Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Kill the Messenger—A Window into America in the Late Twentieth Century

                                      A Film Review by James Norwood

--“Do you believe in conspiracy theories, Gary?”

--“No, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.  Conspiracies, yes…there’s nothing ‘theory’ about it.”

The Iran-Contra Affair was the culminating act in America’s drama of Cold War adventurism in the Third World.  This clandestine event was eventually presented to the public as the story of swapping “arms for hostages” in an arrangement of secret deals in Iran and Nicaragua.  The wishes of the people of Iran, Nicaragua, and America were not considerations in the policy decisions of the United States government.  When exposed, the affair ended in international scandal and disgrace.

Kill the Messenger probes deeper into Iran-Contra by telling the story of Gary Webb, an investigative journalist, who was personally driven to report the truth.  Living and working in California, Webb came to realize that in addition to arms and hostages, the Iran-Contra Affair involved trading in illegal drugs.  His research led to his published exposés on how the American intelligence network facilitated the drug trafficking with the goal of generating enormous amounts of cash to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.  This activity had to be kept secret because it was in clear violation of the Boland Amendment, which prohibited assistance to the Contras in overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.  This act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on December 21, 1982.

To the horror of Gary Webb, his research demonstrated that as a result of the increase in narcotic sales, there was a calamitous ripple effect of illegal drug use in America.  From his investigations in California, Webb uncovered an unprecedented uptick in the importation and sale of cocaine in South Central Los Angeles.  The film takes great pains to point out that Webb did not allege that the CIA was functioning as a merchant of the drugs.  Nevertheless, the illegal acts of the CIA were clearly enabling the proliferation of drug use on American soil.  This was at a time when First Lady Nancy Reagan was presenting her agenda to the American people to “just say ‘No’ to drugs.”

Kill the Messenger addresses the personal tragedy of Gary Webb when the government took an active role in challenging his research and besmirching his character.  Eventually, he lost the support of his editors at the San Jose Mercury-News.  Rival newspapers lined up against him.  His life and career went into free-fall, ending in his death apparently by suicide.  An understanding of the life of Gary Webb helps to shed light on why today’s journalists in the mainstream media may be reluctant to pursue the truth in such controversial matters as the JFK assassination. 

The true nature of “conspiracies” is one of the themes of the screenplay for Kill the Messenger.  This topic is explored throughout the film, which includes clips from noted public figures addressing the concept of conspiracies in America. 

CIA Senior Operations Officer Duane Clarridge appears on camera, asserting that “there has never been a conspiracy in this country.”  And John M. Deutch, whose brief tenure as CIA Director coincided with the publication of Webb’s articles, states for the record in 1995 that “we have no evidence of a conspiracy of the CIA to engage in encouraging drug trafficking in Nicaragua.”  But in the face of the overwhelming evidence uncovered by Webb, the CIA had to recant Deutch’s position in its 400-page report of 1998, acknowledging that “the Agency associated with members of the Contra movement who engaged in drug trafficking.”  The onscreen text at the close of the film informs us that the mainstream media all but ignored the CIA’s confession of illegal, conspiratorial activity, due to the journalists' obsession with the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  By the close of the twentieth century, it was clear that in his tenacious reporting and pursuit of the truth, Gary Webb was a dying breed in the lackluster, spineless mainstream media.

In its historical and documentary film style, Kill the Messenger is an essential reference point for the uses and abuses of power beginning in the Cold War and extending to the present day.  In one of the most important scenes in the film, Gary Webb (as brilliantly portrayed by actor Jeremy Renner) is visited by a fictional rogue intelligence agent named John Cullen, who tells Webb the following:  “It’s all about corruption, Gary.  You get attracted to the power.  Then you become addicted to the power.  Then, you’re devoured by the power.”  Those lines could be etched in stone in the CIA's Langley headquarters and have a greater reality to that organization's history than than the biblical passage "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

The Iran-Contra Affair always takes a back seat to Watergate in American history textbooks, but it had far more serious consequences than Watergate.  Kill the Messenger provides a window into the Reagan years, wherein the president known popularly as “The Great Communicator” could not remember for Congress essential details about the planning and authorization of Iran-Contra by his own administration. In turn, Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, would issue full pardons to six key participants in Iran-Contra.  The re-election bid of Gerald Ford was damaged due to his presidential pardon of Richard Nixon.  But, astonishingly, the pardoning of the six Iran-Contra criminals has done little to tarnish the legacy of George H. W. Bush.  As Vice-President, Bush himself was almost certainly aware of the details of the project.  That subplot could be the basis an entire documentary film.

Another example of an outstanding investigative reporter is David Talbot, whose book Brothers is one of the finest studies of the JFK assassination in the early twenty-first century.  Talbot asserts that after the death of President Kennedy, America’s prestige in the world began a descent from which it has never recovered.  Writing in 2007, Talbot observed that “the country is ruled by an administration that has made a cult of secrecy and obedience…Do Americans still want the truth—starting with Dallas and going all the way to Guantánamo?  Do they want to take back their country.”  These questions are implicit in Kill the Messenger.  This fine film demonstrates how a single person can make a difference in the search for the truth.  After the death of Gary Webb, Senator John Kerry wrote that “because of Webb’s work the CIA launched an Inspector General investigation that named dozens of troubling connections to drug runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”  If Americans truly want to learn the history of our nation in the past half century and to take back our country, the place to begin is at the intersection of Houston and Elm.