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.
Jason Leopold pointed out this language in Jay Carney’s press briefing yesterday: Q You had objections to the defense bill; you’ve dropped them. There’s still a lot of civil liberties experts who are convinced that that bill contains the seed of the future detention of U.S. citizens indeterminately if they’re suspected of terrorism. Are you […]
The government continues to crack down on Ayman Joumaa’s Hezbollah-tied money laundering ring, yesterday suing some exchange companies and the auto dealers tied the ring. The announcement reads like a Bush Axis of Evil speech, emphasizing the role of Hezbollah even though just “tens of millions” of the hundreds of millions involved went via one […]
Kudos to Dianne Feinstein for trying to eliminate the President’s ability to indefinitely detain (and kill?) American citizens. This time, she’s trying a free-standing bill titled the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011. It says, (1) An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention […]
The final vote was 86-13. No votes were Lee, Paul, DeMint, Risch, Crapo, and Coburn (the last three not on civil liberties grounds), and Cardin, Wyden, Sanders, Durbin, Franken, Harkin, and Merkley. I’m sure Obama will sign this in time for us all to be indefinitely detained this weekend. Update: Senator Franken sent out a […]
Kagro X and I were engaging in a little thought experiment on Twitter to show how easy it would be to solve our dangerous bankster problem by indefinitely detaining them. It turned out to be pretty easy to do. Here’s how. First, before you indefinitely detain a bankster, you need to show either that he […]
The NYT, which played a key propaganda role in getting us into the Iraq war, has a 1000-word article telling us the Iraq war has officially been declared over. And while it is true that the Administration had a campaign event dog and pony show yesterday declaring the war over, it is not. After all, […]
To explain why it caved on its Defense Authorization veto threat, the Obama Administration had the following to say about the affirmation of detention authority. Ensuring that we track current law and minimize risks associated with legislating on AUMF: Made our requested modifications to the provision that codifies military detention authority under the September 2001 […]
I said this about the detainee provisions in the conference Defense Authorization bill. It seems to me the language does enough to avoid a veto from the cowardly Obama, but still does terrible damage to both the clarity of national security roles and overall investigative expertise. And I was absolutely correct: Obama’s aides have announced […]
Can they do it again? The British human rights organization today won a habeas corpus petition for their client, Yunus Rahmatullah, who has been detained at Bagram for 7 years, in the English Court of Appeal. The Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, Lord Justice Maurice Kay, and Lord Justice Sullivan, said the case raised […]
We’ve long known that many of the techniques used to combat terrorism derived from the drug war. We’ve known that law enforcement agencies around the country are adopting counterterrorism techniques–and even PATRIOT Act tools–in regular law enforcement. Robert Mueller just explained that the FBI is taking lessons learned in its counterterrorism intelligence techniques to combat […]