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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
The Nuremberg Files' Neal Horsley says fugitive abortion foe Clayton Waagner took him hostage, claimed credit for anthrax hoax -- and promised to kill 42 clinic workers if they don't resign. Skeptics say they're in cahoots.
Nov 28, 2001 | Fugitive antiabortion militant Clayton Waagner says he's responsible for sending letters and Federal Express packages purporting to be laced with anthrax to some 700 abortion providers and abortion rights groups last month. He also claims he has a hit list of 42 clinic workers he will murder if they don't quit their jobs.
At least that's the story being put forward by fellow abortion foe Neal Horsley, proprietor of the notorious Nuremberg Files Web site. In one of the more far-fetched tales to emerge from the extreme anti-abortion movement, Horsley claims Waagner took him hostage on the day after Thanksgiving and used him as his mouthpiece to claim responsibility for the anthrax letters and to announce his threat of new violence against abortion providers.
Clinic security experts say they doubt that Horsley was actually taken hostage by Waagner. But they believe his message from the violent fugitive is authentic.
Waagner escaped from federal custody in February while awaiting sentencing on federal firearms and stolen vehicle charges. Since then, authorities say, he has been driving back and forth across the country, stealing cars, robbing banks and stalking abortion clinics. He says he's assembling a cache of weapons and compiling dossiers on clinic staff in order "to kill as many of them as I can," or so he claimed in a communiqui posted on the Army of God Web site, run by the Rev. Donald Spitz, earlier this year. The FBI put him on its 10 Most Wanted List in September.
"We take it very seriously," said FBI spokesman Bill Crowley of the bureau's Pittsburgh field office. "Every law enforcement officer in the country is on the lookout for this guy. And we will continue to go after him until we locate and apprehend him." The feds want Waagner so badly, Crowley says, they've established a multi-agency task force that includes the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Meanwhile, clinic officials are also taking the latest round of threats from Waagner seriously. Ann Glazier, director of clinic security for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says the organization has strong security measures already in place. "Both the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI have been extremely serious about catching Waagner," Glazier says. "I just hope they will be as aggressive as they have been in the past."
