"DARK ALLIANCE" IS BACK ONLINE. The groundbreaking 1996 series by Gary Webb, who committed suicide last December, reported on the connection between the CIA, the Nicaraguan contras, and the explosion of crack in the United States.

Now NarcoNews.com is uploading the entire series to the Web. According to Narco News's Dan Feder, the entire website put together by the San Jose Mercury News was recently discovered on a CD-ROM by Webb's family.

"Dark Alliance" was a landmark of Internet journalism, with people around the country and even the world logging onto the Mercury's website to read it. The grotesque overreaction by the mainstream media to what were some fairly minor flaws in Webb's reporting (not to mention the Mercury's gutlessness in throwing Webb over the side) helped form the current critique of corporate journalism by activists on the left.

Congratulations to Narco News and its founder, my former Phoenix colleague Al Giordano, for getting Webb's work back in circulation.