Gary Thomas Row

Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. (August 13, 1933 – May 25, 1998), alias Thomas Neil Moore, was an American paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. He infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO project to monitor and disrupt Klan activities. Rowe participated in violent Klan activity against African Americans and civil rights groups and ultimately became a Klansman himself, beating Freedom Riders, shooting a civil rights worker, and teaching Klansmen to build bombs, including the one used in the murder of four children during the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama. Given immunity, he was never charged for his crimes.

From 1965 until his death, Rowe was a figure of recurring 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. Rowe admitted to many of his violent acts in his 1976 autobiography, My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan, 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, to Gary Thomas Rowe and Alma Ann Sellars.

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 known for his 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.

In 1975, when in front of the Senate committee, Rowe told them that the FBI knew and disregarded his participation in the violent attacks on African Americans and that he was also tasked with causing friction within the KKK by having sexual relations with some of the Klansmen's wives.

Rowe successfully infiltrated Eastview Klavern 13, the most violent chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in American history, in May 1960. 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, When the injured Freedom Riders arrived at the hospital there was no doctor present, only nurses to provide aid to those in need. They were eventually denied medical attention because they had "caused a commotion" by bringing the white mob to the hospital. Even though Gary Thomas Rowe had informed the FBI three weeks earlier that the attack on Freedom Riders would happen, they decided not to intervene but only to ask what had happened to Genevieve Hughes, who was one of the injured Freedom Riders. She stated, "When I woke up the nurse asked me if I could talk with the FBI. The FBI man did not care about us, but only the bombing".

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

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, Rowe claims that he informed the FBI of this conversation, but no intervention was made by the authorities.

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 Klansmen eventually convicted of the crime, Robert Edward Chambliss, said that it was Rowe who had bombed the church. Investigative records show that Rowe, who was no stranger to dynamite, had twice failed polygraph tests when questioned as to his possible involvement in the bombing. Because of this, the FBI and the Alabama Attorney General serving as prosecutor Bill Baxley did not use Rowe as a witness in Chambliss's trial.

The FBI was also said to believe that Rowe was involved in the bombing of Martin Luther King Jr.'s motel room at the Gaston Motel on May 11, 1963, as well as the bombing of the house and parsonage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s brother. Through one of his African American informants, Rowe claimed that black Muslims were responsible for placing the bombs there. Rowe was eventually arrested with several other Klansmen in June 1963 after Alabama police received a tip-off that they were in possession of a truck full of assorted firearms and explosives intended for use at the University of Alabama to prevent the admission of James Hood and Vivian Malone. They were later released from jail and given back their weapons. 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 Klansmen involved in Liuzzo's murder: Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas. Because he had provided information leading to their conviction, Federal authorities placed Rowe in the Witness Protection Program under the name of Thomas Neil Moore. Following his testimony, Rowe was rewarded with a job as a deputy U.S. Marshal.