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.
A radical thought, I know. But still only definitively true in Massachusetts. At issue is a Massachusetts case, U.S. Bank v. Ibanez, which challenged a foreclosure because of processes banks have widely used in securitizing a bunch of loans into something they can sell investors chumps. Here’s how Bloomberg described the case earlier this week: Massachusetts’s […]
At the beginning of Obama’s term, when he talked about governing as a pragmatist, I perhaps foolishly believed he meant not pragmatism as DC understands it–as a principle-less squishy middle–but as the Pragmatist school of philosophers would mean it–as someone fundamentally open to and respectful of the ideas and viewpoints of all. Mind you, it […]
John Brennan apparently plays an interesting role in the events surrounding Jeffrey Sterling, whom DOJ indicted for allegedly leaking details of the MERLIN program to James Risen. James Risen first wrote about Sterling–profiling his employment discrimination suit–in March 2002. In it, Risen quotes then CIA Deputy Executive Director John Brennan, denying that Sterling was dismissed […]
Let me start by pointing to two data points about the case of Jeffrey Alexander Sterling–the apparent (and alleged) source for James Risen’s reporting on MERLIN. First, as DOJ’s press release alleges, Sterling first contacted Risen in February or March of 2003. The press release later reveals he first became aware that the FBI was […]
Here’s what I think happened with Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, the former CIA officer who just got arrested for leaking classified information to James Risen. As I noted in the timeline, Sterling was assigned to an operation in November 1998. Given that the DOJ press release specifies that Sterling was “the operations officer assigned to handle […]
DOJ has announced the arrest of James Risen’s source for the MERLIN story (though they don’t admit Risen and MERLIN are the leaks in question). Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was charged in a 10-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Dec. 22, 2010, and […]
Glenn Greenwald and Mark Mazzetti tell the story of 19-year old American citizen Gulet Mohamed who was taken into custody by the Kuwaitis after the US, while Mohamed was staying with an uncle in Kuwait, put him on the no-fly list. In the two weeks the Kuwaitis have held him, Mohamed says he was subjected […]
Bob Goodlatte is the guy the GOP put in charge of today’s reading of the Constitution. He apparently chose to read the 10th Amendment–the foundation of state’s rights–himself. The 10th Amendment is supposed to read: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved […]
David Ignatius got it wrong, IMO, when he asked whether Darrell Issa is going to be the next Joe McCarthy. When you see the righteous gleam in Issa’s eye, recall other zealous congressional investigators who claimed to be doing the public’s business but ended up pursuing vendettas. I think of Robert F. Kennedy’s ruthless pursuit […]
Let me try this one out on you. The guy whose “Learned Helplessness” theories made it possible for Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell to make a killing (heh) on torturing detainees has figured out a way to make a killing–$31 million in sole source funds–himself: with an untested “Learned Optimism” program that claims to make […]