"Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". The Department of Justice Inspector-General's report was released on July 23, 1998. [60], It found nothing to support the claim that "the drug trafficking activities of Blandn and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA." Gary Webb, (born August 31, 1955, Corona, California, U.S.died December 10, 2004, Carmichael, California), American investigative journalist who wrote a three-part series for the San Jose Mercury News in 1996 on connections between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S.-backed Contra army seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist government, and cocaine trafficking into the United . I remain astounded by the editorial decisions they made.". Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". He kept saying that he would never get another job in journalism.". The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. ", The report called several of its findings "troubling." Webb's reports prompted three official investigations, including one by the CIA itself which - astonishingly for an organisation rarely praised for its transparency - confirmed the substance of his findings (published at length in Webb's 1998 book, also entitled Dark Alliance). I ask Bell. Did Gary Webb really stray from his wife? 17 years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA and drug traffickers. Jack Blum, who was the lead investigator for Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, which produced a highly damning 1989 report on drug-smuggling in the guise of national security, is one of several commentators to have questioned aspects of Webb's original reporting. Gary Webb is dead. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. Webb was an assertive figure who drove fast cars and powerful motorcycles, hung heavy metal posters in his office and, at certain times in his life, smoked a fair amount of cannabis. GARY WEBB OBITUARY. "Although Ross had become a millionaire by 1984," Katz now wrote, "the market was so huge by then that even a dealer of his stature could seem dwarfed How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level," he continues, "had nothing to do with Ross". Call 911 for assistance. The story they printed was just awful. According to Walt Bogdanich, a former colleague on the Plain Dealer who has won two Pulitzers and now works for The New York Times, Webb was the best retriever of information from public records he has ever seen. WEBB, Mr. Gary Lee, our beloved son, husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle went home with his heavenly Father Monday, August 29, 2011 at University of Michigan Hospital. Uncharacteristically, Persia added her vocals to her father's 2017 song, 'My Name is Ruin'. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. The second article described Blandn's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. Relationships with other women ended badly. To show this, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. E&P Staff. Gary Webb, a journalist at The San Jose Mercury News, thought it was a far-fetched story to begin with, but in 1995 and 1996, he dug in and produced a deeply reported and deeply flawed three-part . ". "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. Mrs. Suzette Thomas Webb. So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? [57], The report covered actions by Department of Justice employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U.S. His. Gary Stephen Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning American investigative reporter who exposed cocaine trafficking by the CIA. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. While working at the legislature, Webb continued to do freelance investigative reporting, sometimes based on his investigative work. Wlaf1450. When removal men arrived, on the morning of 10 December 2004, they found a sign on his front door, which read: ''Please do not enter. ", "Reporter's suicide confirmed by coroner", "Repercussions From Flawed News Articles", "Herhold: Thinking back on journalist Gary Webb and the CIA", Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks, "Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what 'Kill the Messenger' says", "Jeremy Renner's 'Kill the Messenger' Gets Fall Release Date", The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions, United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, "Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Media During the CIA-Contra Affair", Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, "Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion", 'A NATURAL STORY': Tribute to 'Dark Alliance' and Journalist Gary Webb, San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Archive of Gary Webb stories at Sacramento News and Review, "Frontline: Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories & the C.I.A. [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. [36] McManus wrote that Blandn's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. After divorcing his wife, being unable to obtain work from newspapers and facing increasing debts, Gary was forced to sell his home. Garcia is deputy director of the John S Knight Fellowships in Journalism at Stanford University. In a three-part expos, investigative journalist Gary Webb reported that a guerrilla army in Nicaragua had used crack cocaine sales in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund an attempted coup of Nicaragua's socialist government in the 1980s and that the CIA had purposefully funded it. He received his medical degree from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 . That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been willing to stand up and risk it all.". Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. Celebrity. "To get back at his editors?". He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. [28] Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South-Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters. "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. [26] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. And yet, for all his Easy Rider tendencies, he was also a dedicated family man with an extraordinary appetite for researching minutiae. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. It also sparked an . To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. reports. Gary Webb famously died of two gun shot wounds to the head and his death that was ruled a suicide, is the common sense notion that this was clearly assassination true? 'Dark Alliance' - both as journalism and as a book - is a convoluted narrative, but the crucial link it establishes is between the "agricultural salesman" Oscar Danilo Blandn, a Contra sympathiser with close CIA links, and his best customer, an LA drug dealer known as "Freeway" Ricky Ross. Gary E. Webb, a dedicated husband, dad, pappy, coach, mentor, teacher, supporter, hero, and best friend, was called home by the Lord while surrounded by family. The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" In a 2013 article in the LA Weekly, Schou wrote that Webb was "vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandn. