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.
Well, that was quick work. Yesterday I suggested that the Gang of Eight who purportedly attended the March 10, 2004 meeting at which Alberto Gonzales claims to have developed consensus that they should ignore James Comey’s concerns and continue to tap American citizens anyway might have some enlightenment to offer about what went on at the meeting.
One more detail about the Ashcroft and Gonzales guidelines on contacts between DOJ and the White House. While the latter explicitly gives Cheney the authority to communicate with DOJ about ongoing cases, I don’t believe it gives Karl Rove–or any of the people who work in Office of Political Affairs save its head–that authority.
In light of the news that Alberto Gonzales granted Cheneypresidential powers to snoop into ongoing investigations in May 2006, I thoughtit was time to update my chronology of the CIFA side of the Cunningham scandal.September 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Counter-Intelligence Burtt establishes CIFA to oversee counterintelligence units of the armed services; consulting on the new agency was James King, recently retired director of National Imagery and Mapping Agency
DiFi has a habit of using hearings to introduce new allegations against DOJ and she has done so again today. Here’s Christy’s version of the interchange:
Read to you what has been dropped from the earlier addition of the DOJmanual. (1) restriction on bringing a voter fraud case close to anelection.
Alberto Gonzales gave a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee recently and offered an excuse for barging into ICU to try to get Ashcroft to override Jim Comey. Silvestre Reyes, at least, seems satisfied with Gonzales’ explanation.
But Reyes said he was satisfied with Gonzales’ explanation and cautioned against drawing conclusions.
“When there are issues of national security at stake, I thinkcertainly one should not question the motivation of individuals,” Reyestold reporters.
A reader sent me the full text of this Judy Miller interview of Shimon Peres in Murdoch’s newest plaything. The interview itself is nothing exciting. After all acting a stenographer of other people’s thoughts is what Judy does best, which means her stenography is only ever as interesting as Judy’s source.
Kudos to Congressman Bill Delahunt. He seems to be on a lonely crusade to get the US Government to treat all kinds of terrorism the same. He has been criticizing DOJ for its sloppy treatment of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles; DOJ botched its case of immigration violations and Posada effectively went free.
One good thing about the spectacular abuse of intelligence to get us into the Iraq war: the intelligence community is acquiring a habit of releasing key judgments from its NIEs (I understand we’ll get an Iraq NIE in time for September’s moving of the goal posts). And when I read the claim yesterday that half the content of last week’s NIE on terrorism came from detainee interrogations …
According to one senior