San Jose

San Jose, California was the home of the San Jose Mercury News, which published the Dark Alliance series, and a secondary market for Contra-connected Cocaine distribution. The city appeared in the story both as a base for Gary Webb's newspaper and as one of the communities affected by the Contra-drug pipeline.¹

Cocaine Distribution

Danilo Blandón's Contra-connected cocaine network distributed drugs in San Jose in addition to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Gary Webb wrote that the fact a government-connected drug ring was dumping tons of cocaine into black neighborhoods in L.A., "and to a lesser extent in San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, Houston, Oklahoma City, Alabama and New Orleans," explained why crack developed such deep roots in the black community. "It's where the seed was planted."²

Dark Alliance Publication

The San Jose Mercury News, based in San Jose, published the Dark Alliance series on August 18, 1996. The paper's Web site became a sensation, recording over one million hits in a single day. After the media counterattack, Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos published his apology column and ordered the Web site's Dark Alliance materials destroyed. Thousands of reprints were gathered up and burned, and a CD-ROM version was destroyed.³