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.
There are a couple of details I want to return to in this AP story on what has happened to those responsible for CIA’s biggest fuck-ups and crimes. One is this discussion of the CIA Inspector General’s report on “erroneous” renditions. While the inspector general was investigating the mishandled el-Masri case, congressional investigators discovered several […]
Every year, for the first few Sundays after the Super Bowl, McCaffrey the MilleniaLab starts sulking at about 3:00 because for some reason we won’t turn on our weekly football game. (Last year we actually resorted to watching basketball the first weekend after the season ended.) So we decided to try to tire him out […]
Marisa Taylor has an important update on the OLC exigent letter opinion. Last year, DOJ’s now-retired Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report revealing how the FBI had used exigent letters to get call data information from telecoms with no oversight. Ryan Singel noted a reference to an OLC opinion that basically melted away the […]
The Chamber of Commerce has tried to craft another non-denial denial that they engaged a bunch of private spooks to spy on people like Brad Friedman. But it’s still a non-denial denial. Once again, they emphasize that they didn’t pay HBGary. The U.S. Chamber never hired or solicited proposals from HBGary, Palantir or Berico, the […]
Remember when that ignorant fool opined, “They hate us for our freedoms”? As one American still ashamed by that comment, let me thank Egypt for such an amazing display of what freedom is about. Congratulations! May it inspire those of us watching from America to reclaim our own democracy.
One of the more interesting documents on HBGary et al’s partnership with the Chamber of Commerce details the prices they wanted to charge. Now, other emails make it clear that the Chamber balked at what the team originally proposed would be $2 million of work–the Chamber didn’t pay these rates (indeed, they probably haven’t paid […]
In a post I’ll write some day, I will show how the WikiLeaks cables show that every time a partner government threatens to use the high tech intelligence toys we share with it–notably our telecommunication wiretapping–to spy on domestic opponents, the Obama Administration makes a very concerted effort to disavow such efforts (if not end […]
At some point the courts are going to have start calling bullshit on the government’s transparent attempts to use State Secrets to hide embarrassing information. From Charlie Savage, we have the story of Kevin Shipp, who tried to sue the CIA for all the medical problems his family suffered from being housed in a house […]
The Chamber of Commerce has responded to ThinkProgress’ reporting of the Chamber’s discussions with Hunton & Williams about an intelligence campaign against USChamberWatch and other anti-Chamber efforts. It purports to deny any connection with Hunton & Williams and HBGary. More Baseless Attacks on the Chamber by Tom Collamore We’re incredulous that anyone would attempt to […]
[Ed: Read the documents about the US Chamber’s plan to spy on unions.] I noted yesterday how mind-numbingly ignorant analysis of Glenn Greenwald’s motivation as a careerist hack that was provided by HBGary. And if the allegations in the excerpts of former WikiLeaks volunteer Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book are accurate, HBGary’s analysis about WikiLeaks itself is […]