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.
It pains me to defend John Rizzo. After all, his willful dumbness–or more likely, outright deceit–played a key role in our country’s approval of torture. Still, I have mixed feelings about investigating–and probably reprimanding, but not prosecuting–him. The Justice Department is investigating whether a former top U.S. intelligence official, John Rizzo, improperly disclosed classified information […]
I was born in 1968. At that point, my grandfather was still a Penn State professor. My mom and her 3 siblings were all Penn State grads. Joe Paterno had been head coach at that point already for a year and a half. My entire life, this football coach has been an institution in my […]
[youtube]4RPt9czGADk[/youtube] The earth avoided getting hit by an asteroid last night. Then today, FEMA tested its catastrophic communications system, only to discover some problems. In my own case, the warning signal started skipping, dadadadadadada, sounding like a machine gun, before it switched my jazz to a bad disco station. Outside, there are whistling high winds […]
As Muna Shikaki and Carol Rosenberg just tweeted, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri requested–and the military judge granted–that his trial not start until November 9, 2012. Which would put it several days after the Presidential election. The logic for this decision seems clear to me. First, the government has made it clear al-Nashiri won’t be released […]
As I read the transcript of the SCOTUS hearing in the US v. Jones yesterday, I was most interested in what the comments suggest about the government’s secret use of the PATRIOT Act to–presumably–use phone geolocation to track people. (Here’s Dahlia Lithwick, Orrin Kerr, Julian Sanchez, Lyle Denniston, and Kashmir Hill on the hearing itself.) […]
One of my first reactions to the news that Nicolas Sarkozy told Obama he doesn’t like Bibi Netanyahu is to note that Sarko is right. “I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen […]
In his statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Attorney General Holder tried to stave off questions about Fast and Furious by asserting that “gun walking” is wrong. I want to be clear: any instance of so-called “gun walking” is unacceptable. Regrettably, this tactic was used as part of Fast and Furious, which was […]
It took until Richard Blumenthal’s turn in Eric Holder’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee today before Holder got asked about foreclosure fraud. Blumenthal generously suggested that, “I know the foreclosure crisis is on your agenda,” and then asked if we’ll ever see a prosecution on robosigning and other fraud. Holder responded, at first, by […]
Eric Holder is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee right now. [watch here] In response to two questions from Orrin Hatch, Eric Holder revealed that the John Durham investigation into torture and the Office of Public Responsibility investigation into the prosecutorial misconduct in the Ted Stevens case are both nearing their end. While none of […]
Jamie Dimon owns Barack Obama’s testicles. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why, rather than firing his JP Morgan Exec Chief of Staff for being incompetent, Obama simply shifted him over to serve as the public face of his Administration. Ten months into his tenure as chief of staff, [Bill] Daley’s core […]