COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan[at]earthlink.net, @ColeenRowley
Rowley, a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.
She just wrote the piece “Why This FBI Whistleblower Seconds Jill Stein’s Call For A New 9/11 Investigation” for Huffington Post, which states: “On this sad 15th anniversary of 9/11, I am encouraged to see that Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein put out a statement calling for a new investigation not afflicted by all the limitations, partisan obstacles and other problems that adversely affected the 9/11 Commission.
“It’s what so many of us have long called for, including me personally (see here and here) as someone with a front row seat to the FBI’s initial cover-ups. The FBI was only one of the agencies and political entities which strived to cover up the truth of why and how they all ignored a ‘system blinking red’ in the months before the attacks. So successful had this been that when I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002, I actually felt I had to explain why the truth was important. That we ‘owed it to the public, especially the victims of terrorism, to be completely honest’ and ‘learning from our mistakes’ were two of the reasons I came up with.
“But the biggest mistake, the launching of the ruinous, counter-productive ‘war on terror,’ had already broken out even before my testimony (and long before the 9/11 Commission was allowed to begin work), along with its attendant war crimes such as torture, which were secretly ‘legalized.’” Rowley will be participating in the upcoming World Beyond War conference beginning Sept. 23 in Washington D.C.
ELIZABETH MURRAY, emurray404[at]aol.com, @elizabethmurra
Murray served as deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government, where she specialized in Middle Eastern political and media analysis.
She is quoted in Rowley’s new piece: “I have long believed there needs to be a kind of 9/11 ‘Truth Commission’ — completely independent and untainted by any political organization — in order for this country to be able to move forward in any meaningful way. The sad fact is that many folks, for varying reasons, just don’t want to ‘go there’ — i.e. the truth may be too painful for them. I don’t know exactly what happened on 9/11, but given my government’s record on Iraq and other issues, I have no reason to trust the official version.
“I think that keeping the public in a fog regarding 9/11 is extremely destructive to the health of the nation. 9/11 is like an open running sore — let’s heal it, painful as it may be.”