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.
As predicted, Tom Maguire links to the two affidavits I made available yesterday without pointing out what those affidavits say: that in Fall 2004, Fitzgerald was still actively investigating Armitage and Novak and Rove and Libby on the Novak leak–because their stories all contradicted what the others were saying. Let me help you out, Tom, by quoting the entire passage on Armitage and the Novak column:
A brief discussion is in order
Reuters reports that the EU report on secret prisons got much of its information from anonymous US intelligence officers.
Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details ofsecret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.
SwissSenator Dick Marty, author of a Council of Europe report on the jails,said senior CIA officials disapproved of Rumsfeld’s methods in huntingdown terrorist suspects,
This is a follow-up to my post speculating that Cheney got his talking point about DOD and State being interested in the Iraq intell from the documents Valerie Wilson wrote before Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger. This post will do something very simple: show where that talking point shows up, and where it doesn’t.
In an effort to make these affidavits available as soon as possible so the wingnuts can start admitting they were wrong about Fitzgerald being a runaway prosecutor, I thought I’d catalog some of the things Fitzgerald didn’t appear to know by August 27, 2004 and September 27, 2004.
As of August 2004, Fitzgerald did not yet know that:Rove may have talked to Novak on July 8, not July 9There was a second
This is the post I’ve been promising for weeks, in which I will speculate wildly as to the source of Cheney’s knowledge about Plame’s role at CPD and in her husband’s trip. Here’s the argument, in brief:Cheney learns during the week of June 9 that “Defense and State expressed a strong interestin the Niger intelligence”At a time when Cheney presumably already knew that information, he tried to get CIA to repeat
During the book salon chat on The Wrong Stuff yesterday, we discussed the House Intelligence Committee report on how Duke Cunningham managed to scam so much money for his friends. Lo and behold, the LAT has a long article on it today (hat tip Kentucky Jelly). The report, though, is pretty disappointing.
Mark Kleiman argues that the Democrats should see BushCo’s refusal to turn over proof that they buried details about Pat Tillman’s death as a godsend. This is the scandal, he argues, over which the Democrats should choose to confront Bush.
This is a Godsend for the Democrats in Congress. The committeesshouldn’t compromise at all; this is the case we want to go to warover, in the courts and the court of
I’m more and more convinced this is Dick Cheney’s design. Failure in Afghanistan, which might lead to the collapse of Pakistan’s western-friendly government, which might lead to a regional war between Sunni and Shiite.
Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq.
‘Theconsequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,’he said.
I found this story on the National Review cruise over at Susie’s place. It’s the perfect comedy to accompany the Sunday shows–stories about what nuts Republicans when they presume they’re alone. There’s a lot that worth reading, not least the portrayal of the Podhoretz-Buckley feud (with Buckley almost–but not quite–disowning his conservative offspring).
Remember when I pointed out that the real story of those civil liberties violations that Gonzales didn’t admit to was the role of the Intelligence Oversight Board? Well, I was right:
An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIAscandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney generalof legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bushadministration’s counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has