Word: coleen
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...says an aide. But in truth, the heat was on Bush. For the first time since the war began, the White House was struggling to remain in control of the agenda. Bush went before the cameras only hours after the televised congressional testimony of FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who ripped the bureau's pre-9/11 bunglings in a letter to director Robert Mueller last month. A no-nonsense Midwesterner with a grim, credible tale of field agents being smothered by layer after layer of self-protecting bureaucrats, she told her story Thursday on Capitol Hill...
...what to do with it, an agency that hates embarrassment above all things. So it was extraordinary to see last week what it takes to bring an agency like the FBI to its knees, make it admit defeat and promise--yet again--to mend its ways. Minneapolis, Minn., agent Coleen Rowley's blistering 13-page memo, first published by TIME, detailed some warnings that had been ignored and the opportunities that were missed even when the FBI agents working on the strange case of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui implored headquarters to act before something really bad happened...
...White House concerned that Mueller may have gone too far? "Our goal was to position him as the reformer," says a senior White House aide. Which explains why the words reform and reformer kept tripping off the lips of Administration spinners as they refuted charges--from FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley as well as from senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill--that Mueller has been more focused on protecting the bureau than fixing...
...intelligence committees. In fact, he says he is "happy" to face the scrutiny of congressional investigators, a pronouncement that jibes nicely with his live television appearance last week, during which he outlined plans to restructure the FBI. He also offered a simple and direct mea culpa, referring specifically to Coleen Rowley's now-famously scathing letter, which criticized Mueller specifically and the FBI culture in general...
...dresses simply and wears large spectacles that have a habit of sliding down her nose. She takes her lunch to work every day and often arrives long before any of her co-workers. "She goes the extra mile on everything," says Larry Brubaker, a retired agent and former colleague. "Coleen always looks stressed. She is very high energy." In her letter, she comes off as passionate and informed, and her controlled legal arguments are punctuated by piquant asides, dark humor and bursts of deep feeling. As her name rolled off the tongues of every politician and talking head in Washington...