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. *, 'Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion' is published in the UK by Seven Stories Press, priced 11.99, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. His wife, Gemma, was a member of the Sidcup fan club. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . But "Dark Alliance" was also posted on the Mercury News's website, with the image of a crack smoker superimposed on the CIA badge. After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. "[58], It also concluded that "the claims that Blandn and Meneses were responsible for introducing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and spreading the crack epidemic throughout the country were unsupported." When his medical insurance expired, he stopped taking his antidepressants. "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. WEBB, Gary T. - Age 55, of Goodrich, died Thursday, May 15, 2003 at his residence. Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. "He was crying. [4] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school. Calling the Post's overall focus "misplaced", Overholser expressed regret that the paper had not taken the opportunity to re-examine whether the CIA had overlooked Contra involvement in drug smuggling, "a subject The Post and the public had given short shrift. This support "was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA," and the Committee found "no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals support. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . "That's right," says Blum. Webb became a staff reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in 1988. [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. He was born in Hammersmith, London. But once the flak really started to fly, from the nation's grandest newspapers, Ceppos - having come under exactly what form of pressure it is difficult to know - printed a retraction which Webb dismissed as spineless. After the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996. "You do not understand the power of these people," he adds, referring to the US intelligence services. Webb conducted a year-long investigation during which he discovered that a San Francisco-based drug ring, which had ties to a CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan contra group called the FDN, sold cocaine to. [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. "Like enjoy it.". After a lengthy battle with cancer, Beth Webb, wife of Pastor Gary Webb at Grace Polaris Church, Westerville, Ohio, was released from her earthly suffering and passed into the presence of Jesus on Wednesday afternoon. "He had six in a short period of time." [54] Editors at the paper, on the other hand, felt that Webb had failed to tell them about information that contradicted the series's claims and that he "responded to concerns not with reasoned argument, but with accusations of us selling him out. "He walked in one day," Bell recalls, "and said, 'You are not going to believe what I just found out.' [39] Carey's critique appeared in mid-October and went through several of the Post's criticisms of the series, including the importance of Blandn's drug ring in spreading crack, questions about Blandn's testimony in court, and how specific series allegations about CIA involvement had been, giving Webb's responses. (Strawser) Webb. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). Going to the CIA to ask if they've ever profited from drug sales in Los Angeles, I suggested to Kornbluh, is rather like asking Fagin if he has ever picked a pocket. Kill the Messenger, a movie starring Jeremy Renner, just opened, about the life and death of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who committed suicide in 2004. Baca claimed that a drug dealer with close links to the CIA had framed her boyfriend, who was also in the cocaine business. Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". Gary Webb was born on March 21, 1959 to Wayne and Peggy Davie Webb in Lamesa, Texas. The review was conducted primarily by editor Jonathan Krim and reporter Pete Carey, who had written the paper's first published analysis of the series. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." "People told me that," she says. But while Webb overreached, some key findings in "Dark Alliance" were on target-and important. The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Garry Webb wrote the 1996 "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose Mercury News. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." Although Blandn's cartel was undoubtedly one of the first to bring crack to LA, Webb was almost certainly suffering a rush of blood when he described the group as "the first pipeline" into the city. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. Regarding issues raised in the series's shorter sidebar stories, it found that some in the government were "not eager" to have DEA agent Celerino Castillo "openly probe" activities at Ilopango Airport in El Salvador, where covert operations in support of the Contras were undertaken, and that the CIA had indeed intervened in a case involving smuggler Julio Zavala. [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. Numan's real name is Gary Anthony James Webb, and he was born on March 8, 1958. Thank you." "For the better part of a decade," it began, "a San Francisco drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency.". Yes. On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. Like Schou, Corn cites the inspector general's report, which he says "acknowledged that the CIA had indeed worked with suspected drugrunners (sic) while supporting the contras. Webb followed up Baca's leads at the California State Library, examining Congressional records and FBI reports. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. According to a description of Webb's injuries in the Los Angeles Times, he shot himself with a .38 revolver, which he placed near his right ear. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandn in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. "[62] It also found no evidence to support Webb's suggestion that several other drug smugglers mentioned in the series were associated with the CIA, or that anyone associated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies was involved in supplying or selling drugs in Los Angeles.[62]. [42] The extent of the criticism, however, convinced Ceppos that The Mercury News had to acknowledge to its readers that the series had been subjected to strong criticism. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. "[55] In June 1997, The Mercury News told Webb it was transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento. Webb's series was published on the Mercury News's fledgling website, but it wasn't exactly an instant sensation. When he was engaged, he worked hard. [68], In August 2004, Webb joined the Sacramento News & Review, an alternative weekly newspaper, where he continued doing investigative writing. