[1] 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.
Rowe admitted to many of these violent acts in his 1976 autobiography, My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan,[2] and in confession and testimony given to the United States Senate.
[3] He dropped out of high school to join the Georgia National Guard and United States Marine Corps Reserves.
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.
[citation needed] 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.
[4] Rowe successfully infiltrated Eastview Klavern 13, the most violent chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in American history, in May 1960.
[3] In 1961, Gary Thomas Rowe helped plan and lead a violent mob attack against the Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama.
[7] Although there were state patrolmen there during the incident and they fired warning shots to call off the mob, they did very little to protect the Freedom Riders from being beaten and burnt alive.
The KKK used iron pipes, baseball bats and bicycle chains to beat the Freedom Riders as they left the bus.
In 1963, Gary Thomas Rowe may have helped perpetrate the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young girls.
[10] 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.
The FBI attempted to downplay the situation and discredit Liuzzo by spreading rumors that she was a member of the Communist Party, that she was a heroin addict and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
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.
Wearing a bizarre cotton hood that resembled the Klan headpiece to conceal his new identity, Rowe told the Senate committee that the FBI had known and approved of his violence against blacks.