New York man convicted in “death ray” case targeting Muslims, Obama

Luibrand, in his closing argument, said if “Crawford is guilty of anything, it is proliferating information” but said the government was responsible for creating what the media dubbed the “death ray” machine. It hasn’t worked in any of the post-9/11 cases involving Muslims brought up on terrorism charges, and the Crawford case strikes me as stronger than a lot of those cases.

Industrial mechanic Glendon Scott Crawford was found guilty Friday of attempting to produce a deadly radiological device, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and distributing information about weapons of mass destruction.

The men also planned to attack the White House, according to a recording of their May 2012 conversation played at the trial, in which Crawford described himself a Klansman and called the remote-controlled device “Hiroshima on a light switch”. “We don’t really have those connections”. He struck the local Jewish organizations he approached to discuss his crazed scheme as so unhinged that they contacted the police.

“We all would like our country restored to what it was”, Crawford said in a recording. That was something the agents and undercover investigators didn’t initially know about, he said. The Government says Crawford wanted to use that device to harm others. Sentencing is set for December 15 at the federal court in Albany. Jeff presented himself purposely as a disgruntled U.S. military member who like Crawford was unhappy with the government and the state of the country. Crawford also suggested the Governor’s Mansion as a potential target.

A central feature of Crawford’s completed X-ray device was that its targets would be exposed to risky and lethal doses of X-ray radiation without being aware of the exposure, the harmful effects of which would likely not be immediately apparent.

Andrew Vale, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Albany Division, said, “No matter how extraordinary the plot seemed, the threat was real”.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Belliss said the 49-year-old Crawford even sought support in 2013 for the device from a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in North Carolina, who was an Federal Bureau of Investigation informant.