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.
As Jim White reported this morning, Raymond Davis has been released after the families of his victims were paid blood money per Sharia law. We’ve really gotten to bizarro-land when a possible Blackwater contractor has been saved by Sharia law. But wait! Hillary says we didn’t pay the blood money ourselves. QUESTION: Okay, we’ll jump […]
Thought I’d share some pics from the rally today in Lansing. It’s a decent sized crown–6,000 around noon; they expect to get a whole bunch of teachers out for the last set of speakers at 4:30. Here’s the crowd just outside of the Capitol in Lansing. Lots of signs about the Constitution protesting the Emergency […]
On Friday, Dylan Ratigan and I had a podcast chat about the treatment of Bradley Manning. Among other things, we talked about the “Constitutional Law Professor” President’s rather bizarre response when DOD told him it was standard procedure to strip an Army man of his clothes because of a trumped up claim that his underwear […]
I’m headed out to Lansing shortly–hopefully I’ll be posting updates from the biggest protest MI’s capital has seen in a long time. But I wanted to point out something funny (as in, “oh jeebus we’re all going to die” funny) about the American Nuclear Society’s talking points to try to convince Americans that nukes are […]
As I mentioned in my earlier post on the new Gitmo protective order, DOD is reportedly preparing to charge Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri for his role in the Cole bombing for trial in a military commission. That’s worth keeping in mind because the Gitmo order is largely based on the protective order the DC District […]
DOD just issued a new protective order that will cover the military commissions they’re about to roll out. (h/t Carol Rosenberg) I’m still reading the document. But I wanted to highlight this requirement. Statements of the detainee that detainee’s counsel acquires from classified documents cannot be shared with the detainee absent authorization from the appropriate […]
With all the attention focused on Bradley Manning’s treatment yesterday because of PJ Crowley’s ouster, DOD has done a lot of pushback on the notion that taking away Manning’s underwear is “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid.” The pushback has been so effective that a number of journalists have reported that Quantico no longer takes Manning’s underwear […]
A WikiLeaks cable dated March 5, 2007 has raised new interest in the BAE bribery scandal (AP, WSJ, Telegraph). While no one seems to have noted this, the cable shows that the British lied to their counterparts at the OECD about details of the bribery investigation into BAE. As the Guardian (which led the reporting […]
While a number of media outlets have reported one line–“The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values”–from PJ Crowley’s resignation statement, I wanted to remark on a few things in the larger statement. The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a […]
Last we heard of Dennis Kucinich’s request to visit Bradley Manning, the Pentagon had spent a full month referring his request from one official to another rather than respond to his request. On February 4, Dennis Kucinich asked DOD to allow him to visit Bradley Manning so he could assess his conditions of confinement. On […]