FBI agent, whistleblower, won't run

AP | 11/26/03

[kattracks]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis FBI agent who called attention to the agency for failing to act before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said she has decided not to run for Congress.

Coleen Rowley told the Star Tribune in a story published Wednesday that she doubted she would fit into politics. She noted that as a youngster, "I only sold 16 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I was the lowest in the whole troop. I don't have much salesmanship in me."

Democratic activists had tried to persuade her to run against freshman Republican Rep. John Kline in the Second District, which includes suburbs and farm country south of the Twin Cities.

Running would have forced Rowley to quit the FBI about a year before she would qualify for early retirement benefits.

Rowley was named one of Time magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year. She criticized the FBI for refusing to seek a national security warrant for a search of terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui's possessions before the terror attacks.

[Thebaddog]

Her real goal has always been to get that pension, no more, no less. Perhaps she could have done a better job of getting the warning out before 911 if she had put that pension at risk at that time.

[alnick]

This is really no great loss. I read something that she wrote recently, and it was an incoherent mess.

[Thebaddog]

Getting on the cover of Time for pointing to the swinging barn door was the real mess.

[alnick]

Agreed.

[BiteMedems]

Incoherent? Seems like she would fit right in to the Democrat party. Take Teddy for example.