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.
When news broke yesterday that Darrell Issa had fired his spokesperson, Kurt Bardella, for sharing emails with NYT reporter Mark Leibovich, I suggested, I suspect Issa just fired his spokesperson because Issa cares more about staying in the good graces of Politico than NYT. #WinTheMorning It was John Harris’ complaint that his reporters’ emails had […]
Even before Tom Ricks handed his blog over to Bob Woodward to rip Donald Rumsfeld a new asshole, Ricks shared this quote from H.R. Haldeman about Rummy as a way to introduce Rummy’s dismissal of Ricks’ Fiasco and Woodward’s books. So in my research on the Vietnam War I was paging through H.R. Haldeman’s diaries […]
This is a really cool project. ABC’s World News has a series this week on whether or not a typical upper middle class family can survive without consumer goods made in America. It includes: Footage of a bunch of Americans claiming to buy America ABC’s news team going through the house of one family–the Usrys–and […]
Let me just say, without qualification, that of the high profile journalists whose techniques were discussed or entered as evidence in the Scooter Libby trial, Bob Woodward had the best note taking. Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, Bob Novak, Andrea Mitchell (and, I’m sure, Marcy Wheeler)? They all were put to shame by Bob Woodward’s exactitude […]
When I first posted on Hank Johnson’s letter demanding an investigation into Hunton & Williams’ appropriation of counterterrorist techniques to attack citizen speech, I was a bit skeptical. Without a way to get some coverage of the demand, such a letter risks being yet one more angry letter into the void. But I will say […]
Bloomberg has an excellent catch from the HB Gary emails, revealing that Morgan Stanley was one of the 20-200 companies targeted by the Chinese-based Aurora hack in 2009. Morgan Stanley experienced a “very sensitive” break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc.’s computers more than a year ago, according to […]
Hmmm. “Tactics developed for use on terrorists may have been unleashed against citizens.” That sounds like something I would have written about the HB Gary scandal. Twice. It’s nice to see some members of Congress understand what the entire problem with this scandal is about. In a letter to be released Tuesday, Rep. Hank Johnson […]
He’ll probably just get picked up by TASC, which was about to buy out HB Gary Federal anyway. But I do take some pleasure at his recognition that his reputation is for shit. Embattled CEO Aaron Barr says he is stepping down from his post at HBGary Federal to allow the company to move on […]
I’ve long said that, after the big military-industrial-complex states outside of DC (which have, after all, benefited from 10 years of big stimulus), MI is the state that has most benefited from Obama’s economic policies. Not only did Obama bail out GM and Chrysler (and therefore many of the contractors that supply them), but he […]
The Guardian has its version of the Arthur Brisbane article approving of NYT’s decision to withhold all mention of Raymond Davis’ identity. One of the two main reasons why the Guardian chose to publish even as CIA and MI5 were warning that that might endanger Davis is the one I keep pointing out: all the […]