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.
The story of the day is from Michael Hastings, fresh off winning a Polk Award for his reporting on the insubordination of key members of Stanley McChrystal’s staff. In today’s story, he describes how Lieutenant General William Caldwell ordered a PsyOp unit to manipulate Senators–including John McCain, Carl Levin, Jack Reed, and Al Franken–to support […]
It appears that Vikram Pandit’s failure to disclose material problems with Citibank’s valuation of its shitpile is another of the crimes we’re supposed to look forward and ignore. Jonathan Weil looks at how one of the documents disclosed in the FCIC dump–a February 14, 2008 OCC report finding that Citibank’s models for measuring the value […]
This morning, the FBI arrested 20-year old Saudi citizen Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari on one charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. According to the FBI, Aldawsari had allegedly purchased all the ingredients to make an IED using the explosive trinitrophenol, which also known as T.N.P., or picric acid. In addition, he had […]
As I have followed the Raymond Davis saga, this passage from an early Jeremy Scahill story on the CIA/JSOC/Blackwater programs operating in Pakistan, has haunted me. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to […]
A day after the Case-Shiller Index confirmed that the housing market is in a double dip, the Powers that Be (a subsidiary of the Masters of the Universe, currently CEOed by one Barack Obama) have floated their proposal for a mortgage fraud settlement. The settlement terms remain fluid, people familiar with the matter cautioned, and […]
Finally, some good news from DOJ: Eric Holder has just announced the government will stop defending DOMA. In the two years since this Administration took office, the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act on several occasions in federal court. Each of those cases evaluating Section 3 was considered […]
The NYT has gotten a lot of press for this story, detailing that Qaddafi’s son, Mutassim al-Qadhafi, paid $1 million to have Mariah Carey to sing four songs at his New Year’s Day party in St. Barts, and, the following year, another $1 million to have Beyonce and Usher sing. While it affords the NYT […]
Josh Gerstein reports that the government has withdrawn from defending Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Jose Padilla suit Judge Richard Mark Gergel dismissed the other day. (h/t MD) The Justice Department under President Barack Obama has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and administration officials – including former […]
Glenn and I both complained after the US media admitted yesterday it had been sitting on the very obvious news that Raymond Davis was a spook. But I got a number of questions from people who seem to miss the point. Why did I argue for years that Bob Novak shouldn’t have published Valerie Plame’s […]
Last week, bmaz (with my kibbitzing) noted how outrageous is it that the federal government is fighting to prevent a government employee who destroyed an entire hard drive of evidence from spending even one day in jail. But given the record of this Administration–from the mantra of “look forward” to the refusal to charge Dick […]