like American soldiers, and the other team always looks like terrorists (or “OPFORs” in Army lingo, meaning “opposing forces.”)

In the wake of 9/11, the public and media reaction was, in the Army’s words, “overwhelmingly positive.” Salon’s Wagner James Au, for example, gushed that the game would help “create the wartime culture that is so desperately needed now” and excitedly anticipated the day when youngsters raised on America’s Army would pick up real weapons to cleanse the globe of real terrorists. Most media accounts focused on the novelty of using a video game to help find recruits and carried jocular headlines like “Uncle Sim Wants You.”

“We thought we’d have a lot more problems,” Zyda said. “But the country is in this mood where anything the military does is great. ... 9/11 sort of assured the success of this game. I’m not sure what kind of reception it would have received otherwise.”

There are now more than 4 million registered users, more than half of whom have completed weapons training and gone online to play, making it the fourth most-played online shooter. The Army says there are 500 fan sites on the Web, and recruiters have been busy setting up local tournaments and cultivating an America’s Army “community” on the Internet, hoping to replicate the Counter-Strike phenomenon.

“With respect to recruitment, actual results won’t be known for four or five years, when the current raft of 13- and 14-year-olds will be old enough to join,” Zyda wrote.