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.
DOD appears to be preparing to admit one of two critical details Afghan witnesses to this weekend’s massacre have maintained from the start: that the shooter(s) was drunk (villager witnesses also said more than one soldier was involved). At least, that’s what I conclude by the anonymous leak to DOD’s favorite mouthpiece, Barbara Starr. The […]
Jeremy Scahill has a disturbing story of how President Obama intervened to make sure Yemen kept journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye imprisoned even after domestic pressure convinced then President Ali Abdullah Saleh to release him. [Note, I’ve adjusted the order of Scahill’s report to make Obama’s intervention more clear] After Shaye was convicted and sentenced, tribal […]
Greg Sargent tweeted the results of this CBS/NYT poll, showing that 37% of those polled believe the whole birth control debate is about religious freedom. While Sargent thinks 37% is a small number, given that it means that maybe a quarter of people polled (given that almost 100% of sexually active women have used birth […]
Back on February 3, I noted what I thought was the irony that, four days after FBI Director Robert Mueller bragged about FBI’s cybersecurity expertise–including its partnerships with counterparts overseas–Anonymous released an earlier hacked call between Scotland Yard and FBI. Mueller: If I may interject, we have built up a substantial bit of expertise in […]
The people have issued their demands. And–belatedly–we’re responding. Here’s your damned Trash. I tried to talk bmaz into doing it, but he’s so torqued up about the hope of getting Peyton and the belief the Broncos will get him, I don’t think he’s up to it. So I’ll have to do it. We’ll start with […]
I’m sure that Eric Holder didn’t mean to suggest that the assassination plots purportedly planned by Iran’s Quds Force and Manssor Arbabsiar with the assistance of a DEA informant targeting the Saudi Ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, as well as Israeli and Saudi figures in Argentina, are legal. But given the debate between the […]
When I first read that Treasury is investigating Ed Rendell for his paid speeches supporting the MEK, I was gratified that the government might finally be showing some balance in its pursuit of terrorists. Mr. Rendell, who asserts that he has done nothing illegal, said the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a […]
I started my morning reading with this AP Q&A on the significance of their series on the NYPD’s spying on Muslims. There are several things missing: why does the NYPD profile only businesses they believe to be owned by Muslims, and not the American chains at which recent immigrants also congregate? Why doesn’t the Q&A […]
Or, more likely, they hate us because stuff like this happens: About midnight, 11 people, including three women; four children whose ages ranged from 6 to 9; and four men were executed inside the home of a village elder. “They entered the room where the women and children were sleeping and they were all shot […]
With the exception of the time CBS borrowed my post on the Iranian Jewish butchers profiled by the NYPD, the NY news outlets cheering the NYPD apparently haven’t actually looked closely at what the AP was reporting. The NY Post, the NYDN, they seem to blindly accept whatever Ray Kelly or Mike Bloomberg claim about […]