Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
On a conference call just now, senior administration officials provided some details about their plan for detaining Guantanamo detainees at Illinois’ Thomson Correction Center, just across the Mississippi River from Iowa. The facility will be for a “limited number” of detainees, a senior administration official told reporters, for those “who would face trial [in] military commissions.” A different official clarified that “I think the plan would be to hold the military commissions at Thomson.”
But Thomson will not be a way station for out-processing Guantanamo Bay detainees back to their home countries. Nor will it house detainees who will face prosecutions in federal court — those detainees will be transferred the jurisdictions trying them.
Finally, a senior administration official said that while “notionally” it could house detainees for indefinite or preventive detention — the so-called “Fifth Category” of detainees who the administration contends cannot be tried in any forum nor responsibly released — the administration has not yet identified any detainees who fall into that category. Accordingly, neither official told reporters how many detainees at Guantanamo it had identified for transfer to Thomson, saying the process of review remains ongoing.
The Thomson Correctional Center, maximum-security prison built in 2001, is “virtually empty,” the first official said, but inside the prison, non-terrorism detainees will be held in segregation from the former Guantanamo inmates. While the facility is up to the security standards of the Florence, Colo. Supermax prison — with “dual-sided electric stun fencing,” outer and inner towers with armed guards, networked cameras and more – the U.S. Defense Department will add “extra perimeter security” to make it “the most secure facility in the nation.” Ex-Guantanamo detainees will be allowed to communicate with their lawyers, the International Committee of the Red Cross and law enforcement officials — that is, no friends, and no family.
Finally, the officials couldn’t give a time frame for when the transfers ought to occur — and, accordingly, when Guantanamo will be closed. That will require “some change in law, and some funding, obviously, from Congress.” The officials said they were working with Congress — and particularly the Illinois delegation — to secure that additional money and legal authority, though they did not specify precisely which legal changes were necessary and sufficient for the transfer.
Spencer Ackerman is national security correspondent for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.
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