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.
At a hearing before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs this week, Thomas Heffelfinger got asked some questions about how the USA Purge related to his work–and that of Chiara, Charlton, Iglesias, McKay, and Bogden before they were fired. In his testimony, Heffelfinger noted that those USAs on NAIS who were fired were not just on the subcommittee, they were leaders on it.
Since Fred Thompson got into the Presidential race in a big way, I’ve increasingly been getting this creepy feeling. I keep thinking: when was the last time we had a charismatic (if ugly, in this case) candidate who knows nothing about policy and is even less interested in taking a stand on policy, who seems to be hiring the right advisors, but who himself, still seems to be Bush league.
Kagro X says almost all that needs to be said about BushCo’s claims that Bush intended to exempt he and Cheney from rules on classification. I’ll come back later to expand on Kagro’s point about the insta-declassification theory of leaking Plame’s identity. But for now, I’d like to make a teeny tiny point.
Sidney Blumenthal and I were apparently making the same point at about the same time. Not long after I argued, on a panel on the Imperial Presidency, that there are those within the Administration who believe in the rule of law and can therefore be mobilized against it, Sidney was finishing up his column making that point in much more comprehensive fashion.
In private, Bushadministration sub-Cabinet officials who have been instrumental informulating
Bill Mercer’s announcement that he’s stepping down is much more interesting than the other clique resignations for several reasons (thanks to TeddySF for the heads up). First, his “resignation” does not mean he leaves DOJ; rather, he simply avoids a nomination hearing. And that’s a nomination hearing that would have been challenging, to say the least.
William W.
You may recall a theory I postulated a few weeks back that when Libby called Robert Grenier on June 11, 2003, he asked questions he already knew the answers to. He wasn’t really looking for information. Rather, he was hoping to get the information from a source he could use publicly; he was trying to get certain information about the Wilsons out while hiding Dick Cheney’s original source for the information
Fitzgerald submitted his response to Libby’s request for bond pending appeal today. Basically, it reiterates the points he made in last week’s hearing on the issue, though in the written form that allows some snark.
Congress Doesn’t Need New Laws
The filing starts by undercutting Libby’s Appointments Clause complaint with a simple reading of the law.
Remarkably, defendant’s application, while suggesting that the AAG might have addressed the urgent conflict-of-interest issue by opting to
So Jeff Lomonaco and I were trying to figure out the best place for us to meet face to face after having emailed obsessively on the Plame case for two years. We thought of the best place to meet: at Prettyman Courthouse so we could read through the CIPA filings submitted last year in the case.
I deliberately avoided Richard Cohen’s latest nonsense of the other day. But then watertiger sent me a tidbit from Cohen’s online chat today (dirty trick, watertiger), and I got sucked in. First, let me start with this passage:
Boston: If Bush felt he needed to respond to Wilson, why not do it openly, on-the-record, based on the merits?
Richard Cohen:
It appears that we’ve got our panel for Scooter’s motion for release pending appeal–and we lucked out. Judges Sentelle, Henderson, and Tatel appear to be the panel–the same three judges that heard Judy’s and Cooper’s appeal on their subpoena. Sentelle is no liberal, not by any shade. But his decision on the appeal was reasonable.