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.
You may have noticed I snuck away for the weekend. Mr. EW and I decided to take the opportunity of Athenae’s book party to head to Chicago for a weekend. In spite of the fact that Athenae’s book was obviously timed to St. Paddy’s Day, in spite of the fact that I’ve been to Chicago […]
As I have repeatedly pointed out, stripping detainees to “demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor” was introduced as a Standard Operating Procedure at Gitmo back in 2002 when they were preparing to torture Mohammed al-Qahtani. Abu Zubaydah’s torturers, like Bradley Manning’s jailers, call it being “God.” That must be the standard procedure that President Obama […]
As I noted earlier today, State Department Spokesperson PJ Crowley described Bradley Manning’s abuse as counterproductive and stupid at an event at MIT yesterday. Ethan Zuckerman has a transcript of Crowley’s remarks. Charlie deTar: There’s an elephant in the room during this discussion: Wikileaks. The US government is torturing a whistleblower in prison right now. […]
Things for anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya have gone from difficult to worse. Yet even after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the mistake of telling the truth about Qaddafi’s strength, there has been little discussion about this report from James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (one exception is Dan Drezner). Here’s part of what Clapper […]
When PJ Crowley tweeted this the other day: These are not #Twitter or #Wikileaks revolutions. They belong to the people, but technology can expand and accelerate the pace of change. I was going to tweet back that he had to say that, given the necessity of maintaining the Administration party line on WikiLeaks. I’ve pointed […]
Join Firedoglake’s NEW Annual Membership Program Support our work and help shape the future of Firedoglake with an annual membership contribution. When Jane first invited you to become a founding member of Firedoglake, she made an analogy to NPR. Last year, Craig Newmark of Craigslist said he thinks that by the year 2020, NPR will […]
The folks at the Fed who run our economy apparently believe in the Easter Bunny. And Casper the Friendly Ghost. And Santa Claus. I mean, I can only conclude the folks over there are completely unhinged from reality given their claim that no people–not a single homeowner–was wrongly foreclosed. A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage […]
Back in 2002, Gitmo’s Standard Operating Procedures advocated stripping detainees of clothing as a way of demonstrating the omnipotence of the captors. In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee. With Abu Zubaydah–as Jane Mayer has written–they explicitly tied this […]
As I predicted in my liveblog, the most emotional moment of Peter King’s MUAC Hearing came when Keith Ellison saluted the sacrifice of Mohammed Salman Hamdani. Every American, including Muslim Americans, suffered on 9/11. 29 Muslims died at the World Trade Center; 3 Muslims died in the hijacked planes (United Flight 175 and American Flight […]
You can watch here or here. Bennie Thompson gets permission for Andre Carson and two other Reps to sit on the hearing. People often forget that Carson, like Keith Ellison, is Muslim. King accuses those who oppose the form of this hearing of hysteria. “To back down would be craven abdication to political correctness.” King: […]