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.
Skdadl, who has been tweeting up a storm on the upcoming WikiLeaks dump, noted that the British government has issued D-notices regarding the upcoming dump, which is basically a non-binding request on editors to brief the government before doing a story. The news came to light in two Tweets from WikiLeaks one of which said, […]
The next WikiLeaks dump is about to reveal to the world what the United States really thinks of the world leaders it pretends to like and the degree to which it overlooks corruption among friends (it sounds like the reports will include confirmation that Hamid Karzai is corrupt, among other things). Knowing that it’s coming […]
I wasn’t going to write a post debunking this Nation article on the opposition to gate grope. Sure, it was a specious hit on John Tyner, the “Don’t touch my junk” dude. But I figured as soon as anyone read this passage: Tyner attended private Christian schools in Southern California and lives in Oceanside, a […]
The Fianna Fail government in Ireland has released the austerity plan it promised in response for the big bank bailout the rest of Europe forced on it. There’s a lot that’s awful in it: big cuts in pension, huge increases in tuition costs, and a ludicrous claim that this austerity plan will help Ireland’s economy […]
Yves does a thorough smackdown on the departing Michael Barr’s description of all the things the government is going to get to the bottom of the foreclosure fraud problem, noting that the foreclosure task force simply isn’t investigating the problem in enough detail to understand, much less solve, the problem. But I wanted to look […]
As I noted, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is meeting today. As announced, they discussed foreclosure fraud and securitization. For less than 15 minutes. And then they moved on, without once raising the issue of whether or not the banks’ exposure due to securitization problems posed a systemic risk to our financial system. As the […]
You know how I mocked the White House for dismissing the problem of gate rape by saying only 170,000 passengers had had their genitalia groped by a stranger working for the government? I noted that their pushback was potentially inconsistent. According to “administration officials,” just half of one percent of all passengers–or about 170,000–get their […]
Just one week ago, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller told Chris Dodd that Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions Michael Barr was the key person from Treasury working with the Attorneys General investigation into foreclosure fraud. Miller: We haven’t had any contact with the [Financial Stability Oversight Council]. We have had repeated contact […]
The White House has started a pushback campaign on gate rape that is reminiscent of “Recovery Summer” or “Mission Accomplished” for its credibility. It consists of a number of things, in addition to the inevitable army of talking-point-people using the word “enhanced” the same way Cheney did. First, there are statistics. Such as their claim […]
Apparently, John Pistole not only promised to Congress–but failed to deliver–public education about why gate rape was necessary. But he ignored advice from DHS to provide a public explanation in advance, too. In an hour-long discussion with reporters, Pistole said media officials at the Department of Homeland Security had urged him to “get out ahead” […]