Karen Kwiatkowski (ka-tao-skee) was commissioned in 1982 as a second lieutenant in theUnited States Air Force. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. After tours in Massachusetts, Spain and Italy, Kwiatkowski was assigned to the National Security Agency, eventually becoming a speech writer for the agency’s director.

Col. Kwiatkowski transferred to the Pentagon, first working on the Air Staff as a political military affairs officer, then moving over to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa Directorate. From May 2002 to February 2003, she served in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).  While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, “Insider Notes from the Pentagon” that appeared on the website of David Hackworth, protesting neoconservatism inside the Pentagon and the pro-war propaganda being put forth by Pentagon appointees.  Kwiatkowski was in her office inside the Pentagon when it was tragically attacked on September 11, 2001.  She left NESA in February 2003 and after 20 years of service, retired from the Air Force.

In April 2003, she began writing articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June 2003, the Ohio Beacon Journal, published her op-ed ”Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon” which attracted international notice. Kwiatkowski became publicly known for criticizing a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her most comprehensive writings on this subject appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com.

Kwiatkowski has become a respected columnist for various international media outlets. She is a regular contributor to Lewrockwell.com and has had articles about her work with the Department of Defense published in the American Conservative.  She has hosted the popular call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally on Liberty and Power.  Since her retirement, she has taught American government related classes at Lord Fairfax Community College and James Madison University, and teaches information systems related classes for the University of Maryland.  She and her husband raise beef cattle in Shenandoah County, Virginia.  They have been married since 1982 and have four children.

EDUCATION:

    MA in Government from Harvard.

    MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska.

    Completed both Air Command and Staff College and the Naval War College seminar programs.

    Holds a Ph.D. in World Politics from Catholic University of America.

ON 9-11

Contributor to 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out 8/23/06:  Account of Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Pentagon employee and eyewitness to the events at the Pentagon on 9/11.  "I believe the Commission failed to deeply examine the topic at hand, failed to apply scientific rigor to its assessment of events leading up to and including 9/11, failed to produce a believable and unbiased summary of what happened, failed to fully examine why it happened, and even failed to include a set of unanswered questions for future research.  

It is as a scientist that I have the most trouble with the official government conspiracy theory, mainly because it does not satisfy the rules of probability or physics.  The collapses of the World Trade Center buildings clearly violate the laws of probability and physics.

There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked [Pentagon] lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact.  Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld], who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a "missile". ...

I saw nothing of significance at the point of impact - no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon. ... all of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected to see was not evident.

The same is true with regard to the kind of damage we expected. ... But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roof line remaining relatively straight.

The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon.

More information is certainly needed regarding the events of 9/11 and the events leading up to that terrible day."