Gary Webb was an investigative reporter, focusing on government and private sector corruption and winning more than 30 journalism awards. He was one of six reporters at the San Jose Mercury News to win a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for a series of stories on the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct during northern California's 1989 earthquake. He also received the 1997 Media Hero Award from the Institute for Alternative Journalism and in 1996 was named Journalist of the Year by the Bay Area Society of Professional Journalists. Webb is currently a consultant to the California State legislature Task Force on Government Oversight and a regular feature contributor to Esquire. In 1998, his book Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Seven Stories Press), revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. He died in 2004.