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.
For some reason, Andrew Ross Sorkin felt the need to weigh in on the debate over whether Rick Wagoner or Team Auto should get credit for GM’s turnaround. He probably shouldn’t have, seeing as how some of his evidence against Wagoner is that “he wasn’t able or willing to cull failing brands like Pontiac, for […]
The TARP Congressional Oversight Panel just released a report dedicated to the foreclosure fraud problem and the securitization mess underlying it. They conclude that the problems may represent a significant problem for the housing market and the financial system more generally. Here’s a great summary of why: If documentation problems prove to be pervasive and, […]
Binyam Mohamed and a number of other detainees will be paid millions by the British government to compensate for their role in torturing him. Around a dozen men who accused British security forces of colluding in their transfer overseas are to get millions in compensation from the UK government. Some of the men, who are […]
As Spencer reported yesterday, the incoming Chair of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon wants to revisit and expand the 2001 AUMF authorizing our war against al Qaeda. The objective wouldn’t the “drop a new Authorization to Use Military Force, but to reaffirm and strengthen the existing one,” says an aide to McKeon who […]
If only David Stern were being treated as badly as he treats homeowners, this would bring real schadenfreude. In a regulatory filing published today, Stern’s publicly traded company revealed that one of its subsidiaries failed to pay rent in November on its towering office building in Plantation, Florida, and had received a notice of default. […]
A month ago, the Financial Fraud Task Force first started to get around to investigating the systemic fraud in our foreclosure system. Federal investigators are exploring whether banks and other financial firms broke U.S. law when using fraudulent court documents to foreclose on people’s homes, according to sources familiar with the effort. The criminal investigation, […]
In the last week or so, two public reports have cataloged the growing insecurity of Americans. Last week, CDC reported that the number of people without health insurance topped 59 million in the first quarter of this year (up 400,000 from last year and 2.7 million from 2008). And today, USDA reported that 50.2 million […]
The Telegraph reports that a High Peace Council convened by Hamid Karzai may request that some Gitmo detainees be freed so they can participate in peace talks. (h/t Carol Rosenberg) Taliban prisoners would be freed from Guantánamo Bay to potentially join peace negotiations under a proposal from the Afghan council appointed to find a settlement […]
The WaPo has a story on the growing realization that the banksters have been engaging in massive fraud to keep churning out foreclosures. It includes a detail about Chicago Sheriff Thomas Dart’s refusal to enforce foreclosures I did not know: that when he had a sample of foreclosures reviewed, he found that only 5% of […]
There are a lot of things wrong with Obama’s apparently imminent decision to just let Khalid Sheikh Mohammed rot in jail without a formal trial. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials. The […]