Marcy Wheeler

Marcy Wheeler (a.k.a. "emptywheel") is an American independent journalist specializing in national security and civil liberties. Wheeler publishes on her own site, Emptywheel, established in July 2011, and was a senior policy analyst at First Look Media's The Intercept until her amicable resignation 16 May 2014. She makes occasional contributions to the commentary and analysis section of The Guardian, progressive news site Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Michigan Liberal. Between early December 2007 and July 2011 Wheeler published primarily on Jane Hamsher's FireDogLake (FDL) and prior to that on The Next Hurrah.
During United States v. Libby, the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, along with other regular press-accredited contributors to FireDogLake, Wheeler reported on the testimony live from the courtroom. In her accounts of the Libby trial, she describes her entries as "not a transcript". Nevertheless, such bloggers' eye-witness accounts served as sources of reliable information about the trial for their readers. During the trial, she appeared on camera in video reports posted online on PoliticsTV.com, along with other accredited Libby trial blogger-correspondents such as TalkLeft creator Jeralyn Merritt and FDL creator Jane Hamsher and FDL principal blogger Christy Hardin Smith.
In October 2013, Newsweek published an article about Wheeler titled "The Woman Who Knows The NSA's Secrets."

Marcy Wheeler lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is married to an engineer. She campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in 2004, and is a former vice chairwoman of the Washtenaw County Democratic Party.

Wheeler graduated with a BA from Amherst College in 1990. She moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan from her native New York City for graduate school in 1995. In 2000, she earned a Ph.D in comparative literature from the University of Michigan, writing her dissertation on the feuilleton, a literary-journalistic essay form that is often self-published. In her online "Prologue" to Anatomy of Deceit, she observes that the feuilleton essay is an important medium for expressing opinions which might ordinarily be censored due to government displeasure, citing recent examples such as former Czechoslovakian dissident and former Czech President Václav Havel:

. . . a literary-journalistic form called the feuilleton [is] a kind of conversational essay that appears in a newspaper in its own section. Feuilletons first appeared in response to Napoleonic censorship, and in the two hundred years since, they have often become important at moments when political polarization or government censorship has degraded traditional news reporting into nothing more than the parroting of ideological talking points. At such times, the feuilleton has served as a place where writers, using ordinary language, could tell of important events in a more meaningful way.

In Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, a group of citizens started writing feuilletons [samizdat], telling an unofficial version of events. They shared them among friends, copying them over and passing them on in a form of self-publishing. These citizens would go on to lead a revolution, the peaceful Velvet Revolution. One of these citizens Václav Havel would even become president.

Wheeler's reputation as a blogger stems from her analysis of the alleged outing of the covert CIA identity of Valerie E. Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, and the Bush administration's justification for 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War. Several of her posts led to follow-up stories in the mainstream media. As their first book publication by FDL Books (Vaster Books), "in order to have Marcy [Wheeler]’s work seen by a larger audience," FireDogLake and Daily Kos jointly published her book on the CIA leak scandal, entitled Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy, on January 28, 2007. The book is cited in articles about the scandal and has been praised by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, the husband of Valerie E. Wilson (Valerie Plame). The book has a website devoted to it, with an associated blog, in which Wheeler has posted her "Prologue".

Many of Wheeler's 2007 blog entries at The Next Hurrah focused on the Congressional hearings into the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys subsequent to the November 2006 U.S. midterm election.

• In his column/blog White House Watch, published in washingtonpost.com (hosted on the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Internet [WPNI]), Dan Froomkin cited the efforts of FiredogLake in live-blogging the Libby trial as "essential reading" (page 3).
• Another article about the coverage of the trial by FDL and other bloggers appeared in The New York Times.
• Due to her extensive research about the outing of Valerie Plame and her coverage of the Libby trial as a blogger, Wheeler was a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
• She was interviewed by online websites such as The Raw Story
• Sean Paul Kelley interviewed her live on radio for the blog The Agonist, as posted on Radio Agonist.
• Amy Goodman interviewed her along with Murray Waas on the radio program Democracy Now!
• She was also a special guest at the Daily Kos "YearlyKos Convention" fundraiser in New York City, on March 10, 2007.
• Wheeler received a 2009 Sidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Award, in the blog category, cited for her body of work, including 2009 coverage of the auto industry crisis, and the evolution of G.W. Bush administration justification and practice of torture (aka Enhanced Interrogation Techniques).

• Dan Froomkin, "A Lurid Look Behind the Curtain", White House Watch (column and blog), The Washington Post, online posting, washingtonpost.com, January 24, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Scott Shane, "For Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder", The New York Times, February 15, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Politics: Libby Trial Reveals Workings of White House, Media, Talk of the Nation, February 5, 2007, accessed December 8, 2008.
• Brian Beutler, "Chief Libby Trial Blogger Says She Believes Prosecutor 'wants Cheney,' 'won't rest on laurels'", The Raw Story (blog), February 20, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Sean Paul Kelley, "Radio Agonist: Episode Three", interview with Marcy Wheeler, online posting, The Agonist (blog), February 27, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Amy Goodman, "Ex-Cheney Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby Convicted of Perjury, Obstruction in CIA Leak Trial", interview of Marcy Wheeler and Murray Waas, Democracy Now!, March 7, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Raven, "YearlyKos Convention Fundraiser: New York" (event announcement), Daily Kos, February 20, 2007, accessed April 28, 2007.
• Sidney Hillman Foundation, [1] 2009 Journalism Award