Dark Alliance (book)

This article is about the 1998 book. For other uses, see Dark Alliance.
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
Cover of the 1998 first edition
AuthorGary Webb
PublisherSeven Stories Press
Publication date
May 1998 (hardcover)
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback)
Pages548
ISBN1-888363-68-1
OCLC38281498
363.4/5/097285

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion is a 1998 book by journalist Gary Webb. The book is based on "Dark Alliance", Webb's three-part investigative series published in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996. The original series claimed that, in order to help raise funds for efforts against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, the CIA supported cocaine trafficking into the US by top members of Nicaraguan Contra Rebel organizations and allowed the subsequent crack epidemic to spread in Los Angeles. The book expands on the series and recounts media reaction to Webb's original newspaper exposé.

Dark Alliance was published in 1998 by Seven Stories Press, with an introduction by U.S. Representative Maxine Waters. A revised edition was published in 1999. The same year the book won a Pen Oakland Censorship Award[1] and a Firecracker Alternative Book Award.[2] It served as part of the basis for Kill the Messenger, a 2014 film based on Webb's life.

  1. ^ "Pen Oakland Award Winners". Pen Oakland. Archived from the original on 2 July 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  2. ^ "Firecracker Alternative Book Awards". Readers Read. Retrieved 2015-02-01.