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 House response to the Brent Wilkes subpoena is now online–it’s 81 pages long. I’ll comment more on the rationale for quashing the subpoenas in an update (I’ve got a talk to go give shortly, but the short version is speech and debate). But some initial details:The subpoena to Ike Skelton has been withdrawnWilkes also subpoenaed:
In what might be the best testament to the wisdom of mounting primary challenges, Jane Harman has turned into a bulldog debunking this Administration’s lies to drum up support for expanded surveillance. On Olbermann yesterday, she revealed that the terror threat the Administration used to scare up support for the FISA amendment came from a source deemed to be unreliable.
Well the chatter was up all summer at the level of pre-9/11
Does this look like a budget request for a war that is going to end any time soon?
Gates says another $42 billion is needed to cover additional requirements. The extra money includes:$11 billion to field another 7,000 MRAP vehicles in addition to the 8,000 already planned;$9 billion to reconstitute equipment and technology;$6 billion for training and equipment of troops;$1 billion to improve U.S.
The UAW is about to become one of the country’s biggest purchasers of health care.
Under the agreement, responsibility for the retiree health plan willshift to a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association managed by theunion. Details about how the VEBA will be funded have not beendisclosed. But it is expected to involve a one-time payment of as muchas $35 billion by GM, providing the union with money to invest and useto pay for
Paul Kiel notes the most curious of the three recent filings from the Wilkes/Michael case, in which prosecutors attempt to prevent Wilkes from citing duress as his defense against the bribery charges. I think the target of this filing is not–or not just–Duke Cunningham. Rather, I think prosecutors filed this to stave off Wilkes’ Congressional testimony ploy.
Via ThinkProgress, USA Today reports that the cheat sheet for Bush’s speech got placed on the UN website today.
Apparently, a marked-up draft of the president’s speech popped up onthe U.N.’s website as President Bush delivered his remarks this morningbefore the General Assembly, USA TODAY’s David Jackson reports. Thedraft included phonetic spellings of some names and countries, and thecellphone numbers for Bush speechwriters.
Press secretary Dana Perino downplayed the incident, and saidphonetic spellings
There’s something that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has suggested in the past, but which he has made crystal clear in his testimony today. The Administration has compartmentalized him out of the warrantless wiretapping program as it existed before he became DNI earlier this year. Senator Leahy made this clear–but then dropped the obvious follow-up.
Like many of us, Grassley argues that if you bring an issue that has widespread support among the electorate up for a vote often enough, you will eventually convince intransigent Republicans to vote for it.
Grassley said if he were the Democrats, he would send the SCHIPexpansion to a vote every three months, along with campaignadvertisements accusing Republicans of abandoning children.
I’ve got a different interpretation of the news–via ThinkProgress–that Bush is advising Democrats to keep their options open to sustain the permanent war in Iraq.
Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked inwhere you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, thingscould change dramatically.’ â€
Bolten said Bush wants enoughcontinuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president wouldbe in a position to sustain
Reading through the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (hat tip Laura Rozen), you’d think that the Ryan-Crocker dog and pony show was designed to justify war on Iran. And you might be right. The amendment cites four Petraeus statements about Iranian influence in Iraq and four Crocker statements. And intersperses those with cherry-picked citations to create the illusion that Iran is the only outside force causing trouble in Iran.