Director’s note: Gary Webb, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIA’s involvement in the importation of cocaine into the U.S., died on Friday, December 10, reportedly from self-inflicted gunshots to the head.

It was a tragic end to a brilliant, and tragic, career.

This interview was conducted as part of a video course GNN’s Stephen Marshall and I gave at the School of Authentic Journalism’s 2003 seminar in Merída and Isla de las Mujeres, Mexico. Here Webb discusses the media battle that erupted in the aftermath of his groundbreaking 1996 investigation into the CIA’s drug dealing operations during the 1980s to aid the Nicaraguan Contras.