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.
Nope. Mr. emptywheel hasn’t made me my pancakes yet.
SSCI’s report on the FISA Amendment uses remarkable logic for their justification for retroactive immunity.
It argues that, because the Administration has invoked State Secrets in all the suits against the telecoms, the poor telecoms cannot mount any kind of defense–cannot even prove their innocence, in the case of companies that refused to participate in the warrantless wiretap program.
I’m going to have a whole slew of posts on this SSCI report on their FISA bill(you’ll all be hoping mr. emptywheel gets up and distracts me withpancakes, no doubt). In this post, I want to show the language thereport uses to privilege the Authorization to Use Military Force. In it’s description of the basis for the program, the report depicts the warrantless wiretapping program as distinctly military.
TheNSA program was described
Laura links to a CQ story based on this SSCI report on FISA. As Starks noted in his CQ article, the report reveals that the telecom companies did not have the requisite approval from the Attorney General for the period following the hospital confrontation; rather, they had White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ approval.
The committee’s published report on legislation (S 2248) that wouldrewrite the rules for government surveillance states thattelecommunications companies participating
I believe it was just the other day when I was saying it was more urgent to implement whistleblower protection than to write a new journalist shield law. This doesn’t change my opinion in that regard.
This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effortto collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department.The U.S.
Chrisc, who thankfully made it safely through the San Diego fires, didn’t let them distract her from the matter at hand: the Wilkes trial. Mark Geragos took the opportunity of a big natural disaster to sneak his client onto the stand to testify–apparently taking the government by surprise. I’ll review a few of the details, but I’d like to compare the account of Seth Hettena and that of Allison Hoffman.
According to the NYT, the White House has very generously allowed the entire SJC to view the documents justifying the domestic wiretapping program–at least that’s what Tony Fratto says.
The White House on Thursday offered to share secret documents on the National Security Agency’sdomestic surveillance program with the Senate Judiciary Committee, astep toward possible compromise on eavesdropping legislation.
Okay, I mean this to be an honest question. The NYT has scary pictures up–courtesy of William Broad, who was glued to Judy’s hip on Mobile Bioweapons Lab stories in summer 2003–showing that the purported nuclear reactor the Israelis took out in Syria has been razed to the ground.
That offers proof, the accompanying article states, that the Syrians were up to no good, and that the bombed site was a nuclear
The White House must be trying to peel Scottish Haggis away from the Democrats on the SJC who oppose granting the telecoms immunity for illegally spying on citizens. Why else show Leahy and Specter the family jewels–the justification for the domestic wiretap program–without sharing them with the rest of SJC?
The White House has offered leaders of the Senate JudiciaryCommittee access to legal documents related to the National SecurityAgency’s warrantless surveillance program,
I’d like to return to an interchange between Waxman and Condi from the hearing today. Condi made a verygenerousoffer to let Waxman’s committee review documents pertaining to corruption. Waxman pointed out that that offer did not allow the committee to discuss what it discovered in those documents publicly.
He raised the example of whether Iraqis were laundering money for use in militias.
The NYT has an interesting article telling the story of the Blackwater guards involved in the September 16 shooting. It does a great work getting the views of 6 current and former Blackwater guards in spite of the company’s policy gagging them.
But there are two details, above all, that deserve more attention (particularly since the article simply presents them, without raising any questions about what they mean).