Roberson, Scott Michael

Scott Michael Roberson

Manchester, Ohio

Feather Location: Row I, #15

By Amanda Garrett, The Plain Dealer The Plain Dealer

We may never know the names of some of the seven CIA officers killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan Wednesday. The spy agency often cloaks the identities of its own even after death.

Scott Michael Roberson died in Afghanistan last week, his family says. But a Summit County family said Saturday the CIA gave them permission to grieve publicly for the loss of Ohio native Scott Michael Roberson, 39, a CIA security officer killed in the blast.

"He always told us that if something happened, he would have no regrets. He was where he wanted to be," Messner said. "He said the people he served with were the finest he ever met."

Roberson was born in Manchester, just south of Akron, and lived there until his family moved to Connecticut for work, Messner said. Roberson returned to Ohio as a teen and graduated from a Cincinnati-area high school before graduating with a degree in criminology from Florida State University.

Messner speculated that so much travel in his youth may have led to her brother's globetrotting later on.

Although Roberson he spent much the 1990s anchored at the Atlanta Police Department -- where he rose to the rank of detective, working undercover in the narcotics unit -- he began the next decade abroad, Messner said. Roberson first worked as a contractor with the United Nations' security forces in Kosovo and went on to protect high-risk officials in Iraq.

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