Americans Who Tell the Truth

Coleen Rowley Comments:

 

At the time of 9-11, I had been an FBI agent for over 20 years.  My main responsibilities had become teaching criminal procedure to FBI agents and other law enforcement officers, mostly about 4th Amendment search and seizure, 5th and 6th Amendment law of interrogation, right to attorney and constitutional protection of rights to “free speech”, due process, habeas corpus, and against cruel and unusual punishment.  A week before 9-11, I and the rest of the FBI’s ethics instructors were mandated (as a result of an earlier public FBI scandal) to give a one hour PowerPoint presentation, a form of remedial training on “law enforcement ethics” which I accomplished in a fairly perfunctory way, just reading the slides.  After 9-11, with the knowledge I had of the bitter internal dispute inside the FBI that was being hushed up but had kept some of our better agents from possibly uncovering more of the 9-11 plot before it happened, I couldn’t forget two of the slides in that Law Enforcement ethics curriculum:  “DO NOT:  Puff, Shade, Tailor, Firm up, Stretch, Massage, or Tidy up statements of fact.”  And “Misplaced Loyalties:  As employees of the FBI, we must be aware that our highest loyalty is to the United States Constitution.  We should never sacrifice the truth in order to obtain a desired result (e.g. conviction of a defendant) or to avoid personal or institutional embarrassment.” 

 

The official dissembling and excuse-making about the true causes and prior mistakes that allowed the terrorist attacks to happen, almost immediately ushered in the Bush-Cheney Administration’s egregious and lawless “war on terror” post 9-11 agenda which bore no connection to the original causes and no connection to the goal of reducing terrorism and making the world safer.  When I got a chance, about 8 ½ months after 9-11 to tell what I knew, I did so and my disclosures led to further investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General and figured in the 9-11 Commission Report.  But it was way too late for this emerging bit of truth to have any impact.  Having seen the cost of remaining silent, I publicly warned, a few months after my first memo, against launching the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.  I was ultimately forced to step down from my legal position and I retired from the FBI in 2004.  But I have continued to speak out about the counter-productiveness of this misbegotten “war on terror” (which has now been re-termed the “long war” and/or “permanent war”) in every way I can think of, including an unsuccessful run for Congress and engaging in various forms of peace activism.