I am going to take issue with this view on two levels. First, Crowley's work is not plagiarism because her work is original and transformative - she discussed the ideas of others to weave them into a synthesis and prescription for future action that is original with her.
Second, far too much is made of plagiarism. The exact crime of plagiarism is stealing someone else's work, taking someone else's original ideas . And so for it to be plagiarism she must be passing off as her ideas, ideas that were actually original with the person accusing her of plagiarism.
Generally known and reported facts are not original ideas. For instance she was accused of plagiarizing something from someone who recorded what Reuters reported. But, the original plagiarist does not own the report, Reuters does, and Crowley wrote that Reuters reported it. And she was accused of plagiarism for reporting something about Keynesian economics. Now, it would be theft if she reported ideas thought up by Keynes as her ideas, but she didn't. She stated they were Keynes's ideas. Someone does not gain title to those ideas, by being the first thief. The are Keynes's ideas, not Investopedia's.
The real issue is not plagiarism, but principles of good scholarship, which requires citing sources of ideas and information principally to provide evidence of accuracy. Avoidance of plagiarism is a lower standard. It merely requires not passing off as your ideas, ideas that belong to someone else. Now, generally I am a strong advocate of good scholarship to assure the provenance of facts and ideas. And there the issue is to ensure that the facts and ideas are not original with Crowley, not #fakenews, but in fact things that actually transpired or were actually said or recorded.
So, it is a valid criticism to state that for you, or for me, the value of the work would have been augmented by careful footnoting (if it wasn't all properly footnoted, something I don't know for a fact.)
Second, far too much is made of plagiarism. The exact crime of plagiarism is stealing someone else’s work, taking someone else’s original ideas . And so for it to be plagiarism she must be passing off as her ideas, ideas that were actually original with the person accusing her of plagiarism.
Plagiarism is stealing someone else’s intellectual property. Not just big ideas. Exact phrases that clearly are lifted from someone else’s writing. She’s smart. There was no reason for her to do this.
Like you said, you can quote and footnote others’ words and ideas all day, as long as you forthrightly give them their credit.
She impresses me greatly. That doesn’t change that she plagiarized and it’s a crime of low ethics. She should be above it. She should be honest. But she wasn’t.