Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
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.
Entries by emptywheel
Pelosi: Of Hidden Memos and Covert Ops Hidden in Supplementals
/77 Comments/in Torture/by emptywheelI wanted to point out two more details from the Pelosi press conference the other day when she made her comments about briefings on torture (the complete transcript of this section is below).
First, Pelosi points out that one thing BushCo did was put intelligence-related appropriations through without telling the intelligence committee what they were putting through.
The Bush Administration Did Not Give Legally-Required Prior Notification to Congress
/87 Comments/in Torture/by emptywheelIf the torture program began–as Michael Hayden has said–as a covert op, then it would require Bush to have notified Congress of the plan to torture before it happened. That did not happen. In fact, even according to reports from the CIA, it appears the CIA did not have its presidential finding until a year after the torture started.