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Interesting article on Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who has attacked the system for its failure on September 11.
Particularly so, to me, because of the portrait it paints of Rowley -
When she was in the fifth grade, Rowley wrote a letter to the bureau's headquarters in Washington and got back a booklet called 100 Facts About the FBI. From that point on, she dreamed of becoming an agent. Friends say she protested when her dean at the University of Iowa Law School refused to let an FBI recruiter on campus; she lost the battle but applied for a job on her own and was hired as a special agent after earning her law degree in 1980. She took pride in being a pioneer, part of the first wave of women fighting to be taken seriously in the bureau's male-dominated, button-down culture.
Another thing which fascinates me:
American life seems uniquely capable of producing stories like hers — a loyal public servant who clings to her belief in the system until a betrayal of that faith makes it impossible to stay silent.
Which sounds accurate to me, and probably applies more broadly than just in the US. It explains a great deal about corporate and government servants and whistleblowers. |
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