Coleen Rowley
Coleen Rowley, who served as chief counsel of the FBI's Minneapolis field office, "in a 13-page memo, outlined how FBI headquarters thwarted agents' attempts to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker. The 'bombshell memo' led bureau chief Robert Mueller to reorganize the agency. Rowley testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June about the FBI bureaucracy that frustrates agents' attempts at innovative investigation and mires them in paperwork." [1]
Rowley was selected as Time magazine's 2002 "Person of the Year". According to Time's December 22, 2002, article "The Special Agent," on May 21, 2002, "when Rowley upbraided her beloved FBI in a secret 13-page memo, she thought she was on a private rescue mission. In her view, it was not a reprimand but an act of redemption. It was not about speaking truth to power, because people like Rowley don't see much difference between the two. Truth is power--that's how you catch the bad guys. [2]
"So the memo -- the one that leaked and landed her on the front pages of newspapers, that brought her to Washington to face cameras and Congressmen and that helped set off the debate over how to reinvent the FBI--was not meant to be a memo at all. It came tumbling out, almost by accident, because she couldn't hold the words inside anymore."[3]
"In June 2002, Rowley testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee based on her 23-year history with the FBI and on her role in the Zacarias Moussaoui investigation. Rowley joined the FBI as a Special Agent in 1980 after earning a law degree from the University of Iowa."[4]
SourceWatch Resources
External links
- Nick Anderson and Mark Fineman, "Coleen Rowley. Agency whistle-blower known as straight arrow,", San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2002.
- Romesh Ratnesar and Michael Weisskopf, "How The FBI Blew The Case. The inside story of the FBI whistle-blower who accuses her bosses of ignoring warnings of 9/11. A reading of her entire memo suggests a bracing blueprint for change" (Article Preview) Time, June 3, 2002.
- Coleen Rowley's letter BBC/UK, June 6, 2002.
- Steve Perry, "Famous for 15 Seconds. How All the President's Men Buried Coleen Rowley," CounterPunch, June 13, 2002.
- "The Secret Agent," Time, December 22, 2002.
- Ramesh Ponnuru, "Whistle Stop. The New York Times's latest antiwar 'expert',", National Review Online, March 7, 2003.
- Coleen Rowley, "The wrong side of 'us vs. them'," Star Tribune, October 17, 2003.
- Amy Goodman, Coleen Rowley, Sibel Edmonds, Two FBI Whistleblowers Accuse Bureau of Ignoring Warnings Before 9/11, Democracy Now, 9 April 2004.
