FBI Terror-Effort Whistleblower Retires

[seemslikeadream]

By Associated Press

...

Rowley, who worked for the FBI for 24 years, said she has no immediate plans, but wants to be considered for appointment to a new federal board that will ensure counterterrorism investigations and arrests do not infringe on people's rights. The law overhauling the nation's intelligence apparatus directs the Department of Homeland Security to create the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

She did not immediately return a call left Friday night by The Associated Press.

Rowley was hailed by colleagues in Minneapolis in 2002 when she wrote a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller accusing bureau headquarters of blowing a chance to unravel the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking plot.

She charged that FBI supervisors in Washington blundered when they blocked requests from Minneapolis agents for a special warrant to search the possessions of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet at a Minnesota flight school. Moussaoui is now the only figure facing U.S. trial in connection with the attacks.

...

In early 2003, however, Rowley angered fellow agents by making public a letter she wrote urging Mueller to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Rowley argued that a war in Iraq could result in a "flood of terrorism" on a scale the bureau was not prepared to handle.

...

There, she was the agency's public face, serving as spokeswoman for several years in the 1990s and through some major cases, including the high-profile hunt for killer Andrew Cunanan and the capture, in St. Paul, Minn., of Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson.
more
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-rowley-retires,0,6259854.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

[Pam-Moby]

1. We need more ex FBI people like her.

I bet she will not get the job is *ush has anything to do with it. Sad

[TexasChick]

2. Yeah, especially after she said this:

but wants to be considered for appointment to a new federal board that will ensure counterterrorism investigations and arrests do not infringe on people's rights.



Imagine, someone still believing in Democracy.

[Lostnote03]

3. Wasn't $25,000 plus carreer advancement awarded to the "brainiac" that ...

....halted Rowleys inquirey....

[seemslikeadream]

4. * * *Dept. head who blocked Colleen Rowley given award. * * *

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1378478

9215 (1000+ posts) Fri Apr-09-04 10:40 AM
Original message
* * *Dept. head who blocked Colleen Rowley given award. * * *


Collen Rowley the FBI agent mentioned by 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorlick as having been thwarted in her attempt to expose Moussaoui before 9/11 was one of three "Women of the Year" for Time magazine 2002.

Well, get a load of this. The person responsible for blocking Rowley's info was also given an award. She was given an "exceptional performance" award by the Bush administration.

A nasty political sequel is being played out before our eyes. "The Bureaucracy Strikes Back" is the story flowing from the courageous saga of Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who blew the whistle on higher-ups in the FBI's bureaucracy.
Just seven months ago she was being heralded as a national hero for daring to testify that top-level FBI officials had stymied efforts by Minneapolis agents to search records of Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A go-ahead from Washington for a search in Minneapolis might have yielded information that might have prevented the horrid attacks. A search of Moussaoui's belongings after 9/11 found clues to the plot.......

...At a quiet little ceremony earlier this month, Marion (Spike) Bowman was one of nine people in the bureau to receive an award for "exceptional performance." The award carries with it a cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of the recipient's salary and a framed certificate signed by the president.

What does this have to do with Rowley?

Bowman heads the FBI's National Security Law Unit. That's the unit that blocked Minneapolis agents from pursuing their suspicions about Moussaoui.

Bowman received the big pats on the back (and cash) a few days before the House and Senate Intelligence committees turned in their reports of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures. The committees said that Minneapolis agents deserved honors for their work and that those who performed poorly should be disciplined. The National Security Law Unit was singled out by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., for inept performance.

There were no FBI honors for the Minneapolis office. There was a big honor for the lead antagonist of the Minneapolis office.
.......more.......
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3547688.html


Not only did Bush try to impede investigations into terrorism, particularly Al Qaeda, but rewarded those who helped him.


Here is some info on Rowley:


And the FBI "Deliberately thwarted investigation" :

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/27/2032...

The now-infamous memo written by FBI veteran Colleen Rowley, the FBI's chief lawyer in the Minneapolis field office, to her boss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, reveals that bureau officials may have engaged in a massive cover-up to hide their malfeasance and negligence that apparently led to the events of Sept. 11.
In another sensational claim, she says that a senior bureau official continued to block the investigation of an al-Qaeda terrorist after his cohorts had made their attacks on the World Trade Center.
In Rowley's 13-page memo, she recounts how the Minneapolis agents became desperate to search the computer laptop that had been taken from the arrested "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui, as well as to conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects.
In her memo to Mueller, Rowley took exception to claims that the events of 9-11 could not have been prevented and that any argument they could have was a result of "20-20 hindsight" rationale.
In fact, Rowley says, on Sept. 11, "after the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already occurred," the Minneapolis office telephoned Washington and "the FBI Supervisory Special Agent who was the one most involved in the Moussaoui matter and who, up to that point, seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts."
Rowley said her office was shocked when, "Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Minneapolis' prior suspicions about Moussaoui.".....more.....



