Critical FBI Agent retires

The AP reports:

A career F.B.I. agent who wrote a blistering memo to the agency's director alleging missteps by the bureau before the Sept. 11 attacks retired from the agency on Friday.

The agent, Coleen Rowley, retired 11 days after turning 50, when she became eligible for a full pension, The Star Tribune reported.

Ms. Rowley, who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 24 years, said she had no immediate plans, but would like to be considered for appointment to a new federal board that will ensure counterterrorism investigations and arrests do not infringe on people's rights. The law overhauling the intelligence apparatus directs the Department of Homeland Security to create the panel, called the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Ms. Rowley was hailed by colleagues in Minneapolis in 2002 when she wrote a letter to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, accusing bureau headquarters of squandering a chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot.

She charged that F.B.I. supervisors in Washington blundered when they blocked requests from Minneapolis agents for a special warrant to search the possessions of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet at a Minnesota flight school. Mr. Moussaoui is now the only figure facing trial in the United States in connection with the attacks.

It's a sad day when one of the few FBI agents who has been willing to stand up to the tangled bureaucracy to help defend the American people is pushed to resign this early in her career.