Julia Cowley

Like you said, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, I was never part of one of those, but we did have one in our office.

And again, you could just pick up the phone and call any one of them and they would help you.

And that was always my experience.

Well, I'll say I'm going to start off in saying I am not used to speaking to the public as an FBI agent.

That is something we rarely did.

I think most people know that the FBI never says anything.

So in my role as a supervisor,

I had to be authorized to say anything.

And occasionally, if something came up locally and they wanted a statement from the FBI, I would have to call our media coordinator, get it authorized, make sure I'm saying exactly what the FBI wants me to say, and then I could provide that statement.

In a situation like this, I think every situation is different.

It really does depend how people are working together.

But

What you would want to do in something like this is try to have a spokesperson who does regularly speak to the public with things that are matters of public safety or information they want to get out in order to advance their investigation and keep that person informed.

consistent.

And that would be a group decision.

Now, I've never had an experience quite like what is going on out there where we're involved in a case where I have to make decisions about who's going to say something, who's going to speak.

I've always been

one of the people doing the searches.

And so I had nothing to do with that, but the managers would all get together the high ups in the offices and, you know, decide who was going to say something.

And many times that role is given to a state or local person, as opposed to the FBI.