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.
I’m actually sympathetic to the notion that if Eric Holder misled Congress about what he knew of the Fast and Furious debacle, he should pay a price for that (though it seems likely he was instead narrowly parsing). House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress […]
While supervisors from the NYPD are pepper-spraying peaceful political protestors, the Department is also coming under scrutiny for its past (and presumably ongoing) civil liberties abuse, the profiling of Muslim and Arab residents of NY. As the original AP story on the NYPD’s profiling program described, in the 1980s, the city was put under court […]
Particularly given the questions bmaz raised the other day, I wanted to point to something Dutch Ruppersberger, the Democratic Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, had to say the other day. As part of the assurance he offered that the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was legal, he admitted he doesn’t know whether Samir Khan, […]
I can think of no stronger indictment of the process by which the Obama Administration killed Anwar al-Awlaki than for Dick Cheney to, first, confirm that the process by which Awlaki was targeted does not constitute due process, and then state that Presidents should have that authority anyway. Cheney then says Obama should apologize for […]
Frances Fragos Townsend is distraught that the media are not using the government’s euphemism for the Anwar al-Awlaki assassination. Awalaki op was NOT assassination; nor a targeted killing; nor a hit job as media keeps describing! Was a legal capture or kill of AQ enemy. My favorite bit is how that “captureorkill” rolls right into […]
Yesterday, CA Attorney General Kamala Harris announced she was withdrawing from the 50-state foreclosure fraud settlement. California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation’s biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners. Harris removed herself from talks by […]
As I tweeted earlier, I find the timing of the Anwar al-Awlaki assassination to be rather curious. The first time we might hear real evidence supporting the government’s claim that Awlaki was operational, and not just producing propaganda, will be in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s trial, which starts next week. Which is why I’m curious about […]
Last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the following: I am asserting privilege over classified intelligence information, assessments, and analysis prepared, obtained, or under the control of any entity within the U.S. Intelligence Community concerning al-Qaeda, AQAP or Anwar al-Aulaqi that may be implicated by [Awlaki’s father’s attempt to sue for information about […]
Ding dong Awlaki’s dead, says the government. While everyone’s talking about having “got” this latest bogeyman, I just wanted to remind folks the kind of language the Administration used to explain why it could kill an American citizen with no due process. Accordingly, although it would not be appropriate to make a comprehensive statement as […]