Glendon Scott Crawford Targeted Andrew Cuomo In Death Ray Plot: Report

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the targets of a bizarre plot to use weaponized X-rays on unsuspecting victims by a reputed Ku Klux Klan member who allegedly also intended to use the technology to kill Muslims.

Glendon Scott Crawford, the alleged KKK member, and a co-conspirator were charged with terrorism-related offenses in a federal case Thursday in connection with the plans. Authorities said the targets of the plot were not in serious danger, in part because undercover FBI agents were appearing to assist the defendants with the scheme.

A lengthy complaint charging Crawford and associate Eric Feight with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction does not identify specific targets of the plot, but the New York Daily News reported that Cuomo was an unnamed government official who the defendants planned to kill with the so-called death ray. The complaint said that Crawford and Freight wanted to kill Muslims and “America’s enemies,” who Crawford repeatedly called “medical waste.”

While U.S. President Barack Obama was not identified as a target of the plot, according to sources who spoke with the Daily News, Crawford heavily criticized the president, referring to him in a text message cited in the criminal complaint as a “treasonous bedwetting maggot in chief [sic].”

Obama “started bringing the scumbags here without background checks.,” Crawford texted in reference to Muslims.

Crawford, a General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) employee, did not give a reason for why he wanted to kill Cuomo, but the Daily News pointed out that the former U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary filed housing-discrimination cases against the hate group. But it’s unclear whether Crawford knew about the cases.

The bizarre plot unveiled Thursday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Albany involved the alleged KKK member reaching out to Jewish organizations in the area of the state capital, asking whether they would finance the plot and help kill Muslims (Crawford didn’t identify himself as a KKK member in the phone calls). Instead of rendering him that assistance, the groups called authorities after they were contacted in April 2012.

Crawford and Feight intended to place the remote-controlled X-ray device in a truck, the complaint stated. They called the technology “Hiroshima on a light switch,” which could kill their enemies “in their sleep.”

The technology for the components of the weapon exists, according to the complaint. “The essence of Crawford’s scheme is the creation of a mobile, remotely operated, radiation-emitting device capable of killing human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation,” the complaint read. “A central figure of Crawford’s weaponized radiation device is that the target(s), and those around them, would not immediately be aware they had absorbed lethal doses of radiation, and the harmful effects of that radiation would not become apparent until days after the exposure.”