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.
Fresh off Obama imploring the country to “win the [vaguely defined, and definitely not defined as preventing climate change] future,” Calculated Risk has a new chart, showing the decline in unemployment by state. It’s useful to show not just which states are unemployment clusterfucks (Michigan remains near the top, though CA and FL passed it […]
Wired has a post on MSNBC’s report that “there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to [Julian] Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.” In it, Kim Zetter looks to the chat logs to try to explain why there is no such evidence. If it’s true that investigators […]
CNN elaborates on something MSNBC reported last night. Not only did Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart improperly put Bradley Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, but the military is now investigating why he did so. The U.S. military is investigating why the commander of the military jail put Pfc. Bradley Manning, suspected […]
When Michael Mukasey announced in 2008 no one would be charged for politicizing DOJ, I had this to say. Understand: Mukasey has turned into a terrible shill for the Administration. But it has been clear for over a year that the Administration would escape criminal charges for having committed massive violations of the Hatch Act. […]
The government has admitted to MSNBC that the Brig Commander at Quantico improperly put Bradley Manning on suicide watch last week. The officials told NBC News, however, that a U.S. Marine commander did violate procedure when he placed Manning on “suicide watch” last week. Military officials said Brig Commander James Averhart did not have the […]
Via Jeff Stein, the St. Louis Beacon reports that DOJ not only (unsuccessfully) subpoenaed James Risen in their pursuit of alleged MERLIN source Jeffrey Sterling, but they successfully subpoenaed Sterling’s one-time lawyer, Mark Zaid. Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who handles national security cases, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to discuss […]
As Adam Serwer notes, one of the most interesting things about this long story on how Peter King came to split with a Muslim community close to his district as he increasingly attacked Muslims in general after 9/11 is the description of the way a novel of his tied al Qaeda, Long Island Muslims, and […]
As soon as I read the news that the new Chinese stealth fighter might have been reverse-engineered from an F-117 Nighthawk shot down during the NATO bombing of Serbia, I wondered the same thing implied (though not explicitly stated) in this Fox News piece: did we bomb the Chinese embassy because they were actively collecting […]
Update: I’m wrong about this being buried–it will be in tomorrow’s NYT, so big coverage. When Jeff Stein reported that Mullah Omar was rushed to a hospital for heart treatment, I was pretty sure the real story was about Dewey Clarridge’s Eclipse group, which the NYT had suggested before might be involved in a privatized […]
I spent much of the day yesterday pointing out how stupid it was for Obama to put outsourcer, China nut, and TBTF bankster Jeff Immelt in charge of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have been focusing on Obama’s frame for the problem as “competitiveness.” In his piece, Krugman […]