Over the weekend, the son of former drug lord Pablo Escobar released a new book claiming that his father “worked for the CIA.”

In a new book, “Pablo Escobar In Fraganti,” Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his “father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America.”

When I read this I couldn't help but think of the tragic story of Gary Webb, one of the last real journalists in America.
In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb posted Dark Alliance: The story behind the crack explosion.

Dark Alliance should have been a proud moment in American journalism. Instead it became a milestone along the road to decay.

The original “Dark Alliance” series was powerful in naming names, backed by court documents. Webb added specifics and personalities to the story of Contra drug trafficking first broken by Associated Press in 1985 (ignored by major newspapers) and then expanded in 1989 by John Kerry’s Senate subcommittee report which found that Contra drug dealing was tolerated in the U.S. frenzy to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftwing Sandinista government. Kerry’s work was ignored or attacked in big media -- Newsweek labeled him a “randy conspiracy buff.”
There were some flaws and overstatements in the Webb series, mostly in editing and presentation; a controversial graphic had a crack smoker embedded in the CIA seal. But in light of history – and much smoke has cleared since 1996 – Webb’s series stands up far better as journalism than the hatchet jobs from the three establishment newspapers.

The three establishment newspapers, The New York Times, LA Times, and The Washington Post, all went to great lengths to discredit Webb.
They eventually destroyed his career, his marriage, and led him to suicide with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.
Years afterward it was revealed that the CIA helped manage the media attack of Webb, much like how the Reagan White House launched “a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs.”

Webb was partially vindicated just two years after Dark Alliance came out.

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 Blandón. The L.A. Times, New York Times and Washington Post buried the IG's report; under L.A. Times editor Michael Parks, the paper didn't acknowledge its release for months. The L.A. Times' smears against Webb continued after his death. After Webb committed suicide in a suburb of Sacramento in December 2004 - the same day he was to vacate his just-sold home and move in with his mother - a damning L.A. Times obituary described the coverage by the three papers as "discrediting" Webb. As Katz admitted to Mantle, "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. ... And it ruined that reporter's career."

It didn't matter that the CIA inspector General himself admitted that much of what Webb reported was true.
Oliver North's own diary proved the CIA link.

“Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into the U.S.,” reads an entry for Aug. 9, 1985, reflecting a conversation North had with Owen about Mario Calero, Adolfo’s brother.
An entry from July 12, 1985 relates that “14 million to finance [an arms depot] came from drugs” and another references a trip to Bolivia to pick up “paste.”

Amazingly, mainstream journalism still regard the Iran-Contra CIA drug trafficking scandal as a ‘conspiracy theory’, which makes the term 'conspiracy theory' absolutely meaningless.

Too much truth can kill you, as Gary Webb discovered.

However, the truth itself doesn't die so easily.
Slowly, gradually, the main characters in Webb's Dark Alliance are coming into the open.

Meanwhile, the establishment news media continues to ignore how the CIA and the illegal drug industry are linked arm-in-arm. Only now it isn't cocaine in Central America. Now it's opium in Afghanistan.

For several years, Follis headed up the Drug Enforcement Administration's efforts in Afghanistan as the agency's country attaché, reporting directly to the US ambassador....
Battling Afghanistan's drug kingpins was a particular challenge, Follis recalls. There were serious security issues: Agents could not always travel freely or safely and informants had little or no protection. And the trade was aided and abetted at the top levels of government, he says. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai's late half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was rumored to be deeply involved in the heroin trade. Follis bolsters this claim: "Without equivocation, Wali was highly implicated, especially in western Afghanistan." Further complicating things, Wali was rumored to be working with the Central Intelligence Agency.

After the movie Kill the Messenger was released in 2014, the Washington Post launched yet another smear of Gary Webb.