IN 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy: the Reagan-Bush administration's protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review, and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor, Jerry Ceppos, sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News.

On Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb's death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb's contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

Even after the CIA's inspector general issued findings in 1998 that largely confirmed what Webb had written, the major newspapers couldn't muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush's case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA's confession from the American people.

Meanwhile, however, Webb became the target of outright media ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the contra war was primarily a business to its participants. "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail," Kurtz chortled.

Webb's suspicion wasn't unfounded, however. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North's emissary Rob Owen had made the same point a decade earlier, in a March 17, 1986, message about the contra leadership. "Few of the so-called leaders of the movement ... really care about the boys in the field," Owen wrote. "THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM." [Capitalization in the original.]

On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series "fell short of my standards." He criticized the stories because they "strongly implied CIA knowledge" of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. "We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship."

For undercutting Webb and the other reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national "Ethics in Journalism Award" by the Society of Professional Journalists. While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse.

At Webb's death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to U.S. history was that he – along with angry African American citizens – forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any U.S. administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.

The real tragedy of Webb's historic gift – and of his life cut short – is that because of the major news media's callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan-Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people. Robert Parry, who broke the first contra-cocaine story for the Associated Press, is the author of Secrecy and Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. A longer version of this article is available at Consortiumnews.com.