Contrary to the Indymedia.us claim, the LA Times and the mainstream media did not "refute all the evidences exposed by the the San Jose Mercury". Far from it. All the claims made by the Mercury news were backed up with official documents and evidence on the Mercury news website at the time of publication--an unprecendented journalistic standard, especially back in 1996.

But the lesser known story is the post-publication ordeal that Mr. Webb went through that, tragically, led to his suicide. Fortunately though, Mr. Webb was one of 18 journalists who wrote about their experiences of what happens when you take on stories that powerful institutions wanted squashed. His first hand account is riveting and appears in the award-winning book "Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press"

Here's a clip from Webb's essay reprinted in an Alternet.org review of Into the Buzzsaw. I'd recommend reading Alternet's full review or better yet the whole book if you have time:

Webb: "If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite?"

But, like most of the contributors to "Into the Buzzsaw," he did his job too well and the powers that be hurled him onto the other side of the looking glass. "And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been," he writes. "The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress."