Man gets 8 years for trying to kill Muslims with X-rays

ALBANY, N.Y. - An upstate New York man who admitted helping build what he thought was a mobile X-ray device to kill Muslims has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Fifty-seven-year-old Eric Feight, of Hudson, pleaded guilty in 2014 to providing material support to terrorists. He was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Albany.

Feight was arrested in 2013 along with 51-year-old Glendon Scott Crawford, of Galway. Crawford is awaiting sentencing after his conviction in August of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and other charges.

Investigators began tracking Crawford in 2012 after he approached two Albany-area Jewish groups. They also learned Crawford sought help from a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who was an FBI informant.

Authorities said the device was inoperable. Nobody was hurt.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Belliss said earlier "Mr. Crawford hated Muslims and other politically liberal people," Belliss told the jurors. He replayed earlier Friday the first secretly taped conversation of Crawford with another FBI informant in which Crawford said, "I think Islam is an opportunist infection of DNA" and "Radiation poisoning is a beautiful thing."

According to the prosecutor, Crawford's tireless pursuit of the plan drove the investigation. The evidence showed he was "cold, calculated" and "committed." He was not "cartoonish" or "a goofy simpleton," as the defense suggested, the prosecutor said.

In one videotape, when asked about the best viable local targets, Crawford mentioned an Albany storefront mosque and the New York governor's mansion.

Luibrand said federal agents and their informants kept making contact with Crawford over the 13-month investigation and they eventually provided an X-ray device that never worked. His client, a Navy veteran, had no criminal history, he said.

"A government agent got the radiological device," Luibrand said. "The government produced it, ordered it, paid for it."