Coleen Rowley grew up in a small town in northeast Iowa. She obtained a B.A. degree in French from Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa and then attended the College of Law at the University of Iowa and graduated with honors in 1980 also passing the Iowa Bar Exam that summer.

In January of 1981, Rowley was appointed 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 6 years worked on Italian organized crime and Sicilian heroin drug investigations. During this time Rowley also served three separate temporary duty assignments in the Paris, France Embassy and Montreal Consulate.

In 1990 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 some outside police training.

In May of 2002 Rowley brought some of the 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, 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.

Rowley has 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.

Blog Entries by Coleen Rowley

Censorship Is Wrong: Let Max Speak!

Posted June 20, 2009 | 11:14 PM (EST)


Anyone who scans my prior Huffington Posts will quickly see that the common thread in most of them, is how counterproductive the post 9-11 "war on terror" has been; how it served to increase terrorism and violent acts in the world and was quickly turned into a war on dissent...

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Colin Powell: No Good Samaritan, only Bush's Deal-Sealer

2 Comments | Posted June 1, 2009 | 10:13 AM (EST)


It might not be exactly kosher to repost somebody else's opinion piece, like Ray McGovern's May 28th one, "Colin Powell: No Good Samaritan" (first posted at Consortium News) but I need to add my two cents. Specifically I can confirm that it was indeed Colin Powell's presentation to the...

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What's FISHY? -- PawLENTY!

25 Comments | Posted May 10, 2009 | 11:41 AM (EST)


2009-05-10-FishingOpenerShoreTeamwebsize.JPG

Guess who got up at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to try and warn all the people heading out on White Bear Lake at Minnesota's grand "Fishing Opener" to be on the look-out for this Pirate PawLENTY who's known to have sworn in...

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Outlasting the Bastards: Learning and Applying the Pete Seeger Lesson

2 Comments | Posted May 8, 2009 | 04:03 PM (EST)


Ever since seeing the "Power of Song" documentary about Pete Seeger in the fall of 2007 and then getting the chance to meet his chip-off-the-old-block-grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger who traveled to Minnesota during the RNC in September 2008 to sing at our "Peace Island Picnic", we have been fascinated with the...

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VIPS Memorandum re Torture: Don't Leave the Loaded Pistol Lying on the Kitchen Table

5 Comments | Posted April 30, 2009 | 04:38 PM (EST)


Twelve of us "Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity" just signed the memorandum below to the President on torture. Our points have been echoed by numerous military and civilian intelligence agency personnel as well as by one former member of the Church Committee, former Vice President Walter Mondale, who made this...

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Needed re Torture Issue: Real World Facts and Real World Understanding

5 Comments | Posted April 24, 2009 | 10:14 AM (EST)


Back in December 2007, when I wrote "Torture is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work", I mentioned that "the FBI agent who reportedly had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, Ali Soufan, the only Arabic-speaking agent in New York and one of only eight in the...

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Time to End the Torture Experiment!

7 Comments | Posted April 19, 2009 | 10:31 AM (EST)


My letter was published in the New York Times yesterday under the caption, "The Uproar Over the C.I.A. and Torture":

To the Editor:


The overall idea put forth on Thursday by torture apologists that the C.I.A. and other government employees were only following Department of Justice legal...

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Minnesota Still Adversely Affected by Republican National Convention

Posted March 28, 2009 | 07:58 PM (EST)


Minnesota Prosecutor Petitioned by Thousands to End Persecution

What do 17,000 members of the Duluth Central Labor Body; the "Minnesota 8" sixty-year olds whose Vietnam draft resistance experiences were commissioned into a 2008 "Peace Crimes" play; over 3000 people from all over the world (many of whom not only signed...

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92 Destroyed Tapes: A Need to Shed Light on Cheney's "Dark Side"

Posted March 2, 2009 | 06:53 PM (EST)


When I first posed these hard questions in the NY Times about the C.I.A. torture tapes, we were all under the belief that only two tapes had been destroyed. Now that we know it was ninety two tapes, all kinds of further questions emerge. But the most pressing is...