And this is part of the all to familiar pattern of the Bush admin marginalizing "people who knew".

FBI told to back off Saudis and OBL by Bush (Palast in Guardian). http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,429368...


Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
"September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that," Wright said. "You can't know the things I know and not go public."
More on FBI agents whistleblowers from sept. 2002:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/2469.shtml
FBI AGENT ROBERT WRIGHT SAYS FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS CONTINUE TO PROTECT TERRORISTS FROM CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS


:hi:
9215

[Minstrel Boy]

6. another coincidence

:hi:

[seemslikeadream]

8. and likely stories

I learned a safety rule
I don’t know who to thank
Don't stand between the reservation and the
corporate bank
They send in federal tanks
It isn’t nice but it’s reality

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh.

They got these energy companies that want the land
and they’ve got churches by the dozen who want to
guide our hands
and sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and
greed
Get rich... get rich quick.

We got the federal marshals
We got the covert spies
We got the liars by the fire
We got the FBIs
They lie in court and get nailed
and still Peltier goes off to jail

My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of
exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo

We had the Goldrush Wars
Aw, didn’t we learn to crawl and still our history gets
written in a liar’s scrawl
They tell ‘ya “Honey, you can still be an Indian
d-d-down at the ‘Y’
on Saturday nights”

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh!

http://www.creative-native.com/albums/coin.htm

So what ever happened to 9215? Rumor was he took off for the Keys to do a little writing. :evilgrin:

:hi:

[Carl Brennan]

10. Holy you know what!! Excellent work sld.

As usual.

What was that somebody said about no bad deed gone unrewarded?

[Lostnote03]

7. Thanks MB&SLAD.......

......Pretty disgusting isn't it?

[Minstrel Boy]

5. "Dept. head who blocked Colleen Rowley given award"

The original story has been removed; thanks to old DUer 9215 for the thread:

...At a quiet little ceremony earlier this month, Marion (Spike) Bowman was one of nine people in the bureau to receive an award for "exceptional performance." The award carries with it a cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of the recipient's salary and a framed certificate signed by the president.

What does this have to do with Rowley?

Bowman heads the FBI's National Security Law Unit. That's the unit that blocked Minneapolis agents from pursuing their suspicions about Moussaoui.

Bowman received the big pats on the back (and cash) a few days before the House and Senate Intelligence committees turned in their reports of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures. The committees said that Minneapolis agents deserved honors for their work and that those who performed poorly should be disciplined. The National Security Law Unit was singled out by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., for inept performance.

There were no FBI honors for the Minneapolis office. There was a big honor for the lead antagonist of the Minneapolis office.

Another one who blocked Rowley and others was Dave Frasca of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalism Unit, who received a promotion for his efforts:

Who is Dave Frasca?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1383582

The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington D.C.


Dave Frasca is the key supervising special agent in the charge of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington D.C. According to Newsweek (June 3, 2002, p. 25) "Frasca was the agent in charge of the Moussaoui case and his office also received the Phoenix memo." The New York Times also confirms that the "FBI clearinghouse for Al Qaeda intelligence was the Bin Laden and Radical Fundamentalist Units...The units had complete access to the Phoenix memorandum, the Moussaoui case and the Ressam debriefings." (Ressam is the man with the bomb intended for the L.A. Airport who was arrested at the Canadian border in December, l999) (New York Times, May 27, 2002, p. A11)

Despite intense criticism of Dave Frasca by FBI agent Rowley in her famous report, she has never revealed publicly his name. Yet Patrick J.. Leahy (an anthrax target), Democrat of Vermont; Charles E. Grussley, Republican of Iowa and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania "have identified Dave Frasca" as the cutting edge of the U.S. Government's pre-September 11 do nothing policy in regards to Al Qaeda terrorists.

...

After, when Rowley talked to other FBI agents in other parts of the country, the first question was Why?—"Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case?" Agent Rowley reports that jokes were made that FBI Headquarters personnel were "spies" or "moles" who were actually "working for Osama Bin Laden." (Rowley Report p. 7) Apparently no one mentioned that it could be the other way around i.e., Bin Laden working for the CIA/FBI. The notion that Bush cabinet members were urging the CIA/FBI chiefs to keep a lit on local FBI investigative actions to arrest or curtail terrorist plots was, at the time, an unthinkable thought. That after all, would not be a joke. It would be one of the most murderous, diabolical cover up committed against American citizens by an American President and cabinet.

