Tag: Homeland Security

A $20,000 computer server gone missing. A $1 million check left for months in a mailbox. A mobile security field station squatting unused in a Lake City parking lot. Those are just a few of the blunders the governor's Homeland Security office uncovered in Colorado as its auditors sought to track the way the state was spending federal Homeland Security funds in 2008 and 2009, according to a joint study published last week by the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Center for Public Integrity.

In a series of charged emails to the Colorado Independent prompted by a report on the existence of unlisted immigrant-detention "subfield offices" in the state, Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, wrote to clarify that the offices were used only for processing suspects. He said immigrants suspected of violations were held at the agency's subfield offices for up to approximately two hours before being transferred to long-term holding facilities. He conceded that contact information for the facilities was unavailable and that detainees being processed at the offices were not allowed to contact relatives or attorneys before being transferred to the larger facilities. The nature of the processing done in the offices, however, was merely transitional, he wrote, and the offices were not "secret."

Michael Brown, the disgraced head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina, lives in Boulder now and, four years after the epic...

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn added his voice to those criticizing the White House decision to try suspected 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other suspected terrorists in a New York City civilian court. In a strongly worded statement issued yesterday, the Colorado 5th District Republican argued that New York could become a number one target for attacks during the trial, that the terrorists were enemy combatants who would be granted additional rights unnecessarily once brought onto U.S. soil and that the men could radicalize prison populations wherever they might eventually be held. In conversation with the Colorado Independent, however, the Department of Justice played down the criticism as overheated and lacking perspective.

An e-mailed statement sent Tuesday evening from U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet's office about an anti-terrorism investigation with Colorado ties inadvertently included a chain of more than a dozen e-mails from staffers scrambling to update the boss and worrying whether news organizations might conclude the state's junior senator wasn't "as much in the loop" as U.S. Sen. Mark Udall.

Our friends over at the Colorado Springs-based blog Newspeak recently uncovered the amazing Threat Alert Jesus. Threat Alert Jesus is a "beautifully sculpted figurine...