I first learned of Wheeler last April, when her name appeared in a front-page article in The New York Times about the release of Bush-era memos on interrogation techniques. Through a close reading of the documents, Wheeler was able to conclude that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in one month. This revelation was quickly picked up by The Huffington Post, and soon thereafter it showed up in the Times.
“The idea that our work is parasitical is farcical,” Wheeler told me by phone. “There’s a lot of good, original work in the blogosphere. Half of all journalists look at the blogosphere when working on a story.” At the same time, she said, “I’m happy to admit I’m still utterly reliant on journalists. You can’t have a conversation [about torture] without talking about Jane Mayer [of The New Yorker],” she said. Wheeler also praised Dana Priest and Joby Warrick of The Washington Post and James Risen and Douglas Jehl of The New York Times. “We ought to be talking about a symbiotic rather than a parasitical relationship,” she told me.
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