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.
US-Pakistani relations really didn’t need this right now. Pakistan arrested–and then released, apparently because the person’s claim to have diplomatic status checked out–an American with high tech gear allegedly snooping around a nuke lab. The American diplomat, purportedly called Matthew Bennett, was found near Fateh Jang by ISI and MI personnel who had been watching […]
Just weeks after the SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, a company best known for profiting wildly off of fantasy stories for children has trademarked Seal Team 6. The Walt Disney Company has trademarked “Seal Team 6,” which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that killed Osama Bin Laden. The […]
The NYT has a story on how Erik Prince’s latest scam–to hide from the trial lawyers–involves using retired US servicemen to train Colombian mercenaries to “defend” the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince […]
In this post, I noted that John McCain seemed to be talking about Hassan Ghul when he spoke of a detainee who gave up key information on Osama bin Laden’s courier without being tortured. It’s the other detail I find even more interesting: that info on Abu Ahmed’s real role and his real relationship with […]
The Nation has a long study on the Army’s Detainee Abuse Task Force, which one of its members described as a “whitewash.” Jon Renaud, a retired Army Warrant Officer who headed the task force as the Special Agent in Charge for the first half of 2005, now says of the DATF, “It didn’t accomplish anything—it […]
There’s a lot to loathe about the current incarnation of the Senate, that elite club of millionaires where legislation goes to either get rewritten to serve corporate interests or killed. What does that say about DOJ, then, that the Senate is doing such a better job at investigating crimes? In just one month’s time the […]
Vice Admiral William McRaven, the Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command–which has been celebrated for the last two weeks for its role in getting Osama bin Laden–told Marc Ambinder (who has long been one of the most informative writers on JSOC and wrote a detailed profile of them last week)–that he’d like JSOC to […]
The National Consumer Law Center just released a report on something that’s been a pet peeve of mine for some years: states’ increasing reliance on pre-paid cards to distribute unemployment compensation, rather than checks. (h/t Susie) As the report explains, issuing funds via a card is much cheaper for the states. But what’s really happening […]
The most interesting aspect of Michael Mukasey’s retort to John McCain’s op-ed calling him a liar is not the content–that’s the same old trite sophism–but rather the publication details of it. It appears not under Mukasey’s byline, but under Dick Cheney’s speech-writer’s byline, complete with a picture. And when he introduces Mukasey’s words, Marc Thiessen […]
It’s now a perennial joke. Every time we kill the next Number Three in al Qaeda, we joke about how no one wants to take that guy’s place. Which was my first impression when I read this bit from ProPublica’s review of what the intelligence from Osama bin Laden’s compound has thus far revealed. Bin […]