Marcy Wheeler
Marcy Wheeler writes the blog Emptywheel. and the "Right to Know" column for ExposeFactsorg. Her book, Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy, provided a primer on the CIA Leak case surrounding Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson. She publishes at various outlets including the Guardian, Salon and the Progressive. Wheeler won the 2009 the Hillman Award for blog journalism.
Democrats' Surrender On Torture Is Nearly Complete
In the same tweet he used to unceremoniously fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump announced the twin nominations of CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson's replacement and CIA veteran Gina Haspel as the new head of the nation's premier intelligence agency...
The Nunes-Ryan Civil Liberties Sham
For the last three weeks, privacy advocates have been buffeted by two political whirlwinds. First, the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act two weeks ago, authored by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. And then today, the release of a partisan memo , authored by Nunes'...
Wikileaks Dumps CIA's Hacking Tools
Today, Wikileaks released a big chunk of documents pertaining to CIA's hacking tools. People will — and already have — treated this as yet another Russian effort to use Wikileaks as a cutout to release documents it wants out there. And that may well be the case. It would follow closely on the...
The Story About Judicial Dysfunction Behind the Comey Whiplash
I've been home from Europe for less than a day and already I'm thinking of sporting a neck collar for the whiplash I've gotten watching the wildly varying Jim Comey opinions. I'm speaking, of course, of the response to Jim Comey's highly unusual announcement to sixteen Chairs and Ranking Members of...
Yahoo to Clapper: Global, Global, Beyond our Borders, Global
I joked when Yahoo first released its letter to James Clapper the other day, asking that he release details about the 2015 scan first revealed by Reuters . It has the tone of a young woman who is justifiably upset because, after sleeping with her, some jerk is pretending he doesn't even know her...
Trump Is Who He's Always Been, and Trump Is the Epitome of the GOP; They Have to Own Him
The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold has come up with another scoop. While scraping for video clips does not seem to be Fahrenthold's strength, like the KFile boys who bolted Buzzfeed in the middle of the night for the apparently greener pastures of CNN, this clip posted by the Washington Post...
In Attempted Hit Piece, NYT Makes Putin Hero of Defeating TPP
In an remarkable hit piece NYT spent over 5,000 words yesterday trying to prove that all of WikiLeaks' leaks are motivated from a desire to benefit Russia. That of course took some doing. It required ignoring the evidence of the other potential source of motivation for Julian Assange — such as that...
Breaking from Saudi Arabia!!! Two-Month-Old Misleading News
This Reuters exclusive is getting a lot of careless attention. Here's what a careless reader learns: EXCLUSIVE: U.S. WITHDRAWS STAFF FROM SAUDI ARABIA DEDICATED TO YEMEN PLANNING From that headline, particularly the use of the present tense, you might assume that the US is in the process of...
Key Area of Dispute on Drone Numbers: Number of Strikes
Dianne Feinstein is out with a statement applauding that I Con the Record has released drone kill numbers that — she suggests — proves the spooks know something we don't and that the number of civilian casualties hasn't been that high. "I want to commend the administration for taking this important...
The Jordanian Arms Theft Story
The NYT has a blockbuster story reporting that Jordanian officers have been stealing weapons "shipped into Jordan" by CIA, and selling them on the black market. Some of these weapons were used to kill two American contractors at a training facility in November. Weapons shipped into Jordan by the...