Kill the Messenger

Starred review from October 15, 2006
Schou personally knew Gary Webb, the reporter with the " San Jose Mercury News" whose 1996 series of articles linked the CIA to the nation's crack-cocaine plague. Schou, who had spent eight years following a similar story, worried that Webb's suicide in 2004 would cause reporters to shy away from uncovering government involvement in drug trafficking. Schou offers a portrait of a dogged reporter, a motorcycle-driving rebel who was occasionally arrogant and had a history of depression. But Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, also had a reputation for meticulous research. Schou retraces Webb's exhaustive research, which connected crack cocaine sold on the streets of L.A and CIA operations in Nicaragua. Schou also recalls other reporters who faced attacks by the government, lack of support by editors, drug-possession setups, and death threats for investigating CIA involvement in drug trafficking. He also details the personal ruin Webb suffered when his series was greeted first with silence by the journalistic community and later attacked, a series that Schou maintains was on target. An impressive look at the intersection of clandestine government operations and a free press.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)