Coleen Rowley grew up in a small town in northeast Iowa. She became an FBI Agent in 1981 and subsequently the “Chief Division Counsel” of the Minneapolis FBI in 1990.
In May of 2002 Rowley brought some of the FBI’s pre 9-11 lapses to light and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about some of the endemic problems facing the FBI and the intelligence community. Rowley's memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller in connection with the Joint Intelligence Committee's Inquiry led to a two year long Department of Justice Inspector General investigation. She was one of three whistleblowers chosen as persons of the year by TIME magazine.
In April 2003, following an unsuccessful and highly criticized attempt to warn the Director and other administration officials about the dangers of launching the invasion of Iraq, Rowley stepped down from her (GS-14) legal position to go back to being a (GS-13) FBI Special Agent. She retired from the FBI at the end of 2004 and now speaks publicly to various groups, ranging from school children to business/professional/civic groups, on two different topics: ethical decision-making and "balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation."
In February 2005 and again in 2007, a majority of Minnesota congresspersons and senators nominated Rowley to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board but she was not selected by the Bush Administration. This Board was mandated by 2004 federal intelligence reform legislation implementing the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission but was allowed to languish.
Rowley authored a chapter in a book published by the Milton Eisenhower Foundation entitled, Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad. She also ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in Minnesota's Second Congressional District in 2006.
The Danger from Politicizing ‘Terror’
Glenn Greenwald’s critique – regarding the recent U.S. indictment of 38-year-old Iraqi Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa (currently in Canada) – is spot on about “terrorism” coming to simply mean opposing United States’ interests or resisting U.S. military invasions. U.S. authorities have now dropped any requirement that the “terrorists” target or ...
Bringing the ‘War on Terror’ Home
The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our Constitutional Republic into a powerful, unaccountable Military Empire. The U.S. Senate has just voted 93 to 7 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, which allows the military to operate domestically within ...
11/11/11 Will Be Celebrated as Originally Intended: As Armistice Day!
Why will members of Veterans for Peace again ring bells 11 times on Armistice /Veterans Day instead of shooting guns into the air? As David Swanson, (founder of War Is A Crime.org and author of War Is A Lie) explains in his piece "Fahrenheit 11-11-11": Believe it or not, November ...
Neither security nor democracy comes from a gun
I recently enjoyed the opportunity to speak to various groups at the University of Northern Iowa in connection with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and also in celebration of Constitution and Citizenship Week. All the more because the overarching post 9/11 challenge: "How do we defeat terrorism without ...
October 2011: Let's Shape Up as Citizens by Exercising First Amendment!
In the course of making our final plans to travel to Washington DC's Freedom Plaza next week for the historic October2011 events, our Minnesota peace group delegation did not think to ask along any First Amendment legal scholars who often prove invaluable in situations like this. So if there are ...
With editing assistance from Hugh Iglarsh, writer/editor/citizen based in Chicago These two words sum up well the op-ed I co-wrote with Bogdan Dzakovic before the ninth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks last year, a shortened version of which was published later in the Los Angeles Times under the title: WikiLeaks ...
Bush Kept Out of Canada, Can We Keep Him Out of Minnesota Too?
Please JOIN US for an anti-torture candlelight vigil dedicated to detainees and victims of torture authorized by George Bush! Wednesday, September21, 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. Beth El Synagogue, public sidewalk area along parking lot, 5224 West 26th Street, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. (This is the same synagogue that hosted Condi ...
Republican Golfing, Political Kabuki Theater and W.A.R. (Wasted American Resources)
As you can see, the John Boehner-Minnesota Golfing Fundraiser in Minnesota enjoyed beautiful weather on Wednesday August 17, 2011. So did our Come Home America group as we traveled to Wayzata, Minnesota to banner outside the event. We had read that House Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Erik ...
"Then They Pulled the Plug" – Hillary Clinton
Unbelievable! Someone just sent me this article below which describes how retired CIA analyst and Veteran for Peace Ray McGovern was drug out of Hillary Clinton's press conference yesterday: At Clinton Speech: Veteran Bloodied, Bruised and Arrested for Standing Silently As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at ...
British Consul Closes Office to Duck Assange Letter
On February 7, 2011, a small group of peace activists organized by the "Tackling Torture at the Top" Committee of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) tried to meet with the British Honorary Consul at his office on the 26th floor of the US Bancorp Center, 800 Nicollet Mall, in downtown ...
NYT's Keller Disparages Assange
How unseemly for New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to look down so disdainfully at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with a nasty ad hominem portrayal in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets.” Someone should count how many disparaging descriptions Keller slips in ...
State of the Union: Don’t Ignore the Elephant War Machine in the Room
We are soon going to hear about our "State of the Union" but no matter what is said and no matter how good the speech, the current war machine dominating the state of the union will remain difficult to turn around. Even a president with military leadership like Eisenhower quickly ...
How Top Secret America Misfires
Why Those Who Value Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties Must Ask Congress to Initiate "Church Committee"-type Hearings Why has Congress not yet awoken to the fact that since 9-11 we have been sailing into a perfect storm? Here are just some of the turbulent winds blowing and pushing officials in ...
OMB Orders Government Agencies to Monitor Disgruntled Employees -- What's Next?
By Linda Lewis and Coleen Rowley As Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano recently admitted, the notion of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is so totally passé. (She didn't explain, of course why, if Bush's old rationale is no longer valid, we still ...
'Dear Afghanistan': A New Year's Call for Peace
Here are some of the e-mails from Minnesotans (beginning with my own) sent today, New Year's Day 2011, taking advantage of the "Dear Afghanistan" communication exchange opportunity organized by the Afghan Youth Voices of Peace. Given our ongoing war situation, some (like mine) probably commenced a little awkwardly but at ...
Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
By Susu Jeffrey and Coleen Rowley Domestic surveillance of peace groups, speech elevated to material support for state enemies, secret assassinations of American citizens — the war on terror has come home. Even publishing an op-ed or filing an amicus brief could be a criminal act. Offering training in non-violent ...
Presidential Powers: Prudence or Perversion? Playing Jeopardy
If we're playing Jeopardy, and we are, this would be the answer: It's the real no-brainer answer to the legal and ethical questions posed by the University of St. Thomas Law School in allowing "torture memo" authors John Yoo and Robert Delahunty to speak this Thursday, October 7th. Let's hope ...
Update about the Government’s New War on Peace
In the first of 20 some rallies being conducted outside FBI offices in cities around the country, a few hundred peace and civil liberties activists gathered yesterday in Lake Wobegon Minneapolis. Some of last week’s victims of FBI raids and grand jury subpoenas spoke out: The Minnesotans who had gathered ...
Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwestern Anti-war Activists
The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI's "Joint Terrorism ...
Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: War With Iran We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is ...
Join the FAT (Fast Against Torture) on August 1, 2010
Please consider participating in a 24 hour Fast Against Torture in memory of all those illegally, unethically tortured around the world, including, most importantly, those tortured and waterboarded by the Bush-Cheney administration. Sunday August 1, 2010 is the eight-year anniversary of the writing of the "torture memos" by Office of ...
Sad Clouds Hang Over St. Thomas Law Graduation
By Roger Cuthbertson and Coleen Rowley UPDATED 6/29/2010 Clouds hung over the St. Thomas School of Law graduation on May 8, 2010, in more ways than one. The University of St. Thomas Law School held its graduation ceremony at Orchestra Hall, a few blocks from their campus. So most of ...
Maybe it was because June is "Torture Awareness Month", but when the wrenching image of an oil drenched pelican (taken by Associated Press Photographer Charlie Riedel) as a result of the BP oil spill appeared in our Star Tribune newspaper earlier this month, anti-torture activist Diane Steen-Hinderlie quickly spotted this ...
Karl Rove: No Courage. No Consequences. Yet.
We had to scurry last week to organize the proper welcome when we heard that war criminal Karl Rove was coming back to the Twin Cities to “inspire” his young Republicans at the University of Minnesota and try to peddle more of his bizarrely-titled Courage and Consequence books. Even though ...
Asking Minnesotan Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar to Say NO to War
Tuesday evening over 100 Minnesotans demonstrated outside Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office with half of our group eventually going inside to seek a response from the Senator as to how she would vote on the upcoming $33 billion “war supplemental” to continue the escalation of war on Afghanistan. After a couple ...
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December 14th, 2011
The Danger from Politicizing ‘Terror’
Glenn Greenwald’s critique – regarding the recent U.S. indictment of 38-year-old Iraqi Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa (currently in Canada) – is spot on about “terrorism” ...
December 4th, 2011
Bringing the ‘War on Terror’ Home
The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our Constitutional Republic into a powerful, unaccountable Military Empire. The U.S. Senate has ...
November 11th, 2011
11/11/11 Will Be Celebrated as Originally Intended: As Armistice Day!
Why will members of Veterans for Peace again ring bells 11 times on Armistice /Veterans Day instead of shooting guns into the air? As David ...
October 18th, 2011
Neither security nor democracy comes from a gun
I recently enjoyed the opportunity to speak to various groups at the University of Northern Iowa in connection with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 ...
September 29th, 2011
October 2011: Let's Shape Up as Citizens by Exercising First Amendment!
In the course of making our final plans to travel to Washington DC's Freedom Plaza next week for the historic October2011 events, our Minnesota peace ...
September 20th, 2011
With editing assistance from Hugh Iglarsh, writer/editor/citizen based in Chicago These two words sum up well the op-ed I co-wrote with Bogdan Dzakovic before the ...
September 16th, 2011
Bush Kept Out of Canada, Can We Keep Him Out of Minnesota Too?
Please JOIN US for an anti-torture candlelight vigil dedicated to detainees and victims of torture authorized by George Bush! Wednesday, September21, 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. ...
February 17th, 2011
"Then They Pulled the Plug" – Hillary Clinton
Unbelievable! Someone just sent me this article below which describes how retired CIA analyst and Veteran for Peace Ray McGovern was drug out of Hillary ...
February 6th, 2011
NYT's Keller Disparages Assange
How unseemly for New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to look down so disdainfully at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with a nasty ad hominem ...
December 4th, 2011
Bringing the ‘War on Terror’ Home
The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our Constitutional Republic into a powerful, unaccountable Military Empire. The U.S. Senate has ...
September 26th, 2010
Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwestern Anti-war Activists
The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and ...
September 20th, 2011
With editing assistance from Hugh Iglarsh, writer/editor/citizen based in Chicago These two words sum up well the op-ed I co-wrote with Bogdan Dzakovic before the ...
August 21st, 2011
Republican Golfing, Political Kabuki Theater and W.A.R. (Wasted American Resources)
As you can see, the John Boehner-Minnesota Golfing Fundraiser in Minnesota enjoyed beautiful weather on Wednesday August 17, 2011. So did our Come Home America ...
October 13th, 2010
Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
By Susu Jeffrey and Coleen Rowley Domestic surveillance of peace groups, speech elevated to material support for state enemies, secret assassinations of American citizens — ...
Home Front: Portraits from Sheikh Jarrah
Mike, was the triple overtime Outback Bowl come-from-behind win the greatest Spartans game ever?
Yes -- or at least it will be until their appearance in next year's Rose Bowl, a game which... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on Conan, 12/7/11
Michael Moore on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 11/21/11
Michael Moore on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 11/15/11
Michael Moore on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 11/9/11
