NOT-SO-HOT COPY IN SAN JOSE

By Richard Zoglin

It was the sort of sensational investigative story that brings a newspaper attention, praise, often prizes. A three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News last August, the product of a year's work by reporter Gary Webb, alleged that the crack epidemic in inner-city Los Angeles was largely started by Nicaraguan drug suppliers who introduced the new form of cocaine into the ghetto and used the profits to help support the antigovernment rebels known as contras.

Most explosively, the series suggested CIA complicity in, or at least knowledge of, the operation. Hyped by provocative headlines (the series was titled "Dark Alliance") and splashed over the Internet (accompanied by a logo that superimposed the CIA's insignia on the image of a crack smoker), the story was perfect fodder for persistent suspicions in the African-American community of a government conspiracy against blacks. The outrage percolated on talk radio and on the Internet until Jesse Jackson and other black leaders began demanding a full accounting. The CIA conducted an internal review; congressional hearings were convened.

But the story also provoked an extraordinary backlash in the press. The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times all eventually ran lengthy investigative pieces or multipart series that disputed major points in the Mercury News story, especially its implication that the CIA was a party to getting poor blacks hooked on crack. After defending the series with diminishing resolve, Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos finally confessed in an extraordinary Sunday editorial last week that he too found the story flawed.

After an internal re-examination of the piece by seven reporters and editors, Ceppos concluded that the series "did not meet our standards" in several respects. The story fingered Nicaraguan drug supplier Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes as the pivotal figure who funneled money from the L.A. crack trade to the contras, but failed to note that Blandon (who later became a U.S. government informant) testified that he stopped sending money to the contras in 1982, well before he began trafficking drugs in L.A. Moreover, Ceppos admitted, the assertion that "millions in profits" from drug dealing went to the contras was only an estimate, and may have been exaggerated.

The editor also acknowledged that the story's contention that crack smoking in the inner city can be traced to a single Nicaraguan drug ring (Blandon was called "the Johnny Appleseed of crack") was an "oversimplification" and ignored evidence that the crack epidemic was a "complex phenomenon that had more than one origin." Finally, Ceppos admitted, the Mercury News "did not have proof" that top CIA officials knew the contras were getting money from the L.A. drug connection. "If we were to publish 'Dark Alliance' today," he said, "it would be edited differently. It would state fewer conclusions as certainties and be clearer in explaining why, given the thicket of sometimes conflicting evidence, we drew the conclusions that we did."

Yet this recantation--as unusual as it was--did not knock the struts out of the story entirely. Ceppos noted that Webb's reporting was "right on many important points." The series did, for example, establish a link between one of the most notorious L.A. drug dealers--"Freeway Rick" Ross--and Nicaraguan suppliers who were admitted supporters of the contras. And while strongly hinting at CIA knowledge of the drug connection, the story never explicitly made that claim.

Nor is the paper's mea culpa likely to change the minds of those who want to believe that the U.S. government was behind the introduction of crack into the inner city. Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who was among the first to take up Webb's reporting as a political cause, has reaffirmed her belief that the basic story is sound and has vowed to continue pressing for congressional hearings. Says Los Angeles city councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas: "There is a lot of suspicion that there was some truth associated with the claims in the story. Frankly, those suspicions will not go away."

Another who continues to stand by the series is reporter Webb, whose disagreement with some of Ceppos' criticisms were explicitly noted in the editorial. Webb, who has spent eight years at the Mercury News, mostly reporting from Sacramento, the state capital, maintains that the paper "is not backing down from the central assertion of the story"--that cocaine sold in Los Angeles in the 1980s produced money for the contras. He says he has written four follow-up stories that bolster his allegations: one featuring an eyewitness interview that, Webb claims, confirms some dollar figures, and another based on documents that allegedly show "how far up in the CIA this thing went." (Ceppos, who will not comment beyond his published statements, has characterized Webb's new material as only "notes," and won't say whether he is going to run them.) "The nature of this story is a very dangerous idea," says Webb. "Once you go down this trail, you challenge the moral authority of the government, which is why I believe other media shied away from it."

The wrangle over the article highlights the creative tension that often exists in newsrooms between investigative reporters and their editors. The former are by nature advocates; they work for many months on their lonely quest, become passionate about their story, and sometimes promise more than they can responsibly deliver. The latter must act as the voice of caution, tamping down enthusiasms and reining in excesses. At the Mercury News, Webb played his assigned part with gusto, but it's not so clear that the editors adequately performed theirs. Though Ceppos did not directly edit the story, he has taken responsibility for it.

Yet according to insiders at the paper, many staff members are now embarrassed by the story and resentful of Webb's self-promotional efforts on its behalf. Indeed, the lure of talk-show celebrity, maybe even a Hollywood deal, may have played a role in letting a promising investigative piece get out of control. The Mercury News has made an admirable effort to face up to its journalistic lapses. But it would be a shame if the incident discouraged editors from supporting the kind of aggressive reporting Webb has done--or muffled the serious questions that his series has raised.

--With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles