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.
Last week, I noted that the NYPD–the same NYPD that had trumped up a “terrorist attack” against a synagogue last year–was calling the New Year’s Day attack on a Queens mosque a “hate crime.” For the sake of consistency, I wanted to note that very similar attacks–Molotov cocktails thrown at houses of worship, in this […]
Wikipedia defines “false flag operations” as “covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities.” Unpacking such an operation would require explaining clearly the target audience(s) of the deception and the purpose of it. But Mark Perry doesn’t describe […]
Back when PA’s Department of Homeland Security was investigating anti-fracking activists as potential terrorist threats to critical infrastructure, I noted that the bigger threat to critical infrastructure pipelines was corporations that pocket rate increases rather than dedicating them to maintaining the pipelines. Just to take one example, who do you think is a greater risk […]
When I hosted Steve Rattner at FDL Book Salon, I noted how blind he was to problems of other private equity firms–in the context of the auto bailout, Cerberus. So I was interested in Rattner’s attempt to defend Mitt’s tenure at Bain. Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of […]
[youtube]_TMq3m_Oli4[/youtube] I hope to get around to saying more about the latest assassinated Iranian scientist, but in the meantime, I wanted to point out a coincidence of timing. Jim Lobe argues convincingly that the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was likely designed to scuttle any efforts to dial down the rhetoric between Iran and the US. […]
In her Gitmo anniversary piece, Dahlia Lithwick, piggybacking on Adam Liptak’s earlier report, used the extensive redactions in the DC Circuit Opinion overturning Adnan Latif’s habeas petition to illustrate how little the courts are telling us about his fate, our detention program, and its impact on the most basic right in this country, habeas corpus. […]
“WHAT ELSE ARE WE ON THIS EARTH TO DO???,” Dan Froomkin tweeted as he contemplated the NYT’s Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, asking for reader input on whether or not its reporters should correct false statements made by those they report on. I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters […]
Remember the “good” jobs report last week? As Dean Baker explained, many of the new jobs were actually the “couriers” who delivered your holiday presents. The sharp drop in the unemployment rate over the last four months (from 9.1 percent to 8.5 percent) is not consistent with the job growth reported in the establishment survey. […]
According to this October 2010 report, these are all the locations at which someone–DOD, DHS, and NASA are publicly admitted users; “Other Government Agencies” (spooks) are always included in the discussion though not detailed–got waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration since 2008 to operate drones outside of restricted airspace. And we know they’ve been active […]
The guy in charge of–among other things–the elusive foreclosure fraud settlement with the banksters just told NPR’s Carrie Johnson he’ll be leaving in March. Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli will leave the third highest-ranking post at the Justice Department in March after nearly three years managing a bustling portfolio that has run the gamut from […]