Column: Ex-FBI Agent Rowley “Secretive, Unaccountable” Homeland Security Turning Inward on Americans

Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent and legal counsel in the Minneapolis field office, wrote a “whistleblower” memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She retired in 2004 and is now a writer and speaker.

FBI Agent Colleen Rowley/ photo ia.ucsb.edu
By COLEEN ROWLEY
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

A secretive, unaccountable, post-9/11 homeland security apparatus has increasingly turned inward on American citizens.

The evidence includes everything from controversial airport body scanners to the FBI’s raids last September on antiwar activists’ homes in Minneapolis and Chicago. A federal grand jury investigation in Chicago was recently expanded.

Unless the erosion of proper legal safeguards is halted, we risk a return to Vietnam-era abuses on the part of the FBI and other security agencies.

Agents are now given a green light, for instance, to check off “statistical achievements” by sending well-paid, manipulative informants into mosques and peace groups.

To read more click here.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

Leave a Reply