It looks like two upstate New York men won't make it to this year's National Knights Party Labor Day weekend bash in Arkansas.
Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, a Ku Klux Klan member, and Eric J. Feight, 54, arraigned on June 19 in Albany, N.Y., for plotting to build a "mobile, remotely operated, radiation emitting device capable of killing targeted individuals silently with lethal doses of X-ray radiation," according to a 67-page FBI FBI criminal complaint. The complaint notes Crawford planned to use the radiation-emitting device to attack a Muslim organization, a political party, and "a political figure." Although the duo did not build an actual device, the pair had advanced in their design and testing and some experts told the FBI the design may have worked.
What is bizarre is that Crawford - the KKK member - attempted to first solicit financing from two Albany Jewish organizations in April 2012, hoping Israel would be interested a weapon to kill its Muslim ethnic groups whom they consider enemies "while they slept." It was then that an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force caught wind of the two men and put them under surveillance.
In FBI-recorded conversations, Crawford identified himself as a member of "the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." He is also listed a member of Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom, a tea party group, according to reports.
And as the Albany Times Union reported, Crawford was also among about 1,259 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the state Legislature challenging the constitutionality of the NY SAFE gun control act, which passed and was signed into law in January.
The chain of events is chilling.
On April 11, 2012, Crawford visited the Congregation Gates of Heaven synagogue and called on the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York in Albany, asking for financial help with a device that could kill Israel's enemies.
Last August 23 Crawford traveled from Albany to North Carolina to solicit funding from a "ranking member of the KKK," who later became a confidential FBI informant. On October 4, he travels to Greensboro, N.C., to meet with whom he believes are high-ranking members of the KKK, but in reality are a cooperating witness and two undercover FBI agents. At a November 14 meeting in a coffee shop near Albany, Eric Feight says though he was a "bit nervous" at first, "after seeing – the direction things were going and then certainly after the elections – that old saying is right – the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Crawford called President Obama a "treasonous, bedwetting maggot."
U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian the investigation "demonstrates how we must remain vigilant to detect and stop potential terrorists, who so often harbor hatred and commit acts of hate crimes toward people they deem undesirable. I also commend the members of the Albany FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for their unwavering commitment over the past 14 months to uncover the details of this plot, before anyone could be harmed and bringing about today's arrests.