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". Do not quote me on anything.". It was accurate. Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. "It was terrible," said Price. [21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it. He wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, which initially backed his articles but later dropped him. When they married, she was aged just 21. "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. He was no hero either. [71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." He was born in Jacksonville, Texas, on March 13, 1954, to Carroll and Waldine Webb, the younger brother of Diane Webb. (Gary is Adult Ministries Pastor at the church.) "He definitely was depressed. [19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. But his central thesis - that the CIA, having participated in narcotics trafficking in central America, had, at best, turned a blind eye to the activities of drug dealers in LA - has never been in question. There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. Webb's experience came as no surprise to Jack Blum, senior prosecutor for the Kerry Committee. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office. When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. Webb took a modestly paid, low-profile job as an investigator with the California State Legislature. In the six years he worked at its Sacramento office, he won the HL Mencken award, for a story exposing corruption in California's drug enforcement agency, and his Pulitzer prize - won jointly, as part of a Mercury News team covering the 1990 Loma Prieta earthquake. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide. But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". Some might consider it an inappropriate assignment for a man with responsibilities. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations. ", The significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. We had been here before." [16] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct. [50] By January, Webb filed drafts of four more articles based on his trip, but his editors concluded that the new articles would not help shore up the original series's claims. In the column, Ceppos defended parts of the article, writing that the series had "solidly documented" that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and did sell large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles. Gary divorced from his wife in 2000, though the two remained close during his final years. Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. In . Unable to get work from any major US newspaper, he spent the four months before his death writing for * a free-sheet covering the Sacramento area. "[75], Jonathan Krim, The Mercury News editor who recruited Webb from The Plain Dealer and who supervised The Mercury News internal review of "Dark Alliance," told AJR editor Paterno that Webb "had all the qualities you'd want in a reporter: curious, dogged, a very high sense of wanting to expose wrongdoing and to hold private and public officials accountable." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."[23]. She was born July 22, 1964 in Jellico, Tennessee. Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. [14] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled Driving Off With Profits which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. As The Independent reported, in an interview with Gary's ex-wife Susan Webb: Webb chose the second option. According to Corn, Webb "was wrong on some important details, but he was, in a way, closer to the truth than many of his establishment media critics who neglected the story of the real CIA-contra-cocaine connection." "[25] It also found disparities in the treatment of Black and White traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandn and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. The first one, "The California Story," was issued in a classified version on December 17, 1997, and in an unclassified version on January 29, 1998. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. The mainstream press, now known as the legacy. While police were preparing the case against her boyfriend, Baca alleged, officers had disclosed documents which revealed that one of her lover's associates had been working for the Contras. He was previously married to Sue Bell. Ceppos failed to reply to one phone message and six emails. I'm glad that I didn't dissuade him, because it was important to get the truth out but for Gary Webb, there was a very high price to pay." A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. His father was a British Airways bus driver based at Heathrow Airport, and his mother Beryl later ran his fan club at the height of his fame. Webb, Bell explains, had written four letters explaining what he was about to do - one to her, one to each of their three children - and mailed them immediately before he killed himself. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. After a local paper reported that he had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons . The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Two years later, he was promoted to Vice President of Knight Ridder, the Mercury News's parent company; he retired from this position last month. Webb's ex wife, Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. Jeremy Renner plays Gary Webb in "Kill the Messenger." (Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features) Webb resigned and wrote a book defending his reporting. Webb undeniably made mistakes of detail and emphasis in the newspaper version of "Dark Alliance". "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' He recently told the American Journalism Review (whose scrupulously researched piece, by Susan Paterno, is the only serious documentation of the Webb case I could find anywhere in the orthodox American media) that Webb's critics in rival newspapers, "quoted these CIA guys - who had a tremendous amount to hide - as though they were telling the truth. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." "If I had one dream for you," he wrote, "it was that you would go into journalism and carry on the kind of work I did - fighting, with all your might, the oppression and bigotry and stupidity and greed that surrounds us. [31] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series's claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. Although it did find that both men were major drug dealers, "guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of countless drug users," and that they had contributed money to the Contra cause, "we did not find that their activities were responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles, much less the rise of crack throughout the nation, or that they were a significant source of support for the Contras. Proved controversial, and the long commute a strong reputation for investigative.... 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