By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, October 2010
In mid-October 2010, FishbowlLA picked up an LA Times op-ed by former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley and former Federal Air Marshal Bogdan Dzakovic. The piece speculated on whether the September 11 attacks could have been averted if an outlet like WikiLeaks had existed in 2001.
Then
Coleen Rowley had been one of the most-cited American whistleblowers of the post-9/11 era — her 2002 FBI memo made her one of Time magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year. Bogdan Dzakovic had been a Federal Air Marshal who testified about pre-9/11 aviation-security failures.
The October 2010 op-ed was timed to the broader WikiLeaks news cycle. Rowley and Dzakovic’s argument was a whistleblower-insider case for the value of a WikiLeaks-style publication channel.
Matthew Fleischer’s FishbowlLA framing treated the op-ed as a serious press-freedom argument from credible whistleblower sources.
Now
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was the subject of an extended extradition-and-legal cycle from 2010 through 2024; in June 2024 he reached a plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors and was released.
The broader category of whistleblower-and-press-freedom debate has been substantially shaped by the post-2010 cycle — including the 2013 Edward Snowden NSA disclosures.
The 2010 piece reads now as one of the documented early-cycle moments of the WikiLeaks-era press-freedom debate.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.
This article touches on the September 11 attacks and surrounding national-security history. It is presented as media-history documentation.