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.
Back in January, Dana Priest first revealed that Anwar al-Awlaki was on a JSOC kill list and was being considered for a CIA kill list. Now, eight months later, DOJ is considering charging him. The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to […]
Mark Hosenball first reported this back in July, then linked back to that report last week. But given yesterday’s post on our what we’ve accomplished in Iraq, I thought it worth noting that the most inflammatory material in the next big Wikileaks dump–which appears to be the Iraq war log Bradley Manning leaked–reportedly pertains to […]
As we discuss whether to abandon rule of law in Afghanistan under General Petraeus, we’d do well to consider how the war Petraeus “won” in Iraq turned out: On a dull December day in 2009, Rabiha al Qassab, a 63-year-old Iraqi refugee living in a quiet residential area of north London, received a telephone call that […]
I’ve been tracking the debate within the Administration over whether we should tolerate corruption in Afghanistan in the name of sustaining a war against someone–anyone–in Afghanistan or not for some weeks. Underlying the entire debate is the fact that our goals in Afghanistan–which started as a pursuit of those who struck us on 9/11 and […]
Here’s where Jack Goldsmith’s op-ed, purporting to offer a solution to the Gitmo problem, breaks down (see Spencer’s take on it here). Civilian trials for terrorists have also proven difficult. They gathered disfavor when Attorney General Eric Holder said he would prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged Sept. 11 plotters in civilian court in […]
Remember that Vanity Fair tell all in which Erik Prince offered new details about Blackwater ops? Though Michael Hayden has suggested Prince made up some of the details, it seemed to be a form of graymail targeted at those who approved Blackwater ops now under criminal investigation. Apparently, there’s a long form version. Erik Prince, […]
Last week, the US put the Tehrek-i-Taliban Pakistan on its official terrorist lists and charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, with something that was almost certainly not a crime. Oddly, though, DOJ did not charge Mehsud which actions they verbally alleged he committed that actually are a crime: conspiring with Faisal Shahzad in his attempted bombing […]
Almost a year ago, Obama offended DC’s chattering class for appearing on Univision’s Sunday show, Al Punto, but not appearing on Fox News Sunday. But as I noted at the time, Al Punto is actually a more popular show than Fox’s Sunday swill. And, as it turns out, the White House can justify blowing off […]
Who knew the world of journalism had the same kind of revolving door as government does? But apparently, if you build a reporting beat entirely around portraying the views of top corporate representatives as the only views that count, and if your newspaper pimps you out as the “play” in a Pay2Play scandal, then you, […]
In 2002, I taught the Argentine film La hora de los hornos (it was a media and narrative class–I wasn’t just proselytizing radical leftist ideology). The second most famous scene from the movie starts at 3:14, but it is very disturbing. I thought the film would get students to think about the degree to which […]