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.
Much of the discussion about this Jeff Zeleny piece has focused on Obama’s apparent consideration of cutting regulations that “affect the economy.” The president intends to offer at least some progressive proposals to help regain a fighting posture that he has not had since the health care debate, but a provision is also being discussed […]
Remember that top DHS cybersecurity official who quit in June? He’s now working for Sony, which badly needs help protecting their users’ privacy. In their latest installment reporting on the NYPD’s “CIA-on-the-Hudson,” Goldman and Apuzzo reveal that the NYPD’s spooks have 250 mosques and student groups under surveillance. Jeffrey Bloomberg reports on Robert Gates bitching […]
You know, I very much want Jeffrey Sterling to defeat the government’s attempt to criminalize whistleblowing. I very much want James Risen to succeed in avoiding expansive testimony in the Sterling case. But this is bullshit. Sterling’s lawyers plan to call Professor Mark Feldstein to make silly claims about a tie between the narrative voice […]
There was an odd pair of stories in the WaPo last week. On Thursday, there was a story by two reporters on the CIA’s increased focus on killing its targets, whether by drone or paramilitary strike. In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency has undergone a fundamental transformation. Although the CIA […]
In their stories on the way the NYPD’s intelligence programs profile religious and ethnic minorities, Goldman and Apuzzo have repeatedly noted that the only entity providing oversight of the programs is the City Council. The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as “rakers,” into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to […]
Last week, Ari Berman chronicled what he termed a war on voting. All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. […]
I decided to compare these numbers after I read this story about an Iraqi veteran patrolling a suburban VA golf course, armed with a Glock, mace, and handcuffs, making $16/hour (h/t Balloon Juice): Total cops in the US (2009): 883,600; median wage (2008): $51,410 Total security guards (2009): 1,028,830; median wage: $23,820 Total prisoners (2009): 1,613,740 […]
There are a number of reasons to read this entire article–Republican Mike Lofgren’s explanation of why the TeaParty convinced him to leave his congressional staffer position after 30 years: the pithy descriptions of Republican nut-jobs (like the quote I’ve taken for my title, which he uses to describe Steve King, Michele Bachman, Paul Broun, Patrick […]
Journalists and human rights groups found a collection of damning–but not the most damning–records of Libya’s cooperation with the CIA and MI6, all wrapped up in binders with labels marking CIA and UK collaboration. Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central […]
Because after the bomb they just dropped on the finance world, I would imagine Geithner will be busy. Here’s the listof banks they’re suing: Ally Financial Inc. f/k/a GMAC, LLC Bank of America Corporation Barclays Bank PLC Citigroup, Inc. Countrywide Financial Corporation Credit Suisse Holdings (USA), Inc. Deutsche Bank AG First Horizon National Corporation General […]