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.
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 […]
Last year, I tracked how TSA head (and former FBI Deputy Director) John Pistole used an FBI entrapment plot targeted at the Metro to justify increased TSA surveillance of the Metro. Which is why I’m intrigued that the FBI’s latest entrapment product, Rezwan Ferdaus, is alleged to have wanted to strike the Pentagon with, effectively, […]
I take that back. I wasn’t really a trust fund kid. But my grandfather was an Ag Scientist who shared the royalties from an erosion control plant he developed with his grandkids, so I did get a modest quarterly “weed money” check while I was a teenager, which was sort of like a trust fund. […]
I’ve been pondering this NYT story–which is presented as news yet which in fact is analysis attempting to provide a general explanation for protests in democracies–since it came out. Its general explanation for why so many people are protesting is that people–primarily youth–have grown disillusioned with voting. Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a […]
Remember that letter a bunch of former Directors of Central Intelligence wrote begging Obama to kill an investigation into George W Bush-approved CIA torture? Poppy, the father of the President who authorized that torture, had the good grace not to sign onto the letter. These things tend to look like stunts when someone with that […]
Back in the day we were watching cut submarine telecom cables pretty closely. Here’s a map of the global Toobz network. (h/t Global Guerrillas) A Muslim Republican, Nezar Hamze, was denied a spot on Broward County Republican Party’s Executive Committee not because he is Muslim, the party claimed, but because he has ties to CAIR. […]
I’ve written recently about Obama’s refusal to appoint anyone to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which is supposed to ensure the government protects privacy while laying out a dragnet to catch terrorists, most recently when Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton issued their 10-year report card on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. And I wrote […]
Yesterday, we had an interesting discussion about whether efforts by Gitmo Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins to expand viewing of Gitmo military commissions was about cover-up or transparency. I suggested that it might be something in-between–an effort to bypass members of the existing Gitmo press corps, who know a lot more about Gitmo and detainee histories […]
Timothy Healy, the Director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, has a telling comment at the end of Charlie Savage’s story on documents revealing new details about the terrorist watch list. But Mr. Healy said the government could not reveal who was on the list, or why, because that would risk revealing intelligence sources. He […]