Kathryn Bolkovac

The Awesome Woman of the Day is KATHRYN BOLKOVAC, a law enforcement professional who blew the whistle on DynCorp, a contractor paid by the U.S. Military to assist in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in the late 1990s, for failing to take action against their own task-force trainees who were patronizing Bosnian establishments that trafficked in very young sex slaves. (A movie called The Whistleblower, based on this true story, was released on Friday, August 5.)

Bolkovac was working as a police officer in her native Nebraska when she saw a recruiting poster for the mission. A mother of three, with two of her children in college, she signed up to be one of 2,000 police officers from 45 countries to work as peacekeepers. During her training session in the States, she learned that at least one man in her group was aware of the use of very young girls for sex in Bosnia, a fact that was borne out once she was deployed. Bolkovac discovered restaurants and night clubs in Bosnia that were fronts for sex-trafficking operations that rented out girls aged 12-15 to international clientele, including her fellow U.N. peacekeepers. The Bosnian police were no help; they apparently were being paid to ignore the awful situation.

The treatment of these young girls was truly atrocious. Bolkovac uncovered evidence of girls who, when they refused to have sex, were beaten and raped in bars by their pimps while peacekeepers stood and watched. She discovered that one UN policeman who was supposed to be investigating the sex trade paid $700 to a bar owner for an underage girl he kept captive in his apartment.

[Madeleine Rees, the head of the UN Human Rights Commission office in Sarajevo, believes trafficking in little girls started with the arrival of the international peacekeepers in 1992.]

Bolkovac reported her findings to her DynCorp, which at the time had a $15 million contract to recruit and train police officers for the Bosnian operation, and she was immediately demoted. Six months later she was fired, and was warned by fellow workers that her life was in danger. After a two-year lawsuit she waged against DynCorp, in 2002,  an employment tribunal ruled that Bolkovac was unfairly dismissed by DynCorp.

In 2002, Salon did a two-part investigation into the participation of DynCorp employees in the Bosnian sex-slave trade, and determined that t least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia -- and at least seven of them fired -- for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. But despite large amounts of evidence in some cases, none of the DynCorp employees sent home have faced criminal prosecution.


In January, a book co-authored by Bolkovac about her experience, The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman's Fight for Justice, was published

Colleen Rowley

Hi!! Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is a woman some of you are friends with on Facebook (and I would be too if I could but she is over her maximum). She's someone I have a great deal of respect for because she stood up for what's right as a whistleblower in the FBI. In 2002 she wrote what was intended to be a private memo to then-director Robert Mueller about the misrepresentation and mishandling of facts regarding the time leading up to the events surrounding 9/11. Her memo quickly garnered public attention and became known as The Bombshell Memo by Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html. Although stating her true opinion was a dangerous thing for her to do, it never occurred to her that it might not be the right thing to do as she felt that "speaking truth to power" always made sense and its that degree of integrity that really impresses me. As a result, She jointly held the [I]TIME[/] "Person of the Year" award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. She also received the Sam Adams Award for 2002.[[I]citation needed[/]]She became a special agent of the FBI in 1984 and was stationed at several posts both domestic and overseasuntil she came ato Minneapolis as their chief legal advisor.After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI HQ personnel inWashington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. This individual had been suspected of being involved in preparations for a suicide-hijacking similar to the December 1994 "Eiffel Tower" hijacking of Air France 8969. Failures identified by Rowley may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Rowley was one of many agents frustrated by the events that led up to the attacks, writing:During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre–September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone's first question was "Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBI HQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like [Robert Hanssen], who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.) [2][3]Rowley testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mueller and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed for and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a significant expansion of FBI personnel with counterterrorism and language skills.[[I]citation needed[/]]For Americans watching this odd display, the message was clear: This mid-level lawyer ata field office in the Midwest had higher expectations for the FBI than its top leaders. The bureau could be great, was her message, if only it put the goal of protecting Americans above the goal of protecting itself, if only agents were not rewarded for sitting still. In short,she made the Congressmen look like interns on the set of the Coleen Rowley show. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003988,00.html#ixzz1MohY8TSBRowley retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency.After this experience, she became much more politically active and later ran for US representative as member of the Democratic Farm Labor party against John Kline but lost due to some questionable circumstances involving a cash contribution and picture that mysteriously was posted on her website portraying her opponent as Col Klink of Hogan's Heroes. She also protested outside GW Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas requesting that Bush meet with Cindy Sheehan and answer some of her questions.

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