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Fire the beam weapons! A man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison over his dream of a novel "weapon of mass destruction":
A 52-year-old industrial mechanic who was the first person in the U.S. convicted of trying to produce a weapon of mass destruction under a 2004 law intended to stop terrorists from using radiation-dispersing "dirty bombs" was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
Glendon Scott Crawford, of Galway in upstate New York, planned to kill Muslims because of their religion as well as other people whose political and social beliefs he disagreed with, U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said. "This is a classic case of domestic terrorism," Hartunian said after Crawford's sentencing by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe.
Investigators began tracking Crawford in 2012 after he approached two local Jewish groups with his idea for how they could defeat their enemies using a mobile X-ray weapon. Prosecutors said Crawford also sought support for the device in 2013 from a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in North Carolina who was an FBI informant.
Also at NBC New York. Here's a story about Glendon Crawford and his friend Eric Feight being charged back in 2013.
The moral of this story? Trust no one and do it yourself.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:38PM
Wizards are just FBI spies? Okay then. Also, anyone else laugh when the Judge cuts off Crawford's rant and says “You are bizarre.” The guy does seem a bit crazy and he didn't actually build an X-Ray weapon.
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(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:48PM
Seriously, first he went to the Jews, and when they turned him down he went to the KKK, for support. The guy clearly is insane, and likely not stable enough to even create a working weapon.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:57PM
Of course anyone who hears 'KKK Grand Wizard' without immediately thinking 'Confidential Informant' isn't too *smart*, but stupidity and insanity are separate items.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:33PM
Yeah, Agreed, don't you actually have to make a real weapon of mass destruction before being convicted of a crime?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:38PM
In the new era of FBI entrapment, they will hand you, a mentally ill male, gray Play-Doh, tell you it's an explosive, and convict you for wiring it to a potato and an off-brand smartwatch.
Hmm, maybe they will splurge for a Misfit smartwatch just to write a funnier report.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:04AM
^^ that ^^
If law enforcement can entrap some misfit without a clue, it makes their numbers look better. 3 convictions of cranks this year, sounds a lot better than no terrorist activity noted. But, the FBI isn't going to use the words crank, misfit, or clueless fool in their descriptions of the victims. There has been more than one story of people indicted, who didn't understand the most basic of electrical circuits, much less the intricacies or wiring a bomb.
Meanwhile, the Boston Marathon bombers had their shit together, and despite warnings from Russia, they were permitted to carry out their plans.
Security theater sure can be entertaining.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:15AM
The question is why aren't the courts throwing these cases out? Here we had the RCMP do similar. Being Canada they picked a couple (equal rights) of junkies and gave them pressure cookers, tickets to the island and lots of other support including grey play-doh. While found guilty by a jury, the Judge stayed the proceedings, saying amongst other things,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/nuttall-and-korody-free-after-b-c-judge-overturns-terror-convictions-1.3700599 [www.cbc.ca]
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:47PM
(Score: 4, Funny) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:54PM
There's a long running joke that the only real KKK members left come in two sorts: the real ones that never show up or pay dues, and FBI informants that attend every meeting and always pay on time.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:51PM
Yeah, can't keep a good joke down. Back in the 1950s and 1960s that was a joke about the US Communist Party.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:55PM
Careful with that joke, son, it's an antique.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:09AM
except it was found out that about 10% of the cpa *was* feeb informants...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:09AM
The spirit of the KKK is alive and well in Gainesville, Florida - at least it was in 2007 when red paint and racial slurs were left on the houses of a handful of Asian residents. Not quite a burning cross, but I guess they're just a little more cowardly now than they used to be back when.
The Ku Klux Klan became active in Gainesville in the early 1920s. As elsewhere, it was anti-black, anti-semitic, and anti-Catholic, and professed to uphold morality. In an early incident, a worker was kidnapped from his job late at night and beaten severely for neglecting his wife and children. A police officer had tried to intervene, but retreated when guns were drawn. City officials condoned the incident. Former mayor William Reuben Thomas condemned the event and called for the mayor and police chief, who apparently were members of the Klan, to step down, to no avail. The Klan also objected to a Catholic priest who had organized a drama club at the University, and in 1923 Catholic priests were officially banned from all state college campuses. The next year three men in full Klan regalia kidnapped the priest from his rectory, beat him severely, and castrated him. The priest and another witness identified two of the kidnappers as the mayor and police chief of Gainesville, but there was no publicity and no investigation of the incident. In the 1930s the Klan took credit for burning down the houses of prostitution on North Main Street, ostensibly to protect the morals of the students at the University.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainesville,_Florida [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]