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.
Steven Benen writes most of the post I was going to write (thanks Steve!) in response to the news that Pete Hoekstra is a big fat hypocrite about intelligence leaks. Steve links to Justin Rood’s coverage of Hoekstra leaking details about the supposedly secret intelligence budget; RawStory first noticed Hoekstra’s leak.
If you haven’t already, go read Jane Mayer’s article on our methods of torture. The short version: we’re using psychological methods to impose “learned helplessness” and dependency, and as a result, we’re getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we’re turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.
I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:
Holden asks:
They’re just thinking of this now?
U.S.military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how securePakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. PervezMusharraf were replaced as the nation’s leader, CNN has learned.
Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons after a shift in power.
[snip]
The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, according to the U.S.
Crooks & Liars links to Bobo Brooks informing Chris Matthews that Republicans hate Matthews’ man-crush, President Bush.
BROOKS: Bush…you gotta remember though…a lot ofRepublicans hate Bush. I mean, we look..we talk about the Democrats,how they hate Bush, in private…
MATTHEWS: What do you mean, “hate Bush?â€
BROOKS: They think Bush is incompetent and destroying their party.
Having just taped a Sunday show of my own (this one may be good–I’ll actually provide a link, but
Josh marvels at the (big surprise) latest galling corruption from a member of the Alaska delegation: Don Young snuck an earmark into a 2005 bill after it had been passed by both houses of Congress, but before Bush signed it.
The ‘Coconut Road’ earmark wasn’t in the bill passed by the Houseand Senate.
The former econ professor notes that we’re already bailing out big money:
Fed to the rescue. Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve added $19billion in temporary funds to the banking system through the purchaseof mortgage-backed securities to help meet demand for cash amid a routin bonds backed by home loans to riskier borrowers.
The Fed accepted only mortgage-backed debt as collateral for thismorning’s weekend repurchase agreement.
Since we’re talking about leaks in the Foggo-Wilkes trial, I wanted to return to the leaks leading up to the Foggo-Wilkes indictments. As a review, Wilkes lawyer Mark Geragos asked the court to dismiss the indictments, arguing that leaks just prior to the time Wilkes was indicted made it impossible for Wilkes to get a fair trial.
I promised to come back and talk about those bits of the latest document dump that don’t support HJC’s allegations of a cover-up. In this post, I’m going to look at how DOJ tried to claim that Lam was responsible for leaks about her resignation. The discussion was a response to two local San Diego newspaper articles predicting Lam’s resignation.
There are two stories out today claiming Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, is really wearing the pants in the Executive Branch’s dealings with intelligence. The NYT has McConnell describing tremendous pressure from Congress, yet insisting he got no pressure from the White House.
In an interview in his office, Mr.
Joe at AmericaBlog says most of what needs to be said about this Eric Lichtblau article, which very gently call BS on White House attempts to discredit a James Risen article from the previous day.
Okay, the height of hypocrisy is anyone in the Bush administrationchallenging anything as “highly misleading.” Liars don’t have thestanding to call anyone else a liar.