In 1989 Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, published the following comic book: Shadowplay: The Secret Team. (He also published a companion piece which will follow shortly here.)
For those of you too young to remember, this concerns a so-called Shadow Government being run out of the "basement" of the Reagan White House that engaged in illegal deals with the Iranian revolutionary government, drug smuggling, and arms running—and included elements of the CIA and the National Security Council. If you think there are shenanigans going on in the current election cycle, this was a genuine conspiracy—no theory here. Pres. Reagan admitted it on national television. There were actual convictions (subsequently overturned on technicalities having to do with prior Congressional grants of immunity). This was ugly. People died.
Sometimes a dark comic book can be the best way of bringing home the reality of that era. Nothing about it, however, is funny.
[If the above embedded comic book is not fully functional, you can find the web archive here and even download it for free.]
2 comments:
Nothing funny about it at all: In the Eighties, I had a much different occupation in the DOJ. There were some Very Bad People whom we were advised by DEA were not to be touched. These were people in active parole status, with valid, for-real passports (a big red flag all by itself) which showed they were well-traveled in Central and South America.
If you did anything with these People, you'd have to let them go and get a talking-to from not only your superior, but an AUSA; "Career suicide." Never mind the more obvious moral implications.
I remember the Reagan Administration well. I was nearing graduation from college when it began. I remember protesting his death squads in Central America with some friends.
John Negroponte was a major promoter of those death squads. In 2011, HRC put him on her Foreign Affairs Policy Board. (Along with a murderer's row of other neocons.)
He's with her now.
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