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 most depressing part of this McClatchy article on the corrupt USAID contracting in Afghanistan by the construction company, Louis Berger, are six-year old quotes calling for an alternative to Berger. Behind the scenes, U.S. officials repeatedly have voiced frustration about the company’s work. In May 2004 — three months after then-President George W. Bush […]
I’ve started reading through J. Edgar Hoover’s files the reports a contractor developed for PA’s Department of Homeland Security that describe political activism as a terrorist threat; Governor Rendell has made them publicly available here. I’ll have more to say about them later (though feel free to add comments on them below). But for the […]
Two weeks ago, I suggested Obama would do well to hire the woman who wrote the book on the struggles of the middle class. Today, he did that. This afternoon, I suggested that the White House needed to get their newest employee out on teevee, talking to the middle class. For the White House, not […]
The government appealed its loss in the habeas petition of Mohamedou Ould Salahi Friday. It’s worth reviewing what this appeal is about. At the District level, Judge James Robertson ruled that while Salahi had clearly been an al Qaeda sympathizer and, before al Qaeda declared war on the US had been a sworn member of […]
I’m cautiously optimistic with the dual appointment of Elizabeth Warren to be Assistant to the President to work at Treasury to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Board. Frankly, no one knows what this appointment will mean in practice except perhaps Obama, Warren, and Timmeh Geithner. And no one knows how well Warren will negotiate […]
Michael Hayden has another tired whine at CNN about Obama’s treatment of the torture program. The entire logic of the piece is predictably silly. It goes something like this: ACLU and CCR are suing the government for targeting American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process. According to Hayden, the targeting of Awlaki was “Authorized […]
Go read this entire Charlie Savage article describing the deliberations within the Administration on how to respond to ACLU/CCR’s lawsuit challenging the government’s ability to target American citizens for assassination with no due process. The whole thing makes me want to cry about what our country has become (Congratulations Osama bin Laden! You’ve won!). But […]
One of the successors to the NeoCon organization PNAC, the Center for Security Policy, released a report the other day that makes an unapologetic call for trumped up McCarthyism targeted at Muslims. The study rather humorously models itself on Team B–the alternate analysis Poppy Bush ordered up to paint the Soviet Union as an ongoing […]
When Erik Prince testified before the Oversight Committee on October 2, 2007, he boasted that no one under Blackwater’s protection had ever been seriously hurt or killed. No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured. There is no better evidence of the skill and dedication of these men. At precisely the […]
I know Democrats are thrilled that Chris Coons, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Delaware, will be running against the kook Christine O’Donnell. But I’m a little troubled by the treatment of O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation stance as just one more kooky proposal. It’s not. Rather, it’s the logical extension of the conservative assault on reproductive freedom. […]