After the tragedy of September 11, the Americans were astonished and wondering about the attack that how a primeval group of the terrorists could freely attempt an attack on the soil of the United States without any involvement of the intelligence agencies of the country. They considered it impossible. The flight school provided the name of Zacarias Moussaoui to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and regarded him as a suspicious person. The flight school provided the name on 15th August 2001, and provided the information that Moussaoui was enrolled in the lessons regarding flight training at the school located in Minneapolis in August 2001, and he was just interested in learning how to land and take off the plane. The Federal Board of Investigation interviewed Moussaoui, roommate with whom he was living, and the flight instructor. The FBI, however, detained Zacarias Moussaoui because of the immigration status violation, and also took his belongings into custody.
The government agencies were just pretending about their astonishment, the special agent of the FBI named Coleen Rowley, who was Chief Division Councel of FBI in Minneapolis, came forward and disclosed that the field office of the agency located in Minneapolis was aware of the fact Moussaoui has given $8000 for the flying lessons of Boeing 747, and was also scheduling hijacking for the suicide. Coleen Rowley requested to search the room as well as computer of Moussaoui, but her bosses did not consider her request. Rowley became frustrated due to the mishandling and improper use of the information regarding attacks. So, she wrote a memorandum of 13 pages and delivered its copies to the director of FBI named Robert Mueller, and also to the members of Senate Intelligence Committee. The memo claimed that the bureau had purposely let down the efforts that might have stopped the attack of September 11. Rowley is now not working in FBI as she retired from the organization in the year 2004.
In 2002, her memo was printed in Time Magazine under the title, “The Bombshell Memo”. Rowley even did not felt any shy in disclosing the fact in front of the 9/11 commission that the tragedy could have been prevented if she had been granted permission officially to interrogate the suspected terrorist (Duffy & Shannon, 2002). The conclusion of this case is still unknown but at least Rowley has forced the Administration as well as FBI to face their failures publically and directly. In 2002, her name appeared as the Person of the Year in Time Magazine.
References
Duffy, M., & Shannon, E. (2002). How the FBI Blew the Case. Cnn.com. Retrieved from:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/27/time.fbi/
