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.
In a post at the Document Exploitation blog, Douglas Cox reminds us of how Crazy Pete Hoekstra and Rick Santorum pressured the government to make all of Saddam’s documents–including a plan for a nuke–available on the InterToobz. The drive towards this unprecedented doc dump arose in earnest in late 2005 and early 2006 when the […]
The Special Agent in Charge of the Newark FBI, Michael Ward, laid into the NYPD’s CIA-on-the-Hudson program for its spying on New Jersey’s Muslims. He raised several legitimate gripes: that the NYPD was picking and choosing the information it shared, that the NYPD wasn’t focused on centers of terrorism, that it has created distrust between […]
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein just sent out a release assuring us all that her committee keeps close watch over counterterrorism programs, including targeted killing. In her statement, she asserted that “our counterterrorism efforts are lawful under the Constitution.” The Attorney General presented the administration’s legal analysis for the use of force against terrorists, […]
As soon as the news came out today that Sabu, the head of LulzSec, offered an FBI computer to facilitate the publication of Stratfor (no doubt set up a LulzSec-assisted indictment of Julian Assange in the future)… Hector Xavier Monsegur, an unemployed 28-year-old Puerto Rican living in New York, was unmasked as “Sabu”, the leader […]
I was disappointed with Steve Pestka’s announcement to run for the 3rd CD. While he promised jobs, he also repeated the “West Michigan Values” phrase a top Kent County Dem used when telling me and others to shut up. And he suggested he was running against extremists. “I will fight for jobs and for West […]
As I’ve followed all the really interesting commentary on the Koch Brothers’ efforts to take over Cato (Dave Weigel, Jonathan Adler, Jane Mayer, Brad DeLong) I keep thinking back to this Adam Serwer post last year, pointing out one of the most anti-libertarian moves they made: dumping $25,000 to beat the biggest defender of civil […]
As I noted last week, every single Catholic Senator save Susan Collins who voted for the Blunt Amendment last week appears likely to have relied on the birth control their Church prohibits to limit the size of their families. Lisa Murkowski, who has just 2 kids, was among the 10 Catholics who was using her […]
It’s recidivist season again, when the DNI releases data about how many Gitmo detainees have “reengaged” and fear-mongering reporters (including, uncharacteristically, Mark Hosenball) then describe how many “recidivists” from Gitmo there have been. Of course, even while DNI brags about how detailed the new numbers are, they are just that. A list of numbers: 12, […]
Perhaps it’s because of all the dubious reasons the Administration continues to keep its case against Anwar al-Awlaki secret, but Eric Holder gave the impression of not knowing precisely what evidence the government had shown against Awlaki. Or, deliberately misrepresenting it. Holder mentioned Awlaki just once–purportedly to summarize Abdulmutallab’s case against Awlaki they released last […]
Eric Holder today said that giving “appropriate members of Congress” information on the “legal framework” of its operations where “lethal force is used against United States citizens” is a key part of robust oversight. That is not to say that the Executive Branch has – or should ever have – the ability to target any […]