Opinions vary on whether the FBI could have stopped this from happening. But outspoken ex-FBI agent Colleen Rowley of post-9/11 fame, seems to think the agency could have at least tried harder. Is she right?
By Zachary Roth
TPMmuckraker
We told you earlier about questions over whether the FBI responded aggressively enough to detailed information it got about Scott Roeder, who’s charged with killing Kansas doctor George Tiller.
And one prominent former bureau veteran says the answer is no.
Colleen Rowley — who made the cover of Time magazine in 2002 after blowing the whistle on the FBI’s failure before 9/11 to follow up on information about the so-called “20th hijacker” — told TPMmuckraker that the Roeder case “should have been jumped on much more aggressively,” given Roeder’s prior record, and the information the FBI appears to have received about him in the days before Tiller’s murder.
A worker at an abortion clinic, Jeffrey Pederson (a pseudonym to protect his identity), has said that Roeder was seen twice in the week before the Tiller shooting trying to glue shut the clinic’s doors. Pederson reported both incidents to the FBI. And Roeder served jail time after being convicted in 1997 of having bomb-making parts in his car.
