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 bunch of leaders in NYC’s Muslim community have declined Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s invitation to an interfaith breakfast because of the racial profiling done by the NYPD’s intelligence division. The move is interesting for the press it has generated–which in turn, has also (presumably, as designed) focused new attention on the racial profiling itself It’s […]
The WaPo has an important piece on the use of drones. One thing bmaz noted about it on Twitter, for example, is that CIA had Anwar al-Awlaki under such multi-drone surveillance before they killed him, it is not credible that they killed Samir Khan, also an American, out of ignorance of his presence. Particularly given […]
It’s that quiet part of Christmas morning where just McCaffrey the MilleniaLab and I are up. I’m drinking coffee preparing myself to take McC out into the “Al Gore is fat” springlike day, and tie up last minute loose ends for the day ahead. And, in spite of all the personal and political stresses, I’m […]
The CIA announced in September it was going to review a narrow aspect of the way CIA officers set up NYPD’s domestic spying agency in the wake of 9/11. As I pointed out then, the investigation was scoped to ignore key parts of the NYPD’s program. The NYPD program is, by all appearances, a massive […]
The Administration has, as expected, buried its signing statement for the Defense Authorization in a holiday Friday document dump. Correction: As DDay corrects me, this is not yet the NDAA signing statement, which is still coming. I’m actually fascinated by the way they’ve suggested that they consider some of the detainee provisions to violate separation […]
It’s been amusing to see how Obama apologists have taken Lawfare’s very helpful explainer on the NDAA’s detainee provisions to pretend that their president isn’t signing a bill that he believes authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens. Take this example from Karoli. Here’s how she claims that Lawfare proves that the bill doesn’t authorize […]
Here are three data points that will make you cranky. First, the New Bottom Line has taken the bonus pool data the big banks have released from the first three quarters of this year to estimate what they’ll be for the year. They are: Next, here’s Bank of America’s stock ticker for the day: It […]
Back in November, I suggested one intended purpose of the detainee provisions in the Defense Authorization is to require a paper trail that would make it a little harder for the Administration to disappear detainees on floating prisons. The bill: Requires written procedures outlining how the Administration decides who counts as a terrorist Requires regular […]
We’re an empire now. And when we act, we create our own reality. –Senior Bush Advisor to Ron Suskind It can be said, therefore, that ideology, as that instrument of internal communication which assures the power structure of inner cohesion is, in the post-totalitarian system, something that transcends the physical aspects of power, something […]
When the Obama Administration charged two Iraqis on al Qaeda related charges in Bowling Green, KY, Mitch McConnell wrote an op-ed wailing about all the fearful things that could happen as a result. In short, these two are not common criminals who should be provided all the rights and privileges of American citizens. They are […]