Glendon Scott Crawford, 52, a Navy veteran and Ku Klux Klan member, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe in Albany, N.Y., on Monday to 30 years in prison for his plot to assassinate President Barack Obama and kill Muslim Americans, The Guardian reports.
Crawford was found guilty in 2015 of conspiring with Eric Feight, 58, to build a radiation-dispersal device, called a "death ray" by tabloid press, that would be used not only to kill the 44th president but also to target mosques. Targets included Albany and Schenectady, N.Y., the Executive Mansion in Albany and the White House.
Feight pleaded guilty to lesser charges in 2015 and was sentenced to eight years and one month in federal prison, the Times Union reports.
Crawford, who faced a mandatory 25 years, will be supervised for any life he has left upon his release.
Both Crawford and Feight worked at General Electric Co.—Crawford as a mechanic and Feight as a subcontractor. The two men researched radiation-dispersal devices to determine exactly what level of emission was necessary to carry out the plot.
Their murderous intentions were uncovered in 2012 after a tip to Schenectady, N.Y., police was sent to the FBI, which opened an investigation.
The FBI complaint states that on June 5, 2012, Crawford met with a confidential source for the FBI at a Scotia restaurant and allegedly talked about his enemies and of being "tired of getting 'raped,' that there are people out there who have decided that they don't get their fair share in life, and that (Crawford) wanted to stop these people."
"Crawford also told the (source) that the target of his radiation emitting device would be the Muslim community," the complaint states. "Crawford described the device's capabilities as 'Hiroshima on a light switch' and that 'everything with respiration would be dead by the morning.'"
The suspects had successfully tested the remote triggering system that could work from a little less than a half mile away from the weapon, the complaint states. On June 12, 2013, they planned to have a dinner where Crawford would be provided with the radiation system, which was not finished. When the men were meeting, the FBI was monitoring their activities, including using undercover informants who posed as members of a South Carolina Ku Klux Klan group interested in purchasing the device and financing the project.
According to prosecutors, “[Crawford's] plot to murder people he did not know was designed to, in his oft-repeated words, ‘take his country back’ from government leaders by forcing them to change government conduct he perceived as favoring Muslims."
Crawford is the first person to be convicted under the Dirty Bomb Prevention Act, a law passed by Congress to crack down on increased terror threats using weapons of mass destruction.