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.

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 times 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, and in confession and testimony given to the United States Senate.

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. 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.

Rowe went through four marriages fathering three children and adopting two children throughout the course of his various marriages.

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 who 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 an informant against the Klan for the FBI.

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