Gary Thomas Rowe

Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr. (1933-1998) was a paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. As an informant, he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and incited violence against African Americans and civil rights groups as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO project. Rowe was accused of participating in and helping to plan violent activity that the FBI had hired him to monitor.^[1]

From 1965 until his death, Rowe was a figure of reoccurring controversy after he testified against fellow Klansmen who were accused of killing Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a civil rights volunteer. He was accused of being an accessory to the murder. Other violent acts that he was accused of, and at time admitted to, planning and perpetrating include the attack on the Freedom Riders and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. He was given immunity by the FBI and he was never convicted of any wrongdoing. Rowe confirmed many of these accusations in his 1976 autobiography, My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan,^[2] and in confession and testimony given to the United States Senate.

Background

Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., was born on August 13, 1933 in Savannah, Georgia. He dropped out of high school to join the Georgia National Guard and United States Marine Corps Reserves. After his discharge, Rowe attempted to join the county sheriff's department but his application was rejected because he did not have a high school diploma.^[1] He earned a living as a nightclub bouncer, and he worked briefly with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, helping them bust up illegal alcohol stills in return for cheap firearms.^[1]

Recruitment by the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan

Rowe was recruited by FBI Special Agent Barrett G. Kemp in April 1960. The FBI discovered that the Klan was attempting to recruit Rowe, a man well known to work with the ATF and was seeking a career in law enforcement. The FBI decided that what made him a good candidate for the Klan also made him a good candidate to be a Klan informant for the FBI.

Rowe successfully infiltrated Eastview Klavern 13, the most violent chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in American history, in May 1960.^[1] He began receiving payments from the FBI for "services rendered," and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally approved these payments.^[2]

Involvement in the Ku Klux Klan

The Mob Attack on the Freedom Riders

In 1961, Gary Thomas Rowe helped plan and lead a violent mob attack against the Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama. He worked together with the Birmingham Police Commissioner, Bull Connor, and Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter) to organize violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters.^[3] They assured Rowe that the mob would have 15 minutes to attack the bus before any arrests were made.

Rowe admitted to using a baseball bat during the attack,^[4] in which the mob attacked the Grayhound bus carrying the Freedom Riders at a bus station in Anniston, Alabama on May 14, Mothers Day. They slashed the tires and set the bus on fire with the Freedom Riders still inside. The mob held the doors shut, intending to let the peaceful civil rights group burn alive, but a small explosion scared them back from the door. As the Freedom Riders exited the bus, they were badly beaten by the mob and many had to be taken to hospitals which refused to treat them.^[5]

The Freedom Riders were attacked by the KKK again in Birmingham. And again, Gary Thomas Rowe played a central roll in the mobbing and with the help of Commissioner Bull Connor. They used iron pipes, baseball bats and bicycle chains to beat the Freedom Riders as they left the bus.^[5]

Years later, Rowe recalled how a call from police headquarters to Rowe had tipped them off to when and where to attack the Freedom Riders in Birmingham,^[6] saying:

"We made an astounding sight . . . men running and walking down the streets of Birmingham on Sunday afternoon carrying chains, sticks, and clubs. Everything was deserted; no police officers were to be seen except one on a street corner. He stepped off and let us go by, and we barged into the bus station and took it over like an army of occupation. There were Klansmen in the waiting room, in the rest rooms, in the parking area."

A photograph of Rowe and several others, including Eastview Klavern leader Hubert Page, beating George Webb on May 14, 1961, was taken by Tommy Langston of the Birmingham Post-Herald, who was also caught and beaten. Although the camera was smashed, the film survived and the photo became one of only a few pieces of physical evidence of Rowe's involvement.

16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

In 1963, Gary Thomas Rowe may have helped perpetrate the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young girls. One of the Klansman eventually convicted of the crime, Robert E. Chambliss, said that it was Rowe who bombed the church.^[7] Rowe, who was no stranger to dynamite, had twice failed polygraph tests when questioned as to his possible involvement in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, investigative records show.^[8] Because of this, the FBI and the prosecution did not use Rowe as a witness in Chambliss's trial.

The Shooting Death of Viola Liuzzo

In 1965, FBI informant and Ku Klux Klan member Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., was involved in the Murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo as she was returning from the March on Selma with other activists. Row was in the car with three other Klansman as they chased Viola's car after they saw a black man in the passenger seat. They pulled up next to her car and shot her dead. Rowe gave this testimony in court as he testified against the three other Klansman: Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas.

The FBI attempted to downplay the situation and discredit Luizzo by spreading rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party, was a heroin addict, and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement.^[9][10] This came at a time when the Bureau was also trying to smear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Communist party.

In 1965, Rowe testified as a trial witness against the three other Klansman involved in the murder of Viola Liuzzo. Because he provided information that led to the conviction of his fellow Klansman, Federal authorities placed Rowe in the Witness Protection Program under the name of Thomas Neil Moore. Following the testimony, Rowe was rewarded with a job as a deputy U.S. Marshal.^[7]

Rowe was relocated to his home town of Savannah, Georgia. Later that year, Alabama authorities attempted to have Rowe extradited back to Alabama to charge him the murder of Luizzo.^[7] However, they were unsuccessful. Rowe claimed that the FBI promised him complete immunity for the information he provided that led to the conviction of the other Klansman.^[7]

Later Years and Death

After Rowe testified against fellow Klansman in the Luizzo case in 1965, Rowe was relocated to Savannah, Georgia, his home town, where he worked for the U.S. Marshals and for a private security company. For the rest of his life, Rowe would be a highly controversial figure. However, he was never convicted of any wrongdoing.

Rowe surfaced in 1975 before a congressional committee. Wearing a bizarre cotton hood that resembled the Klan headpiece to conceal his new identity, Rowe told the Senate committee that the FBI had known of and approved of his violence against blacks. He testified that the FBI did nothing to stop the violence, even when he gave them advance warning.^[7]

In 1978, Rowe confessed to killing an unknown black man in a riot with a firearm, a previously undisclosed crime. By making this confession, one of the investigation memos suggests that Rowe may have been bargaining for blanket immunity for whatever occurred while he was an informant.^[8]

At the age of 64, Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., died of a heart attack on May 25, 1998 in Savannah, Georgia. He was buried under the name Thomas Neil Moore, the name given to him by the Witness Protection Program. According to Eugene Brooks, who had been Rowe's lawyer, Rowe had become bankrupt and had long been divorced from his fourth wife.^[4]

References