Thursday — June 11th, 2009
This is Part 12, and the conclusion, of “Concealed Carry,” a comic drawn by the incomparable Mike Brace and written by Frank Naif. It will run in twelve parts starting on 4 May, with new installments on Mondays and Thursdays.
“Concealed Carry” will appear in the Horrors Of War comic anthology produced by the DC Conspiracy comics collective, a bunch of us here in Washington, DC who make comics, drink beer, and get into barroom brawls.
Horrors of War debuted at the Fourth Annual Counterculture Festival on 24 May 2009, at The Soundry, 316 Dominion Road, Vienna, Virginia.
July 3rd, 2009
On Thursday, Department of Justice Attorneys agreed to ‘preserve’ secret overseas facilities where CIA held and tortured terrorist suspects, according to the New York Times. A separate grand jury is investigating the destruction of CIA videotapes alleged to show torture of Al Qaeda captives.
A day earlier, the Times reported that attorneys representing Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian man formerly held at Guantanamo and now facing Federal terrorism charges in New York, told a Federal judge that they want to visit the alleged secret CIA overseas prison, or “black site,” where their client was reportedly held for two years.
(Cross-posted at Examiner.com)
July 2nd, 2009
From Spencer Ackerman of Washington Independent comes word that the Obama Administration is again delaying release of the 2004 CIA IG report on torture until August 31.
Despite already missing three court-ordered deadlines over the past five months, Federal attorneys say that just Department of Justice, with over 112,500 employees, and CIA, with an estimated 20,000 employees, haven’t had enough time or resources to review the report and associated documents to meet the deadlines.
(Cross-posted to Examiner.com)
July 2nd, 2009
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Utah will soon be home to a million square foot NSA facility that could bring up 1200 high tech jobs to the state. (Hat tip to Tim Shorrock, via twitter.)
The facility is expected to cost billions when completed and consume 65 megawatts of electricity, about as much as is presently consumed by Salt Lake City. NSA’s voracious power consumption is one of the reasons the agency decided to locate the facility in Utah.
That, and the presence of the Utah National Guard, which includes several unique linguist units that support NSA’s foreign intercept operations.
The Salt Lake Tribune article hints that Senate pork might also be a factor in the project. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is the most senator member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, after all. Despite widespread press exposure for the project, Hatch’s office refused comment citing–of course–national security concerns.
Investigative reporter Tim Shorrock, who wrote about NSA’s outsourcing in his book Spies for Hire (now available in paperback) and who has written extensively on NSA’s domestic surveillance activities, thinks that the move is connected to domestic surveillance. This morning Tim tweeted
There’s going to be lots of Mormons monitoring our phone calls and emails soon. And lots of contractors moving to Utah.
(Cross-posted to Examiner.com)
