The Killing Game - Gary Webb's Last Story:
by Ellen Komp
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/kompellen,garywebb,12,18,04.htm
When investigative reporter Gary Webb was found dead of a
gunshot wound on December 10, 2004 the initial reports all
called it an apparent suicide, despite the fact that no
crime scene details or reasons why Webb would have taken his
own life were revealed. The LA Times, which led what
FAIR.org called "damage control for the CIA" on Webb's San
Jose Mercury News series linking the CIA with drug
trafficking, broke the story of Webb's death on Sunday and
all news outlets dutifully followed suit with their reports.
The Sacramento coroner's office, which has been deluged with
phone calls about the incident, confirmed that Webb had been
shot two times in a statement released the following
Tuesday. The Sacramento Bee interviewed Webb's ex-wife, Sue
Bell, who said that Webb had been despondent over his
inability to get a job with a major newspaper and the theft
of his motorcycle just before his death helped push him to
suicide, in her opinion. The Bee reported Webb had paid for
his own cremation earlier this year, had just sold his house
because he was unable to meet mortgage payments, and shot
himself with his father's .38 caliber gun.
Ed Smith, spokesperson for the Sacramento coroner's office,
said by telephone that the office would release no further
information until the case is closed, in perhaps two months'
time. Smith said that it is not uncommon for suicide victims
to be shot twice, but would not say where the bullets
pierced Mr. Webb or if his fingerprints were found on the
weapon. According to Smith, no sheriff's investigator has
been assigned to the case and it was a Sacramento patrol
officer who reported Mr. Webb's death to the coroner.
Ray Horton of the Humboldt County coroner's office said in
an interview for KMUD radio in Redway that "the flags go up"
at his office when a suicide victim is shot twice. Two-shot
suicides almost always involve smaller caliber weapons,
Horton said, adding that the fact that a .38 was used in
Webb's death "should be highly suspicious."
Webb, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, was most famous
for writing that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons
of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and funneled millions of
dollars in profits to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras
during the 1980s. As was Senator John Kerry before him, Webb
was discredited for his investigations, even though a report
by the CIA later confirmed them. In 1997, then-Mercury News
executive editor Jerry Ceppos backed away from Webb's
series, and later received an ethics award from the Society
of Newspaper Editors. After quitting the newspaper in
December 1997, Webb continued to defend his reporting with
his 1999 book "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the
Crack Cocaine Explosion."
ConspiracyPlanet.com remarks that Webb joins artist Mark
Lombardi, J.H. Hatfield (author of "Fortunate Son"), and
journalist Danny Casolaro as the fourth 'suicide' by a
researcher "who had a detailed understanding of the
structure and function of the Bush Crime Family." But
liberal commentators from the Nation to Counterpunch
discounted such talk, wondering aloud why Webb would be
targeted so long after his explosive series was published.
Webb was most recently employed by the Sacramento News and
Review as a reporter for their Chico weekly. Chillingly,
Webb's last article for that paper was a cover story that
ran on October 21, 2004 titled "The Killing Game." It was an
expose of the US Army's development of video games that
simulate warfare and its use of them to recruit young
warriors.
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.
America's Army was released to the public on the July 4,
2002 (the first fourth of July after 9/11). There are now
more than 4 million registered users of the game, mostly 13-
and 14-year-olds, more than half of whom have completed the
required preliminary weapons training and gone online to
play. The Army says the game has 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.
According to Webb's article, the Army has been collecting
player information in a vast relational database system
called "Andromeda" that recruiters will be able to use to
look up a player's statistics if one of them shows up in a
recruiting office. Currently, Army game developers are in
the process of creating a statistics-tracking system that
can tell how much time a player spends online, how many
kills he's made, which battlefields he's best at, how many
kills he averages an hour and similar minutiae.
"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."
Through an exclusive long-term contract the Army signed with
the French software company Ubisoft, America's Army will be
out in a "console" version, for use with Xbox and Sony game
machines. Currently, it is playable only on high-end PCs,
"which reaches a certain demographic for household income,"
Wardynski tells an interviewer. "We'd like to reach a
broader audience, and consoles get you there. For every PC
gamer, there are four console gamers." Also in the works, he
says, are an America's Army clothing line, comic books and
toy action figures.
When American's Army was released, Webb reported, Miami
attorney Jack Thompson went on ABC News and threatened to
seek an injunction, saying it wasn't the government's job to
provide kill 'em games to youngsters. "He was deluged with
angry e-mail and allegedly received death threats," the
article states.
In an interview by telephone, Thompson said he reported
death threats he received by email through chatrooms to
America's Army website administrators after he appeared on
ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings in 2002. He
called those idle threats, but opined, "I wouldn't be
surprised if DOD and/or the video game industry had [Webb]
killed... A lot of money and power is at stake." The
commercial video game industry is grossing $15 billion
yearly, according to Thompson.
Thompson recently wrote a letter to Sen. John McCain calling
for the ouster of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
because of his support of the Institute for Creative
Technologies (ICI) at the University of Southern California
(USC). Thompson writes, "It is now known that ITC has taken
taxpayer dollars and created an urban warfare virtual
reality simulator for our soldiers a) which is being sold as
a commercial game to civilian teenagers, with Rumsfeld's
approval, and b) and which is being used by foreign
terrorists to train their operatives to repulse our troops
in Iraq."
On November 20, USC announced it received a second five-year
grant for ICI, with the U.S. Army more than doubling its
support to $100 million. The endowment represents the
largest research grant ever received by USC. With the $45
million the University has spent since 1999, it developed
two games, Full Spectrum Command (PC) and Full Spectrum
Warrior (Xbox), which has since become a top-selling
consumer game. Imbued with a high level of artificial
intelligence (AI) capabilities, both games contain features
tailored to the Army's training methods and were developed
with teaching personnel at the infantry school at Fort
Benning, Georgia, according to a USC press release.
In a bizarre coincidence, as reports of Webb's death were
circulating, Oracle software announced it finally succeeded
in its hostile takeover of PeopleSoft. Webb had worked for
the state of California as a member of an audit committee
investigating former Gov. Gray Davis' controversial award of
a $95 million no-bid contract to Oracle Corp. in 2001. Tom
Dresslar, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer, was quoted in Webb's obituaries around the state as
a fellow member of that committee.
During the lead up to the announcement of the Scott Peterson
death penalty verdict on Monday, Fox News ran an interview
with Oracle chief Larry Ellison claiming the US economy is
on the upswing, while the news runner at the bottom of the
screen attempted to debunk stories run by all the major
networks that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor
Yushchenko was poisoned. Fox's Bill O'Reilly reportedly told
his former producer that critic Al Franken "would get a
knock on his door" someday. What passes for news and the
thuggery that accompanies it in the wake of Gary Webb's
passing is even more chilling than his death.
Robert Parry, who published an article on Webb at
www.consortiumnews.com, also makes the case on that site for
liberals to support independent media. Webb's tragic
apparent suicide makes it very clear that this is
desperately needed.
See Webb's last story at
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/chico/2004-10-21/cover.asp
By Ellen Komp © updated 12/17/04
ellen@civilliberties.org
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/kompellen,garywebb,12,18,04.htm
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