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’m bemused by this first report on the intelligence from Osama bin Laden’s compound. Apparently, al Qaeda wants to derail trains. A new bulletin issued tonight by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by ABC News describes the terror organization’s chilling desire to derail a train. “As of February 2010, al-Qa’ida […]
As I noted earlier, the AP and other outlets have reported that Hassan Ghul was among the first to inform American interrogators of the importance of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Here’s what the AP reported. Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, […]
According to the Virginia Bar and in a filing that she agreed with, Monica Goodling committed “a criminal or deliberately wrongful act” that reflected badly on her “honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law.” Monica Marie Goodling, the key figure in the controversy about the political hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys during the Bush […]
Back in 2006, a bunch of Islamic groups FOIAed the FBI to find out what kind of records the FBI had on them. The FBI blew the request off, so in 2007, the groups sued. When the groups got their data, they complained the FBI had improperly labeled much of the files as outside the […]
As Spencer reports, former Attorney General John Ashcroft just got named the-Company-formerly-known-as-Blackwater’s ethics chief. The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, is now an “independent director” […]
Jose Rodriguez, the guy who as head of Counterterrorism Center oversaw the torture program and who as head of Clandestine Services had the videotapes that would prove torturers exceeded torture guidelines destroyed, has chosen this moment to give his first public interview. And according to Rodriguez, torture was key in finding Osama bin Laden. “Information […]
I apologize for yet another post on why the torture apologists claims that torture got us Osama bin Laden are wrong. The debate is now manipulating the question at issue, suggesting that the fact Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi provided tidbits (or, according to several reports, unconvincing denials) that led to OBL equates […]
The BBC has a claim from Pakistan’s ISI that, if true, ought to put the torture debate to bed once and for all. ISI claims that they raided the compound in Abbottabad in 2003, while it was under construction, believing they’d capture Abu Faraj al-Libi. The ISI official told the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones in Islamabad […]
Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have fleshed out the story I linked here, describing the threads of intelligence that led to the courier–whose name they report as Sheikh Abu Ahmed–who in turn led to Osama bin Laden. The story includes the following steps: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, months after he was waterboarded and via “standard” interrogation, […]
The AP has confirmed that intelligence leading to the courier that in turn led to Osama bin Laden came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and–as I surmised earlier–Abu Faraj al-Libi while in CIA custody. But partly because of the language AP uses to describe this–and partly because the wingnuts love torture–many are drawing the wrong conclusion […]