THE FBI, THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE and GARY THOMAS ROWE, JR. JULY 1979 Task Force Report On Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr. i l Ralph Hornblower, III Donald R. Burkhalter I John R. Fleder William M. Logan Marydale Drury, Researcher Office of Professional Responsibility Off ice of the Attorney General United States Department of Justice \ \ \ \ TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Mission of the Task Force 1 II. Summary of Findings 4 III. Historical Background 17 IV. Rowe Becomes an Informant 30 v. Incident at the Trailways Bus Station - 48 May 14, 1961 VI. May 1961 - June 1963 65 VII. Rowe and the Birmingham Bombings and the Shooting 74 of an Unidentified Black Man in 1963 A. The Bombings 74 B. The Shooting of an Unidentified Black 97 Man VIII. January 1964 - March 24, 1965 105 IX. Rowe and Eastview 13 Informant "Huey Lipscomb" 133 x. The Killing of Viola Liuzzo 147 A. Undisputed Facts 147 B. Accounts of Gary Thomas Rowe 161 C. Accounts of Eugene Thomas 187 and Collie Leroy Wilkins D. Account of Leroy Moton 214 E. Account of Lavaughn Coleman 222 F. The Federal Grand Jury 224 G. Physical Evidence 228 XI. The Prosecution of United States v. Eaton, et al. 238 A. What Civil Rights Division Attorneys 238 Knew About Rowe From the FBI B. What the FBI and the Civil Rights 246 Division Knew About Rowe's Apparently Untrue Statements '\ c. Wh~the Department and the FBI Never 253 Suspecte.d Rowe in the Liuzzo Killing - i - j XII. Gary Thomas Rowe - The Aftermath 257 Appendix I. Method of Review 1 i II. Rowe and the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program 8 III. Handling FBI Informants 12 A. FBI Rules and Regulations 12 B. How They Operated in Practice 29 C. Current Rules and Regulations 49 - ii - I. MISSION OF THE TASK FORCE On July 12, 1978, Senators Edward M. Kennedy and James Abourezk sent a joint letter to the Department of Justice stating that the Senate Judiciary Committee was 'iintensely interested" in receiving a full report on an investigation into allegations that Mr. Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., committed a violent crime while a government informant. On July 8, 9, and 11, 1978, the ·New York Times had published reports that Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., had taken part in violent crimes with klansmen while serving the FBI as an informant within the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham from 1960 to 1965. In particular, the Times reported that in 1963, Rowe shot an unidentified black man, and was told by his handling FBI agent to keep quiet about it. ABC television had also shown in July 1978, a two-part documentary suggesting that Rowe fired the bullet which killed Viola Liuzza, a civil rights worker who was shot on U. S. Highway 80 on March 25, 1965, following the Selma to Montgomery freedom march, and that he gave "indications of deception" when he told a polygrapher .in 1978 that he had not fired into Viola Liuzzo's car. ABC also repor~ed that Collie Leroy Wilkins gave a "truthful response" when he told a polygrapher that Rowe had fired toward the Liuzza car in 1965. After receiving the Senators' letter, Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti assigned the matter in- volving the unidentified black man to the Criminal Division - 1 - and the remaining allegations to the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. On August 1, 1978, Assistant Attorney General Philip B. Heymann informed the Deputy Attorney General th~t the Criminal Division needed full access to the FBI's files to complete its investigation and noted that the Statute of Limitations had run on any violations of Federal law that Rowe might have been committed in the early 1960's. On August 16, 1978, FBI Director William H. Webster forwarded to the Counsel, Office of Professional Responsi- bility for the Department of Justice, a 510-page report on . its preliminary inquiry of the Rowe allegations, based on a review of FBI files. After examining this and the Criminal Division's report, the Counsel ·requested the Attorney Gen- eral to assign four attorneys to complete the Rowe inquiry. On October 24, 1978, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell created a special task force of four attorneys to investigate and report on the following matters: (1) Whether FBI personnel acted improperly in handling Mr. Gary Thomas Rowe while he served as a Bureau informant within the United Klans of America (UKA); (2) Whether Civil Rights Division attorneys, who tried United States v. Eaton, et al. (the federal civil rights case arising out of the high­ way murder of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo), were aware of Mr. Rowe's alleged unreliability, or suspected he was unreliable; and (3) Whether there is any evidence to sub­ stantiate the allegation that Mr. Rowe was \ ... / - 2 - responsible for the death of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo (to the extent this is possible without preju­ dicing the rights of Mr. Rowe or the State of Alabama in view of Mr. Rowe's recent state indictment for the murder). Ralph Hornblower, III, returning to the Deparqnent of Justice, was app9inted to lead the Task Force, taking a leave of absence from a Washington, D.C. law firm. Three attorneys were selected from the Department of Justice; William M. Logan, Criminal Section, Tax Division; John R. Fleder, Consumer Affairs Section, Antitrust Division; Donald R. Burkhalter, Executive Office for United States Attorneys. Marydale Drury, an Intelligence Research Specialist for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, Criminal I Division, was also appointed to the Task Force. - 3 - II. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS The FBI paid Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr. to inform on the Ku Klux Klan from 1960 to 1965 -- a time when the city of Birmingham was in the throes of a violent civil rig~ts struggle. Extremists were at that time bombing churches and homes, protesting the civil rights movement. The FBI believed that a hard core of klansmen in the Eastview 13 klavern of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were responsible for much of the violence. Rowe was recruited to infiltrate their ranks. He rose rapidly and soon became a confidant of several klan leaders. He gave the Bureau more and better informa- tion than any klan informant in the city. Following Bureau policy, Rowe's handling agents first instructed him to get close to the klansmen to find out what they were doing, but to stay away when things got violent. However, both Rowe and some of the agents soon recognized that he would never penetrate the inner circle responsible for the violence without taking part, at least to some extent, in its plan- ning and execution. Nonetheless, the agents warned him that, if he did get involved in violence, the Bureau would disown him and treat him like a common criminal. This did not prove to be the case. When agents learned that Rowe had taken part in klan beatings, they apparently never reported him to local authorities or terminated him as an informant. While the files do not say so specifically, - 4 - it seems clear that he was simply too valuable to abandon. The Task Force found evidence indicating that some agents failed to report to their superiors all they knew abo~t his violent activities. Rowe told the Task Force that he established his credibility in the klan by beating up blacks and civil rights demonstrators on city buses and at lunch counters, but nothing in FBI files indicates that he told his agents about it. On the contrary, on August 3, 1961, he had told the FBI that he was able to persuade Eastview 13 not to com- mit violence on city buses. He now boasts that he frequently fought and raised hell on his "own time" and did not report it to the FBI because it was "none .of their business". During his f ir'st three years with the FBI, Rowe reported that he was merely present only a few times when klan violencP broke out. One occasion was a night ride to rough up an elderly white couple who was raising a black child, and another was an attack on blacks at a local carnival. (Rowe now says that he threw a sheet over the old man's head, and beat up several blacks at the carnival.) In another incident, Rowe reported that he was present when a group of klansmen beat up a black person at a lunch counter. Rowe now says he assaulted two people. However, his reports to the FBI, given orally and later written up by his agent, only - 5 - vaguely describe the incidents without defining Rowe's role. In each case, there is nothing in the records at least to suggest that agents ever tried to· find out what Rowe was really doing. The most serious incident of Rowe's early years in the klan occurred at the Trailways bus station in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. Rowe reported several days in advance that the klan planned to attack a group of freedom riders ar­ riving that day, and that Public Safety Director Eugene "Bull" Connor had promised klan leaders fifteen minutes to do their work before the police moved in. The Bureau noti­ fied the Chief of Police at least four times that trouble was brewing, but did not place agents at the scene when it happened. The Task Force determined that of the hundreds of people at the station that day, Rowe was one of a handful most responsible for the beatings. The strongest evidence is a front page photograph published in the Birmingham Post­ Herald the next day, showing Rowe beating up a freedom rider.