A Ku Klux Klansman working for General Electric and an accomplice are facing terrorism charges in Upstate New York for allegedly planning to build a mobile X-ray weapon to kill Muslims and other “enemies of Israel,” federal authorities announced Wednesday.
Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, of Galway, N.Y., and Eric J. Feight, 54, of Hudson, N.Y., were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a maximum prison term of 15 years, U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said. They were due in federal court in Albany on Wednesday.
Crawford, an industrial mechanic with GE, claimed the “Hiroshima on a light switch” device could fit in a van, be triggered remotely and deliver lethal doses of ionizing radiation that would kill its targets as they slept, the complaint stated. Feight allegedly agreed to build the electronic controls.
Their target was the Muslim community, the complaint stated, and they had successfully tested the remote trigger from about a half-mile away.
Crawford, a married father of three, is a member of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the criminal complaint said. In disrupting the alleged plot, undercover agents posed as Klansmen in North Carolina who offered to finance and buy the device, which the FBI said was constructed but never operable or a public danger.
Crawford is also listed on Tea Party Patriots as the “coordinator” of Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom, which was founded in April 2009 in Galway.
Update: See also “Feds: Mosque, Islamic Center ‘viable’ targets in death ray plot”, Times Union, 21 June 2013