Order to sleep with Klan wives

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 10 December 1975, Page 27

Order to sleep with Klan wives

(New Zealand Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON. A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (F. 8.1. informant wearing a white hood testified that the agency instructed him to sleep with as many wives of Ku Klux Klansmen as lie could because that was the best way to gain information.

Mr Gary Thomas Rowe, who now lives under an alias in California, also told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was allowed to participate in the racist group’s attacks against blacks and civil rights workers in order to gain access to the Klan’s inner circles. Mr Rowe, who wore the hood to protect his new identity, said that he often warned the F. 8.1. in advance about the attacks, but that they took no action.

In his testimony, Mr Rowe did not say whether he did, in fact, have sexual relations with any wives of Klan members. But he said his instructions were to try to sleep with as many wives as he could.

Mr Rowe described a 1961 incident in which a group of Klansmen were allowed to attack freedom riders in Birmingham, Alabama, with baseball bats, clubs, chains and pistols. He said that he had warned the F. 8.1. about the planned violence three weeks before it happened. The attack was part of an agreement with local police who promised not to interfere in the violence for 15 minutes after it started, Mr Rowe said. When he asked the F. 8.1. why it had done nothing to prevent the attack, he said the reply was: “Who in the hell were we going to report it to? The Police Department was involved.”