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 made my two most critical points about Obama’s Executive Order on indefinite detention in my snarky post yesterday. First, even assuming the idea of institutionalizing indefinite detention weren’t bad on its face, Obama’s EO doesn’t provide any standards of review for the kind of people who should be indefinitely detained. The EO’s standard is, […]
Obama has declared that he has the authority under the 2001 AUMF to indefinitely hold anyone “if it is necessary to protect against a significant threat to the security of the United States.” He doesn’t say that person has to be a terrorist, much less part of al Qaeda. He doesn’t say that person has […]
I think I’ll do a series of posts over the next few days all starting with the phrase, “with David Kris gone,” showing how Obama has finally gone off the deep end (the “Dark Side”) in his War on Terror and the Constitution. This edition has to do with Obama’s announcement that he’s in the […]
There’s an interesting tidbit in the government’s mediation questionnaire in anticipation of their appeal of Vaughn Walker’s decision that al-Haramain had been illegally wiretapped and was entitled to damages. The government is willing to negotiate. In response to the direction, “Provide any other information that might affect the suitability of this case for mediation,” the […]
The buzz today focuses on John McCain’s latest gaff: in his weekly Sunday show appearance with Christiane Amanpour yesterday, he claimed that iPhones and iPads are made in the US. Host Christiane Amanpour spoke about her network’s project to empty a house of goods that are not made overseas. McCain responded: “I think it’s obviously […]
In January, I did a timeline of the key dates revealed in Manning’s July 6, 2010 charging document. I wanted to put the timeline laid out in yesterday’s charging document side-by-side with the earlier one to identify what new details there are, presumably showing us what the government has learned since July, as well as […]
Charlie Savage just tweeted that the Abu Ghraib tactics will continue for Bradley Manning. Quantico tells me Bradley Manning will now be stripped every night as a “precautionary measure” to prevent self-injury Remember, Manning was already being forced to sleep in his underwear. When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down […]
On February 4, Dennis Kucinich asked DOD to allow him to visit Bradley Manning so he could assess his conditions of confinement. On February 8, Robert Gates wrote Kucinich a short note telling him we was referring his request to Secretary of the Army, John McHugh. In a letter dated February 24–but apparently not received […]
I’ve been meaning to return to our government’s contracting for persona software for a while. Last week RawStory had a good story providing details of the persona management contract the Air Force put out for bid. RS reveals that the contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a firm in LA with the kind of website that […]
It’s just like old times! … the CIA interrogators also announced they planned to become Zubaydah’s “God.” They reportedly took his clothing as punishment, and reduced his human interaction to a single daily visit in which they would say simply, “You know what I want,” and then leave. Jane Mayer, The Dark Side In addition […]