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.
Rolling Stone just published an excerpt from Michael Hastings’ new book, The Operators. Click through to read the whole thing (I expect Jim will weigh in as well). But for the moment, consider the irony of this passage, given all that has transpired. I asked him about Petraeus. He said his relationship with Petraeus was […]
A number of people have observed the NYT’s description of 4 arson attacks apparently targeting Muslim sites (though one was actually Hindu) as “bias crimes.” A wave of arson attacks spread across eastern Queens on Sunday night, and the police said the firebombings were being investigated as bias crimes — with Muslims as the targets. […]
Today is the day of the year when a bunch of Big 10.2 teams get thumped in bowl games. As such, it is a key part of the holiday season for college football fans, including those who live in the Midwest. Tomorrow is the day of the Presidential electoral season where a few hundred thousand […]
As I explained here, Obama’s signing statement on the defense authorization was about what I expected. He included squishy language so as to pretend he doesn’t fully support indefinite detention. And he basically promised to ignore much of the language on presumptive military detention. But there was one part of the signing statement I (naively) […]
Happy New Year! No way to start the New Year out right than new detainee provisions formalizing indefinite detention. Here is the part of Obama’s signing statement for the Defense Authorization that pertains to the most onerous parts of the detainee provisions, with my comments. Over the last several years, my Administration has developed an […]
In my seven plus years of blogging, I’ve never done year-end reviews or predictions and I don’t intend to start now. But I do want to point to two pieces taking stock of this moment in history–the AJE piece on the decline of the American empire above (the transcript is here), and Juan Cole’s piece […]
I want to follow-up on Jim’s latest drone post–and go back to Greg Miller’s article on drones–to look at the the approval process. A lot of readers of Miller’s article noted this passage, revealing that JSOC continues to avoid the kind of (minimal) oversight that CIA gets. There is no comparable requirement in Title 10, […]
Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces raided 17 civil society and human rights groups yesterday, in some cases holding staffers at the NGO offices as the raid proceeded. The raid has the odd effect of pitting the Generals we’ve mentored and funded–to the tune of billions–against civil society experts we’ve also funded, through State […]
The 9th Circuit just released its decisions in two warrantless wiretap suits: Jewel, which claimed that the dragnet collection of communications from the Folsom Street AT&T facility violated FISA, Electronic Communication Privacy Act, and the Stored Communications Act; and Hepting, which argued that the FISA Amendments Act–which grated the telecoms retroactive immunity for their illegal […]
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 […]