Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Entries by emptywheel
Is Geithner Planning on a Public-Private Partnership with the Sovereign Wealth Funds?
/37 Comments/in Economics/by emptywheelTim Geithner used the gimmick of a public-private partnership to avoid nationalizing the banks today. But that gimmick may well depend on the continued investment from Sovereign Wealth Funds–the investment arms of nations like China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Kuwait, South Korea, and UAE. That seems to present many more potential problems down the road.
USAMRIID Can’t Keep Track of Its Microbes
/in emptywheel/by emptywheelNow, what do you make of the fact that USAMRIID, the lab at which Bruce Ivins was alleged to have made the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, is having problems cataloging and tracking their high-risk microbes and biomaterials (h/t Danger Room)? The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has suspended research […]
BREAKING: Obama Continues Bush Policy On State Secrets
/161 Comments/in Bush Administration, emptywheel, Intelligence, Law, Obama Administration, Torture/by emptywheelEarlier this morning, Looseheadprop wrote about the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British subject tortured at the hands of the United States at Gitmo, including having his genitals carved selectively with a scalpel. The Mohamed case is of critical significance for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that there was an oral argument in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this morning in which the Obama Administration has shown its true colors and continued the assertion of state secrets to conceal US torture policy.
USAMRIID Can’t Keep Track of Its Microbes
/26 Comments/in Anthrax/by emptywheelRemember how one key to the FBI case against Bruce Ivins is their claim that only he had access to the flask that contained the anthrax strain used in the attack–and that they’re sure that there were no other flasks of the strain? Well, it turns out that Ivins’ lab, USAMRIID, shut down all research on Friday because they don’t have a good inventory of all their high-risk microbes.