They Could Have Stopped 9/11 - Coleen Rowley on the Moussaoui case
The website AntiWar.com - which has historically shown mixed interest in 9.11 Truth issues, is running this interview with Coleen Rowley. It was a pleasure for me to meet Coleen at the Treason in America conference last week. It was somewhat sureal that, years after including her story in my film, she was rushing up to me in person, after my presentation, to shake my hand and thank me.
Coleen is an extremely important part of our efforts to reach out and connect with a new audience. Like Cindy Sheehan she is building bridges for 9/11 Truth with the antiwar community - and we should all support and promote her efforts as vigorously as possible.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/13/coleen-rowley/
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and 9/11 whistleblower, discusses the myth that FISA restrictions (and not incompetence at FBI and CIA headquarters) prevented critical intelligence sharing prior to 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet’s August 2001 “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly” powerpoint briefing about Zacarias Moussaoui and why the creation of the DHS and increased centralization of intelligence organizations did nothing to fix 9/11 failures.
Coleen Rowley grew up in a small town in northeast Iowa. She obtained a B.A. degree in French from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa and then attended the College of Law at the University of Iowa. She graduated with honors in 1980 and passed the Iowa Bar Exam that summer.
In January of 1981, Ms. Rowley was appointed as a Special Agent with the FBI and initially served in the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi Divisions. In 1984, she was assigned to the New York Office and for over six years worked on Italian-organized crime and Sicilian heroin drug investigations. During this time, Ms. Rowley also served three separate temporary duty assignments in the Paris, France Embassy and Montreal Consulate.
In 1990, Ms. Rowley was transferred to Minneapolis where she assumed the duties of Chief Division Counsel, which entailed oversight of the Freedom of Information, Forfeiture, Victim-Witness and Community Outreach Programs as well as providing regular legal and ethics training to FBI Agents of the Division and additional outside police training.
In May of 2002, Ms. Rowley brought several of the pre 9/11 lapses to light and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on some of the endemic problems facing the FBI and the intelligence community. Ms. 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 Person 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, Ms. Rowley stepped down from her (GS-14) legal position to resume her position as 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.”
Ms. Rowley authored a chapter in a book published in 2004 by the Milton Eisenhower Foundation entitled, Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense: Restoring America’s Promise at Home and Abroad. She is also now an avid blogger on the Huffington Post.
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Colleen Rowley is major reason why Nightline came
This is just my opinion, but I believe a major reason why the Treason in America Conference will be seen as historically important is the presence of Ms Rowley. As Co Person of the Year for Time, Rowley's presence represented an opportunity for Nightline to head off an important breakthrough. They may have come to attack Avery and Rowe, but I believe Rowley was their primary draw.
Don't expect to hear the truth at www.antiwar.com
You will be very disappointed if you want to go to antiwar.com to get the truth. You may hear that some people were ineffective, made mistakes, poor thinkers, etc. But you will not hear about any evidence that assumes any criminal plan or foreknowledge.
I used to go to antiwar.com. I used to go there every day for news about the war in Iraq, and I contributed to the site.
Justin Raimondo, the main man there, was the first to see the connections between the Mossad and 9/11, and the coverup. He even published a book about it, long before much about 9/11 truth came out.
And then somebody got to him, or for some reason changed his mind on 9/11. Since then he and the site have not contributed a single bit of information that shows the lying and coverup in the official story of 9/11.
Worse, Justin has on several occassions presented articles that insulted the whole movement, never making any adequate arguments, but simply insulting, I think somebody got to him, threatened him. This was a huge turnaround for somebody who realized from the beginning that something was suspicious about 9/11.
I'm hoping that either Justin Raimondo will become the brave journalist I thought he was at one time, or his site will die out. I'm tired of so called "alternative" sites, sites you go to when you KNOW the real story is being covered up by the msm, censoring the important facts and stories about the most important day in American history. Add to antiwar.com: Democracy Now (Amy Goodman), Counterpunch, Common Dreams, the Nation mag, Mother Jones, Z mag, Truthout. We don't need these censoring media censoring outlets.
Very similar experiences
pfgetty,
I almost thought I was reading my own comment there, for a second. I, too, was once an avid reader of antiwar.com, until their obtuseness re 9/11 just became too much--not only refusing to see how critical the issue of what really happened on 9/11 was to the antiwar cause, but, beyond that, bashing the movement that--for the good of that same antiwar cause--was exposing the untenability of the official story.
