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.
A couple of months ago, I summarized the Plame Affair best as I could speculate. A lot of new information has come to light, so I decided to update that narrative.
The Background–Niger Claims and Power Struggles
I’ll start with some background. There are two reasons why members of the Bush Administration were reckless enough to out a NOC out of petty revenge.
I bypassed to the link to the Judy-Libby lawyer correspondance this early morning, thinking it’d be more boring lawyer letters. Silly me. Nothing has been boring in this Plame Affair. Thanks to pontificator for encouraging me to look further and providing the PDF link to the letters, which has been removed from the front page of the NYT (it’s now two layers down attached to this story).
Much has (rightly, IMO) been
There’s been a lot of discussion on the timing involved in Judy’s deal with Fitzgerald. Was it Franklin’s plea bargain? Was it DeLay’s indictment? Of course, none of these make sense, since she has been working on a deal for almost a month and a half.
Actually, Murray Waas tells us what the catalyst to Judy talking was.