Domestic terrorismTwo men charged with planning an “X-ray weapon’’ to kill Muslim enemies of U.S., Israel
Two men from upstate New York were charged Wednesday with a scheme to build an X-ray weapon to kill Muslim enemies of the United States and Israel. They planned the weapon to kill the designated targets with lethal radiation, and some of the targets were to be killed in their sleep. The indictment says the two wanted to build a powerful X-ray device that could be placed in a truck and driven near a target. The driver would park, leave the area, and activate the device, “killing human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation.”
Glendon Scott Crawford leaving court after his arraignment // Source: siasat.pk
Two men from upstate New York have been charged with a scheme to build an X-ray weapon to kill Muslim enemies of the United States and Israel.
They planned the weapon to kill the designated targets with lethal rays of radiation, and some of the targets were to be killed in their sleep. Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, from Galway, New York, and Eric Feight, 54, of Hudson, New York, were quite open about their plan, and approached different people seeking funding and know-how to put together the truck-mounted machine.
The BBC reports that the police was alerted to the plot by a synagogue in Albany and by the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan.
The two suspects approached the synagogue and the KKK for funding.
The two men are charged with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, and that they face up to fifteen years.
Prosecutors say that in April 2012, Crawford walked into a synagogue in Albany, New York, and “asked to speak with a person who might be willing to help him with a type of technology that could be used by Israel to defeat its enemies, specifically, by killing Israel’s enemies while they slept.”
The indictment says that the two wanted to build a powerful X-ray device that could be placed in a truck and driven near a target. The driver would park, leave the area, and activate the device, “killing human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation.”
When he could not find backers in the synagogue, Crawford turned to another potential source of support: A KKK leader in North Carolina.
Both the synagogue and the White supremacist group alerted the police, and three undercover agents were assigned to the case. Two of the three undercover officers posed as businessmen with Klan sympathies, promising to provide him with the industrial grade X-ray machine he hoped to transform into a weapon.
The agents also recorded conversations with the two men. Crawford, an industrial mechanic at General Electric, knew Feight through his work as an external contractor for GE.
FBI agent Geoffrey Kent said in the indictment: “Crawford has specifically identified Muslims and several other individuals/groups as targets.”
Crawford has told an undercover agent that “radiation poisoning is a beautiful thing.”
The New York Times reports that Crawford, in a January conversation with a federal informer at a restaurant, described his plan as “Hiroshima on a light switch,” and said that whoever wielded the device could kill with little chance of being caught, according to the complaint. As for motive, Crawford told two undercover agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation: “I am in this for my kids. I don’t want money.”
The indictment says Crawford said he harbored animosity to those he perceived as hostile to the interests of the United States, individuals he referred to as “medical waste.”
The indictment quotes both defendants to say they were committed to building the device and discussed technical specifications.
Investigators say Feight designed, built, and tested a remote control for the system.
The two were arrested the same day as undercover investigators planned to offer access to a real but inoperable X-ray system.
Investigators and prosecutors say that Crawford may have had the technical know-how to accomplish his goal. “From our investigation, the device — and there are a number of components that needed to be put together — would have been capable of emitting X-ray radiation that would have caused death,” a prosecutor, John Duncan, told the Times.
“This case demonstrates how we must remain vigilant to detect and stop potential terrorists, who so often harbor hatred toward people they deem undesirable,” prosecuting U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said.
Dr. Fred Mettler, the U.S. representative on the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, was unfamiliar with the specifics of Crawford’s plans, but told the Washington Post that said it is unlikely such a device could work. Radiation can be narrowly beamed, as it is in some cancer treatments, but the accelerators require huge amounts of electricity, are not easily portable and any target would have to remain still for a long time.
“I don’t know of any of these that you can use like a gun to aim at someone on the street,” Mettler said.
