Ryan: “Man, the look you gave me afterwards…”

Denzel: “Yeah, it was a REAL look. Like what the f***!? [laughs]”

Ryan: “Well, if it was your first on-set black eye, I’m glad it was by an apologetic Canadian.”

If you’ve seen any of the advertisements and TV spots for the new film Safe House starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, and read the above correspondence, you probably noticed two things: for one, there is clearly a lot of eye candy for women of all ages in this film, okay? But secondly, there is a whole lot of action, including black-eye inducing car accidents like the one mentioned above, that will keep you fully engaged and sucked in. People are running on the tops of houses in the film, getting caught up in the craziest and most visually insane car chases (Ryan actually drove in a few of those scenes), there are knife fights, actual waterboarding (which Washington says he did with NO stunt double), knock down, drag out, swinging brawls…and Denzel. Sounds like a great Friday night flick right?

The two charming and charismatic actors went in depth about their characters during a press junket about the new film recently. Reynolds plays Matt Weston, the sitter of a South African safe house in which criminals are held for interrogation and protection. When his safe house is attacked by rebels hoping to capture ex-CIA agent Tobin Frost, Weston goes from simple house sitter to a pseudo-agent trying to track down, battle, and often protect Frost. Washington plays the rogue agent, who is both calculated, and at times, pretty sociopathic while trying to escape capture from the agency he turned his back on. In preparing for the role, Washington says he worked with CIA operatives and studied the behavior of sociopaths.

“There are different kinds of sociopaths, and they don’t have to all be violent. Many can just like to create chaos because it’s simply a power thing. A sociopath will do anything to win.”

And he sure does. Frost lies, imitates others, kills and goes through a lot more to be victorious in his complex situation. He’s the ultimate bad guy, but he’s bad for good reasons (I can’t go in depth as to why, you’ll have to find out on your own). If you’ve been pining to see Denzel go from good to bad again (because we loved it in Training Day and so did the Academy), but also want to see him get his Street Fighter on like in The Book of Eli, here’s your opportunity. There are so many twists and turns and acts of betrayal in this film, I found myself with the bug eyes many a time (until a swift knee in the back of my chair knocked me back into my senses). Plus, the small side story surrounding Weston’s relationship issues is intriguing–and so is that body Reynolds has may I add!

All in all, Safe House is a pretty good piece of work. I’m not a die-hard action fan so I didn’t go in with the highest expectations–however, I was pleasantly surprised. Aside from a few slower moments of talking every now and again, it’s very entertaining and will keep your attention throughout its 117 minutes. And even if you were to go in that joint sleepy, there’s no way you would you find yourself knocked out. There’s too much intense action and noise for all that. Oh yeah, and hotness…

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(New York Times) — The Central Intelligence Agency has opened an internal inquiry into whether its close cooperation with the New York Police Department in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks has broken any laws prohibiting the agency from collecting intelligence in the United States.  During his first Congressional testimony as the C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus said Tuesday that the agency’s inspector general had begun to investigate its work with the Police Department “to make sure we are doing the right thing.” Mr. Petraeus said the inquiry began last month, but gave few details about its scope.

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By Alexis Garrett Stodghill

Imagine working for the CIA for 23 years, spending some of that time interrogating suspected terrorists using methods that might be illegal. When the time comes to share your personal experiences, your former employer chooses to use its power to block your freedom of expression. This is exactly what happened to Glenn Carle, whose book “The Interrogator” was published in June of this year — only after heavy meddling by the CIA. Carle’s memoir was published with heavy black bars through extensive passages of the tome to show where the CIA had demanded omissions — even for information that was common knowledge. The CIA took over complete control of how it was portrayed in another human being’s story.

These invasions were committed in an effort to prevent readers from perceiving a text published by a CIA veteran as being a confirmation by the CIA of anything the agency wanted to remain secretive about, including the emotional effects of its tactics. If that sounds convoluted, so is the reasoning behind it. Salon.com reports on the CIA’s logic in violating this individual’s legal rights:

…Carle complained when the [CIA] insisted on cutting information from his book that was already common knowledge. Two reasons are offered for such demands. One is the “mosaic theory of classification,” characterized by Carle as “one of the most harmful consequences of eight years of the Bush administration. And that is not a partisan statement.” [...]

The mosaic theory alleges that pieces of information that may seem innocuous enough on their own — including material that has already been cleared by the CIA — can, when combined with similar pieces of information, present a potential threat that might be of use to the enemy. “By that rationale,” Carle observed, “you should take every chemistry textbook out of every high school in America.” [...]

The other justification the agency commonly offers for redacting material is that some facts, although widely known, have not been officially acknowledged by the agency or the U.S. government. If the CIA were to approve a book stating those facts, it would supposedly amount to an acknowledgment.

The CIA has also been in the news recently for interfering with the publication of a book by former FBI agent Ali Soufan, which is highly critical of “[the CIA's] use of brutal interrogation techniques in the decade since 9/11,” also according to Salon. The CIA appears to want unlimited power to prevent eye witnesses from sharing their accounts of the agency’s perhaps unethical practices — methods justified by the war on terror.

(AP) — In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.  The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.  From that apartment, about an hour outside the department’s jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither theFBI nor the local police had any idea.

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By Alexis Garrett Stodghill

The Nation magazine author Jeremy Scahill has unearthed what many believe is a secret prison for terrorists in Somalia run by the CIA. In his recent article for the political weekly, Scahill details a relationship between the American and Somalian governments in which this Guantanamo Bay-style facility operates without the attendant political backlash. Apparently, these types of underground “black sites” for the detainment and questioning of terror suspects were common before Obama’s presidency, and widely criticized for generating numerous human rights violations through the use of torture.

President Obama signed an order ending the CIA’s black site program on the second day of his term, so the discovery that these prisons appear to remain in operation is causing international outrage. Despite being pressed for answers by news outlets such as CNN and ABC, the CIA remains evasive in discussing its role in Somalia’s secret terrorist prisons, and similar CIA outposts across Africa. Time.com reports:

Whatever the depth of the involvement of the CIA and other intelligence and military agencies in Somalia, the report raises this specter of longstanding and much-loathed U.S. counter-terrorism practices in the Muslim world — policies that many hoped would fade under the Obama Administration and in the wake of the Arab Spring. Before, brutal regimes like those of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and even Muammar Gaddafi in Libya happily collaborated with U.S. agents in the arrest, secret detention and likely torture of Islamists and terror suspects. Scahill’s piece suggests not much has changed, at least in the Horn of Africa, a part of the world that has vexed American policy makers for nearly two decades.

Nations in Africa such as Yemen have become the new focus of America’s war on terror now that the Middle East has been subdued as a source of new threats. The intensifying presence of al-Quaeda in Yemen and Somalia is seen as the grounds for increasing U.S. collusion with oppressive regimes in the region, which lack the resources to mount effective counter-terrorism campaigns. The unfortunate fall out of these relationships is that the CIA must collaborate with draconian rulers such as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh — a leader on the verge of being ousted by his own people for unconscionable acts.