SACRAMENTO - Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a controversial series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, has died at age 49.

Webb was found Friday morning in his home in Sacramento County's Carmichael area, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read 'Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.'

He was killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to Sacramento County Deputy Coroner Bill Guillot. Authorities are treating the death as a suicide, Guillot told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Webb's 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News concluded that a San Francisco Bay area drug ring sold cocaine in South Los Angeles and then funneled millions of dollars in profits to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980s. The articles did not accuse the CIA of directly aiding drug-dealing to raise money for the Contras, but implied that agency was aware of the activity.

Major parts of his reporting were later discredited by other newspaper investigations. A CIA probe found no evidence of CIA drug trafficking with Contras, but said the agency had continued to work with Contras suspected of trafficking.


Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos eventually backed away from the series, saying 'we fell short at every step of our process.' Webb was transferred to one of the paper's suburban bureaus.

'This is just harassment,' Webb said after his demotion. 'This isn't the first time that a reporter went after the CIA and lost his job over it.'

After quitting the newspaper in December 1997, Webb continued to defend his reporting with his 1999 book 'Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.'

Born in Corona to a military family, he moved around the country frequently. He dropped out of journalism school and went to work for the Kentucky Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer before landing at the Mercury News.

There, Webb was part of reporting team that won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of a Loma Prieta earthquake.

He later worked in state government, most prominently as a member of an audit committee investigating former Gov. Gray Davis' controversial award of a $95 million no-bid contract to Oracle Corp. in 2001.

'The guy had a fierce commitment to justice and truth. He cared deeply about the people who are forgotten, that we try to shove into the dark recesses of our minds and world,' Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for the California attorney general's office, told the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier this year, Webb was one of a group of employees fired from the Assembly speaker's Office of Member Services for failing to show up for work. He continued writing occasionally for a various of publications. He recently covered government and politics for the weekly Sacramento News and Review.

'All he ever wanted to do was write,' said Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell, who met him when they were both high school students in Indiana.

Webb is survived by two sons and a daughter. Services were pending.