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.
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 ...
Last night our group of over 50 “Minnesotans for Peace” asked Al Franken “What Would Wellstone Do?” The response was extremely disappointing. To be clear, Franken’s staff and the St. Paul police officers are to be commended for their patience, professionalism and willingness to listen. Al Franken is to be ...
End the Fog of War! Read the Eikenberry Memos!
This new video from Robert Greenwald “Rethink Afghanistan War: The Eikenberry Cables” is a must-view for those who remember the Vietnam War and the difficulty of ending a quagmire that dragged on long after military officials and Presidential Administrations knew it was “unwinnable” and wrong. The actual conversations of despair ...
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Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons
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September 28th, 2012
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And what kind of mind-boggling corruption -- of the worst kind -- influence peddling by a "foreign power" (as defined by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence ...
August 29th, 2012
In recent years, it has become evident that use of deadly force by a U.S.-dominated NATO is not only outside the parameters of international and ...
May 13th, 2012
Militarization of the Mothers: You've Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother's Day for Peace
Recall that Mother's Day was originated by Juliet Ward Howe not to fill restaurants or boost the stock of Hallmark cards but as an anti-militarism ...
March 10th, 2012
Background During the last 4 years the dispute over the implementation of Nobel´s prize for the "champions of peace" has come to a head. The ...
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 ...
April 19th, 2013
Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons
I almost choked on my coffee listening to neoconservative Rudy Giuliani pompously claim on national TV that he was surprised about any Chechens being responsible ...
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 ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