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Why the RNC Commission Report Won't Help Future Planners of National Security Special Events

Posted February 23, 2009 | 10:30 AM (EST)


One of the notable aspects of President Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington was that, somehow, without tear gas, tasers or thousands of people dragged off in handcuffs, professional law enforcement was able to provide exceptional public safety in our nation's capital, even when crowds swelled to almost 2 million people....

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Jesselyn Raddack: "Tell Senate to Demand Whistleblower Protection!"

Posted February 3, 2009 | 02:57 PM (EST)


I'm getting urgent notices from different whistleblower colleagues and "good government" groups today to tell the Senate that the whistleblower reform provision must remain in its "$800 Billion Stimulus Package." My friend Jesselyn Raddack, of the Government Accountability Project, put the matter urgently but succinctly:

There was no...
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Honoring a Whistleblower in the Sam Adams Tradition

Posted January 30, 2009 | 04:32 PM (EST)


Note: On Jan. 26, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Danish military intelligence officer Frank Grevil was given the Sam Adams award for integrity in intelligence. The following is an extended version of the introductory remarks by former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern. While I and others could only join...

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No Victors in the War on Dissent

Posted January 8, 2009 | 09:27 PM (EST)


Among the wars currently being fought by the American government is one in which there can be no winners. Our prior law enforcement experiences warn us that the "war on terrorism" has spawned an internal "war on dissent" in which everyone loses.

Author William John Cox's law enforcement career spanned...

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Bail Me Out!

Posted December 6, 2008 | 10:45 PM (EST)


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Mike Dennehy came up with this cute CARtoon today. All it needs is the invisible hand....out, huh?

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Criminalizing of Dissent: What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?

Posted November 14, 2008 | 11:00 PM (EST)


When I got this letter enclosing 20 some business cards from a St. Paul bail bond company about three weeks before the Republican National Convention, to give to members of my peace group, I couldn't believe it.

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As a retired FBI...

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McCain vs. Obama: Dueling Guitars

Posted October 21, 2008 | 04:41 PM (EST)


You probably can't get a better musical juxtaposition of their differing presidential aspirations than via these two You-Tubes: "Roll With It Johny" and "Be The Change"! Although both feature really good, original song creations written and performed by well known Twin Cities musicians describing the need to stand up for...

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Wrong Lesson from McCain's "Town Hall"

Posted October 13, 2008 | 06:11 PM (EST)


McCain's visit last Friday to the Lakeville (Minnesota) High School just 12 miles south of our home wasn't so much a bad reflection of Minnesota as it was a study in paradox. Unfortunately, the McCain campaign event, mishandled from start to finish, also furnished the worst lesson imaginable for those...

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McCain's Last Gasp in Minnesota?

Posted October 8, 2008 | 05:34 PM (EST)


The staging of John McCain's fake "townhall meeting" this Friday in Lakeville, Minnesota, promises to go beyond merely hokey as the latest polls here show Obama shooting to a 14 point lead over McCain. It seems McCain's upcoming appearance might turn out to be more of a desperate last...

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Doing Democracy at the Palin-McCain Rally

Posted September 21, 2008 | 01:11 PM (EST)


As we watched these 10,000 or so "bitter gun-toting Grandmas (and other Republicans) clinging to McCain and Palin" drive and walk by us as they headed into the rally in Blaine, Minnesota, this last Friday, I couldn't help but remember this old video showing what happens to blindfolded people...

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Peace Island in a Police State--When in Doubt, Hold a Picnic!

Posted September 7, 2008 | 12:52 AM (EST)


2008-09-07-HumanPeacesignwebsize.jpg

Just across the Mississippi from the RNC-created Police State in St. Paul, some brave picnickers turned out to form a message and enjoy a day of art and music at our Peace Island Picnic. But it wasn't without its surreal moments.

A call...

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