Back to Dave Frasca, the head of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit. Here we have a classic case of a highly placed intelligence agent stonewalling for his paymasters. Frasca even suggested that the French Intelligence Reports were "worthless" because they only identified Zacarias Moussaoui by name and he didn't know how many people existed with that name in France. A Minneapolis agent phoned the FBI's legal attache in France who found only one Zacarias Moussaoui in the entire Paris phone directory (Rowley Report, p. 8) Rowley writes further that "we were prevented from even attempting to question Moussaoui on the day of the attacks, when in theory, he could have possessed further information about other co-conspirators." (Rowley Report, p. 9) According to Newsweek June 3, 2002, p. 22) "Moussaoui's computer, searched after September 11, revealed information about crop-dusting and large jets and his belongings included the phone number of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta's roommate."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html

[TahitiNut]

9. Blowing the whistle on corruption is a career-limiting move ...

... even when you appear on the cover of Time magazine. This is just another clear indication of pervasive corruption within our national insititutions at the highest levels.

[Carl Brennan]

11. Rowley was insubordinate

which in the Bush Admin means being honest and doing your job.


FBI told to back off Saudis and OBL by Bush (Palast in Guardian). This needs to be linked to Rowley and others being hamstrung: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4293682,00.html

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.

FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.

The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected terrorist organisation".


Great find SLAD. It is good that we keep tabs on the heroes.

[Carl Brennan]

12. ABC News: Two FBI agents were called off hunt for Al Qaeda.

Two FBI agents were called off hunt for Al Qaeda, ABC news:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/DailyNews/FBI_whistleblowers021219.html

In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
"September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that," Wright said. "You can't know the things I know and not go public."

[bobthedrummer]

13. She knew it was coming, she is another brave woman like Sibel Edmonds

Karen Kwiatkowski. They stood for the truth about this administration.

[seemslikeadream]

14. Karen Kwiatkowski

Bagged and Tagged!

Thanks to a convenient reorganization by the all-knowing and also wild-eyed Secretary Rumsfeld, this consolidation of budget and product has been further stovepiped into an even more politically manageable entity, the Defense Under Secretary for Intelligence. The office is currently staffed by neoconservative loyalist and Claremont Institute alumni Stephen Cambone and his deputy, Bible-thumping warmonger General "Jerry" Boykin.

One wonders how long the rush to lay the blame in a neat package on the CIA corporate culture doorstep will distract the media from the obvious. With 80% of the cash, 80% of the blame may well flow to the Pentagon. But maybe, just maybe, the Pentagon will be OK.

Work with me here. Let’s think back to the Pentagon behavior during the rush to war in 2002 and 2003….

As I recall, Rumsfeld was calm, slow to act, and full of wisdom. He is the man who insists on facts and hard evidence, or was it absence of evidence? Never mind….

Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraqis want democracy and we should support them in their goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein from afar, given the lack of intelligence that would push us into any premature involvement in Baghdad. As a student of history, with a bloody painting of the Battle of Antietam dominating his office wall, Wolfowitz also understood the danger of war, the unintended consequences, the cost.

Under Secretary for Policy Doug Feith was telling anyone who would listen that while it is unfortunate that ugly dictatorships and human rights abusers exist in the world, sometimes it is pragmatic to deal with them, instead of bomb and occupy them. Feith would also remind us of all the oil we bought from Iraq under the oil for food program.
more
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski82.html


The Lie Factory

Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest
January/February 2004 Issue of Mother Jones

It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs.

So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full.
But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.
more
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

That Audacious Richard Clarke

This truth is damaging to that single horse the administration is riding in this election race. The economy, the budget, the debt, veteran's benefits, military readiness, Medicare and social security crises, education, immigration – all are issues where the administration has sorely disappointed conservatives like me, as well as liberals and independents, in every state. If the war on terror horse stumbles, the administration falls.

...

The audacious Mr. Clarke is for all Americans a modern sign of grace, of the power of truth over deception, and of courage over cowardice. May the strong winds blow and the rain come down in Washington, and again save our Republic.

http://militaryweek.com/kk032904.shtml

:hi:

[Supersedeas]

16. Funny how it works that way without the MSM connecting the dots

[Liberty Belle]

15. I hope she writes a tell-all book.

[Carl Brennan]

17. kick