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.
That’s a way to make you feel good about blogging, huh? To be attacked by both Dick DeVos and KayBee Hutchison?
DeVos is suing 30 anonymous bloggers and YouTube users because he believes they are among a group for former distributors who sued Amway and were put under a gag order by the judge in the suit.
In the lawsuit filed this past week in Ottawa County Circuit Court,Quixtar seeks an injunction and
I did my big timeline yesterday to try to pin down how much of what we suspect to be the warrantless wiretap program started in early 2001, rather than post-9/11 as Bush has always claimed. As I pointed out in my timeline, it’s clear that Nacchio walked into the February 27 meeting expecting to talk about Groundbreaker.
As the NYT broke the other day, General Michael Hayden is conducting an investigation of the CIA’s Inspector General, John Helgerson. Their first report on the story intimated the reason why Hayden was conducting such an unusual investigation.
A report by Mr. Helgerson’s office completed in the spring of 2004warned that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared toconstitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by theinternational Convention Against Torture.
What a surprise! An attorney representing a Gitmo detainee and someone in Afghanistan has found “crossed lines” in his telephone connection (h/t scout prime).
A law firm that represents clients atGuantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan is warning its Vermont clientsthat it believes the federal government has been monitoring its phonesand computer system.
[snip]
A Verizon Vermont technician who investigatedproblems with Gensburg’s phone last month found crossed lines, butdidn’t explain what caused the problem,
Amanda marks the expiration of the PATRIOT Act appointees as USA.
These 11 prosecutors now “find themselves at the mercy of the same U.S. district courts that the Justice Department saw fit to cut out of the U.S. Attorney appointmentprocess last year.†The courts today will decide whether to reappointthese prosecutors who were handpicked by Gonzales and the White House.
Hey. Remember when Duke Cunningham was a hero? Well, once you’re useless to the up-and-comers, that hero reputation dies a quick death (h/t chrisc).
Wade said the now-imprisoned congressman was so critical to securingmillions of dollars in federal contracts that defense contractors werewilling to act like they were his friends.
“We would dread having dinner with (Cunningham) and having to listen tohim repeat the same jokes,” Wade told jurors in the same courtroomwhere
The documents made available by the RMN yesterday provide more details about what the NSA and other government agencies have been doing with fiber optic networks–but it’s still not exactly clear what those documents show. As a preliminary, I’m going to try to put the contents of this CIPA filing into a coherent chronology, to clarify some of the issues.
Chris Matthews partly confirms something I speculated last week–though he adds a bit too. Given his description of the three staffers “linked to Cheney” who tried to silence his reporting on OVP’s involvement in the Niger uranium claims that got us into war, it’s safe to assume Libby’s call relates to that effort (and I’d bet there’s a Adam Levine call, too).
Matthews says that there was a “concerted effort” — carried
As you’ve probably already sussed out, the transcript from the Jill Simpson interview with HJC is must-read scandal porn. In it, Simpson clearly states that Rove got involved in the Siegelman prosecution and talked to Public Integrity at DOJ in doing so.
But there’s another bit I’d like to look at closely, which the majority counsel uses to establish that Rob Riley had an extensive relationship with Simpson and that
I’ve long suspected that MZM is the latter-day incarnation of COINTELPRO, though it had the added advantage that it also made a profit for George Bush’s cronies. Via the Daily Muck, it looks like we might make some progress on MZM.
A formerofficial at the Albemarle County-based National Ground IntelligenceCenter pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to a conflict ofinterest charge.
Robert Fromm,a 60-year-old Earlysville resident, was charged in a corruptioninvestigation centered on