But I've never found it necessary to presume that Raimondo was 'gotten' to. While I haven't read his book, I never had the impression that he ever believed in anything more than Israeli 'foreknowledge' of the attacks (and I don't mean to imply that that isn't an important line of inquiry), or ever considered the plot to be anything but the work of Muslim extremists. He's harshly critical of Israeli policy, of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and of American neocons--but apparently, despite all of that, he never (that I've seen) felt moved to seriously reconsider the version of Al Qaeda presented in the U.S. news media. And when it became impossible to ignore the number of people whose skepticism toward the official story extended beyond questions of foreknowledge and actually argued that the attacks had been an inside job, he apparently didn't consider how much such a view was consistent with his own writings about the state of the U.S. government, and instead reacted with the same scorn and derision that many people do when confronted with an idea that had never occurred to them before. It's not uncommon for people to resist or reject an unfamiliar notion even on matters less 'explosive' than 9/11; even those people who don't manifest the swaggering, know-it-all egotism of a Raimondo (or of a Cockburn, at Counterpunch, to give another example). But when you get all these elements at work together, the result can be...pretty obnoxious and alientating from the standpoint of 9/11 truth.
If there are now indications that he is opening a crack regarding 9/11, much better late than never.
same experience here
I also used to read antiwar in the past. then I had a really bad experience with one of their bosses and paymaster, a guy named Eric Garris (you care read all about it here: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/11/reflections-on-antiwarcom-deba...) and I basically lost all respect for them. But before that, I did pay close attention to what Raimondo and Scott Horton had to say about the 9/11 Truth movement (of which, at the time, I was not even a member being still what I called a "9/11 agnostic") and I can tell you that they basically think we are all 'cooks' with tinfoil hats and the like. And since their mega-hero Ron Paul never supported the 9/11T movement, neither will they. Frankly, I have not visited that website in a long long time now. I sure hope that you are correct and that they are slowly coming around (after all, it also took me 8 years to open my eyes....) but I am not holding my breath.
VS
PS: John Albanese, what a great talk you gave.
I really enjoyed the your talk I listened to, here on the blogger. I've sent it to many people. I'd like to see more. You are a very reasoned and insightful person.
Bravo!
Thanks
Thanks for the feedback.
I've been frustrated for years by antiwar.com apparent news blackout on the subject of 9/11 Truth. But recently they appear to be cracking the door open slightly - and letting some light shine in.
Justin Raimondo recently wrote:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/01/10/the-weird-factor/
"What I call the Weird Factor, for lack of a better name, seems to have become a permanent feature of our post-9/11 world, a dark and sinister leitmotif that plays in the background. On 9/11, of course, the Factor was on full display as a whole string of unusual events and unexplained phenomena were visited on us. The 9/11 Commission did little to clear these matters up, for the most part because they didn’t address them. Just a few for the record: Bush reading My Pet Goat to schoolchildren after being told of the attacks, the sudden appearance of the "Israeli art students" – and their buddies, the "laughing Israelis" – in the months and weeks leading up to the attacks, and the apparent passivity of US air defenses on that fateful day."
"I mean, how is it possible that the terrorists actually hit the Pentagon, the symbolic fortress of America’s alleged military supremacy? After spending untold trillions on "defense" over the years, a sum that never declines in real terms, and driving ourselves into near-bankruptcy on account of it, how in the name of all that’s holy did nineteen men armed with box-cutters manage to drive Don Rumsfeld stumbling into the street, literally running for his life?"
How indeed? How is it possible? Raimondo just asked the $1 million question. He has just reached the first plateau of 9/11 Truth.
Look - we shouldn't condemn people who do not share our world view. We just need to continue lobbying for answers - and watching people like Raimondo very closely - to see when they crack that door open - and then stick our foot in!!
Thank you Coleen for sticking your foot in.
That IS encouraging. Thanks for the reply.
That does sound like Justin has made a bit of a change of thinking.
Still, this guy is far too smart, and suspicious of elite power, not to think that there is an obvious connection between the planning for the 9/11 attacks and the US government.
Why has he not even mentioned the nanothermite in the WTC building collapse debris?
That is such an obvious bit of evidence that shows complicity of higher officials in the attacks.
Well, we still have a lot of work to do, don't we?
I wish I could do more, but getting even a few words back from somebody on the front lines of this battle, like you, is encouraging to me. I'm living in a little southern town on the coast of NC, between Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point Marine Corps Air station. And this is the Bible Belt here. I don't get any encouragement or fellowship from anybody else here about 9/11 Truth. It is lonely, but I have persisted in my realization of what went on that day.
One day I would love to connect with more people. So many are isolated like I am. It is hard to be so out of whack with what the rest of your community feels.
I am so grateful that people like you are fighting for our future, our country, all the time.
Keep it up.