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.
Okay, that’s not precisely the conclusion the new NIE in Iraq draws. But it is the logical outcome of the key judgments its gives. Here are some key points, taken totally out of the context of the report, but which are otherwise direct quotes:The IC assesses that the emergence of “bottom-up†security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for improved security over the
I thought it worth mentioning that the Administration has twice made claims in the last week that their website refuted. First came Senator Leahy, who noted that Cheney’s claims not to be part of the Executive Office of the President were disproved by the White House website.
The Administration’s response today also claims that the Office of the Vice President is not part of the Executive Office of the President.
This is our Director of National Intelligence, talking about the threat of Al Qaeda growing stronger in an area nominally controlled by our ally Pakistan:
After the 31st of May we were in extremis becausenow we have significantly less capability. And meantime, the community,before I came back, had been working on a National IntelligenceEstimate on terrorist threat to the homeland.
Wow. I’m with Spencer Ackerman. If transparency is going to kill Americans, Mike McConnell just killed a lot more Americans blabbing to the El Paso Times than a Congressional debate with marginal transparency ever will. Consider this example, where McConnell tries to convince the reporter that the Administration is not data-mining on a massive scale:
Now there’s a sense that we’re doing massive datamining.
Ever since Ed Gillespie became Bush’s replacement for Dan Bartlett (and after that, for Rove), I’ve been trying to track the clients of Quinn Gillespie–the firm that Gillespie co-founded. After all, Gillespie is a guy who, up until days before he took on one of the most powerful advisory roles at the White House, was a big-time lobbyist, with a broad clientele.
Perhaps the most amusing aspect of Hayes’ retelling of the Plame story in his biography on Cheney is his description of the events of fall 2003.
Before I explain it, I should note that Hayes has a problem with time. He frequently alters the chronology of events so he can screw with the causality.
In this post I trace the tangled web in which Tom Davis is investigating Scott Bloch (head of the Office of Special Counsel) at the same time as Bloch may be investigating Tom Davis. The short logic goes like this:Tom Davis is investigating Scott Bloch (and collecting all Bloch emails that refer to any legislator)The WaPo story on Sunday looks like it was based primarily on leaks from OSCIt included details
Several people noted the announcement that DOD was shutting down the TALON database, wondering if the database was just going to be renamed down the line, as TIA seems to have morphed. Apparently they missed this detail:
It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Departmentfacilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBIdatabase known as Guardian, according
I laid out earlier all the details that Stephen Hayes suppressed for his hagiography of Dick Cheney. There are two areas in which his propaganda tract is useful, the second of which I’ll deal with in a later post.
Declassifying the Trip Report
The first is a consistent theme Hayes uses for his tale about OVP’s involvement in the Plame leak.
Marty Lederman notes that Cheney’s latest dodge includes a reference to the ruling that limits Congress’ oversight over the Executive strictly to those areas where it pertains to legislation. From that, he argues that Cheney’s response was premised on the belief that FISA itself is an illegal restriction on the Executive.
Finally, the letter lists numerous reasons whythe VP’s office might not release the requested documents.