If America is about one thing it’s innovation, never taking for granted how things were done in the past but creatively striving to find new ways to accomplish the task at hand. And that applies even to hoary American institutions like the KKK and alleged member Glendon Scott Crawford of Albany, New York.
Crawford developed a truck-based remote-controlled mobile radiation gun which could be used to zap racial undesireables while they slept. Totally invisible.
Crawford, not terribly surprisngly, proposed to sell his ray gun to a Southern branch of the Klan. But interestingly rather than using it to irradiate Jews he actually proposed to sell it to Jews, figuring that the local Jews would act as conduits to Israel to zap Arabs.
Now, if you think Crawford was some yahoo who wouldn’t be able to create a radiation gun, don’t be so sure. He was an industrial mechanic working for General Electric. So he probably at least had the ability to make something that would be pretty dangerous. Notably, he was also apparently a member of Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom, a local Tea Party group.
In any case, here’s where it gets interesting. Presumably because he’s a member of the Klan, Crawford assumed that Synagogues functioned something like local embassies or consulates for the State of Israel. And Crawford’s plan began to unravel when he visited a local Albany synagogue and asked to speak to someone who could help him sell his ray gun technology to Israel “to defeat its enemies, specifically, by killing Israel’s enemies while they slept.”
Crawford apparently didn’t tell these potential customers just what he proposed to sell them, only that it would be awesome and protect Jews.
This article in the Albany Times Union suggests that Crawford hit up various local Jewish organizations offering to sell them a device that would ‘protect the Jewish people’ but not telling him what it was. At least one person contacted the police and the FBI, which launched an investigation. But Jews being Jews, in the case of at least one synagogue, folks were so freaked out by Crawford that they increased security at the synagogue.
Crawford, along with a second suspect, Eric Feight, 54, have now been charged with conspiracy to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
