(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The plot would be comical if not for its disturbing outcome: A man entrapped by FBI undercover agents and informants in a dubious plan to build a so-called X-ray gun is now housed in one of the most notorious prisons in the world.
The inmate, Glendon Crawford, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was initially charged by the Justice Department in 2013 for conspiring to build a “lethal radiation-emitting device.”
It turned out, Crawford’s plans were almost entirely facilitated by FBI undercover informants, undercover agents and a cooperating witness from the KKK—as the DOJ admitted in its own charging documents.
“Crawford soon found two separate groups with the apparent means and ability to get for him the type of x-ray system he wanted for his scheme,” FBI agent Geoffrey Kent said in a 2013 affidavit for an arrest warrant, before getting to the punchline: “Fortunately … both groups presently dealing with Crawford and his scheme are composed of Undercover Employees (UCEs) and a Confidential Human Source (CHS).”
The details of the DOJ’s case against Crawford were revealed to be even more absurd as the matter made its way through federal court. According to court filings, the DOJ used 59 federal agents and law enforcement officers over a two-year span to investigate Crawford, producing 7,700 pages of discovery materials and over 50 audio and video recordings—all made by undercovers in rooms or on the phone with Crawford.
Crawford’s attorney noted in an unsuccessful motion to dismiss that the FBI’s investigation was not a case where an undercover infiltrated a criminal enterprise.
“Rather, no criminal enterprise existed when the undercovers had contact with Crawford, and the criminal enterprise became, over time, all of the undercovers,” his motion said.
“The claimed device was provided by the undercovers, brought to a warehouse operated by those government undercovers, and was not activated at the time of the arrest of Crawford,” his motion stated.
“The video recording … reveals a number of box-type materials—all brought to the site by the government … They are in a government warehouse brought there by the government, and the recording shows defendant Crawford walking around at the encouragement of the government agents reading manuals about the machinery,” Crawford’s motion said.
“In the end, Crawford closed up the machine and said, ‘There is this thing called leagues, and I am not in this one.’”
Despite the highly dubious case, a jury eventually found Crawford guilty.
Crawford’s petition to the Supreme Court—which declined to hear his case—shows that he had many of the same barriers faced by the defendants in the Whitmer kidnap conspiracy: The government was allowed to play select clips of undercover audio recordings, but Crawford was not allowed to present his own evidence from the recordings—meaning the jury couldn’t hear statements where he declined to proceed with the alleged plan.
“The Government was allowed to pick and choose those portions that would be played for the jury and was allowed to pick and choose those portions that they wished to transcribe,” his brief to SCOTUS stated.
“That is, the Government played only select clips of different recordings and Petitioner was not allowed to play the entire portions to put the clips into context.”
A district judge had also allowed the FBI to conceal the identity of three undercover agents who testified against Crawford at trial.
To top it off, a federal judge assessed a twelve-level “terrorism” enhancement when sentencing Crawford, giving him 30 years in prison.
And now, Crawford is serving that sentence in one of the most notorious prisons in the world: Florence supermax, the home of inmates such as drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Florence is also where Whitmer kidnap defendants Adam Fox and Barry Croft are being caged.
Crawford has an ongoing lawsuit over his placement at Florence supermax.
According to Crawford’s lawsuit, which was filed last July, he was held in a medium-security prison in Pekin, Illinois for the first six months of his sentence in 2017. Then, suddenly he was informed that he’d be transferred to Florence.
Since then, Crawford has been subject to “special administrative measures,” or SAMs, designated for violent inmates. He said he’s been denied the ability to communicate with lawyers and others on the outside.
Crawford’s lawsuit claims that he is the “only Christian American who has been unjustifiably subjected to SAMs for six years, housed in the ADX supermax with the most notorious and infamous international Islamic terrorists—all of whom are unapolegetically in a state of war with this great nation.”
Crawford’s lawsuit is still in its early stages. A judge ordered him to file an amended complaint by Feb. 8.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
