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Special Agent Coleen Rowley

FBI Intelligence (Ret.)
FBI special agent and intelligence expert; whistleblower and author

Biography

Special Agent (ret.) Coleen Rowley served in the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 24 years, during which time she worked in several offices, including those in Nebraska, Mississippi, New York, France and Montreal.

She also served as the Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel who taught Constitutional Law and law enforcement ethics to FBI agents and other law enforcement agencies. She then became a whistleblower about the FBI’s pre 9-11 failures, testifying to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Inspector General Staff of the Department of Justice. She was named, along with two other corporate whistleblowers, as Time Magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year. In an early March 2003 memorandum, she warned FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Bush Administration’s deceptive plan to launch war on Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks.

She holds a B.A. in French from Wartburg College and a law degree from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and CNN.com. In 2002, she received the Sam Adams Award – given annually to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics.

Areas of Expertise

  • Interagency National Security Intelligence process

  • Criminal, terrorism, and counter-intelligence investigations

  • Law enforcement / Use Of Force ethics

  • International and Constitutional law

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