Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
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.
Entries by emptywheel
The FBI: Now, with 48% More Domestic Surveillance … but No Banksters
/14 Comments/in Financial Fraud, Terrorism/by emptywheelThe FBI produced a self-congratulatory report of the changes they’ve made since 9/11. It describes the FBI’s new intelligence focus. It boasts that it has a functional computer system (which for the FBI is an accomplishment) and 10,200 SCI work stations. Oh, and it proclaims with joy that the FBI has had a 48% growth […]
The Scandal Is that Jonathan Alter Doesn’t See the Scandal
/20 Comments/in Financial Fraud, FISA, Torture/by emptywheel[Sorry for my unannounced absence. I’m on a road trip visiting Mr. EW’s family. Thanks to Jim White and bmaz for guarding the likker cabinet! I know they’ll keep it safe!] I once got in trouble for mocking people who thought that blowjobs were a scandal worth legal investigation, but torture was not. Given that […]
DOJ’s “New” FOIA Rule Just Attempt to Formalize Practice They’ve Been Following for Years
/14 Comments/in Informants, state secrets, Unitary Executive/by emptywheelAs you no doubt have read, the government wants to issue a rule that says they can lie when people request FOIA information. The language reads, (1) In the event that a component identifies records that may be subject to exclusion from the requirements of the FOIA pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552(c), the head of […]
“The Patriot Act, which the president signed into law on October 2001”
/7 Comments/in FISA, PATRIOT/by emptywheelI only noticed two things that might generously be considered typos (as opposed to outright falsehoods or lies of omission) in Dick Cheney’s entire infernal tome. There’s this reference to an October 10, 2002 speech from Jello Jay Rockefeller in support of the Iraq war: One of the most eloquent statements of the necessity of […]
Confirmed: the Government Hid–and Is Still Hiding–Manssor Arbabsiar’s First Docket
/10 Comments/in Informants, Intelligence, Scary Iran Plot, Terrorism/by emptywheelI first raised questions of why the government had charged Manssor Arbabsiar–the Scary Iran Plotter–with an amended complaint almost two weeks ago. As I noted then, the obvious existence of an earlier sealed complaint might suggest the possibility that Arbabsiar was charged with something entirely different than the murder-for-hire charges he got charged with on […]
The Informant Racket and the Scary Iran Plot
/7 Comments/in Informants, Scary Iran Plot/by emptywheelJeralyn Merritt has been focusing closely on the DEA’s use of informants of late. And as part of a discussion of how much the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case, Carlos Sagastume, has made off his lucrative informant career ($8 million and counting, with much of that coming in the Monzer al Kassar case), […]
Feigned Ignorance Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
/14 Comments/in Drones, Terrorism/by emptywheelAfter the US killed AQAP propagandist Samir Khan in a drone strike, the State Department made two calls to his family to express condolences. Doing so was probably the only way they could maintain the fiction his death was an accident, while still boasting about having killed Anwar al-Awlaki in the same strike. Nevertheless, the […]
Why Isn’t the Federal Government Treating the Maine OWS Attack as WMD Terrorism?
/24 Comments/in Terrorism/by emptywheelMohamed Osman Mohamud’s alleged terrorist act was to take an inert bomb constructed by the FBI and attempt to detonate it in Portland, OR’s Courthouse Square; had he succeeded, a bomb would have gone off in a public space full of people and, possibly (as prosecution filings later emphasized), damaged the nearby federal courthouse as […]
America’s Privatized Repression
/10 Comments/in Economics/by emptywheelCorey Robin has an important post on America’s privatized repression. He starts by describing how, after watching a panel on Occupy Wall Street in which she appeared, the freelancer who got arrested while she was covering the Brooklyn Bridge arrests lost her relationship with the NYT. Two Fridays ago, I attended an excellent panel discussion […]