Gary Rowe
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Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. (August 13, 1933 - May 25, 1998), known in Witness Protection as Thomas Neil Moore, was a paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. As an informant, he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan to monitor and disrupt it, and incited violence as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO project. Rowe was accused of participating in and helping to plan violent Klan activity against African Americans and civil rights groups.
Biography edit
Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. was born on August 13, 1933, in Savannah, Georgia, to Gary Thomas Rowe and Alma Ann Sellars. 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 was married four times, fathered three children and adopted two children.
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.
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.
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.