2 Men Accused of Trying To Make X-Ray Weapon 470
gurps_npc writes "Two radical pro-Israel terrorists were caught in upstate NY when they tried to solicit money from various honorable Jewish organizations to build a truck based x-ray weapon. They intended to drive the truck around and then turn on the x-ray machine, focusing on enemies of Israel. But the Jewish organizations they tried to solicit money from refused to participate. Instead they called the FBI, who promptly set up a sting. The men were arrested before the machine was in working order."
A conspiracy... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
... I can see right thru it.
It reads more like a modern day version of someone trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. However, IANAR[aygun engineer].
Has he thought this through? (Score:3)
Re:Has he thought this through? (Score:4, Informative)
More or less everything radiates in a radial pattern (has spherical wavefron) and is subject to the inverse-square law. Even lasers have some divergence. Better focus (by e.g. reflectors) would give you lower angle of divergence and therefore higher initial power density, but that is all.
Definitely not. X-rays have significantly higher frequency and therefore shorter wavelength (380-740 nm for visible light and 0.01 - 10 nm for x-rays).
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PTO's are not limited to class 7 and higher trucks. Even vans (at least cutaway vans with the pickup chassis) and pickup trucks have PTO openings on the transmission. Ford F450/550 and Dodge 4500/5500 chassis are essentially longer pickup chassis with somewhat heavier suspensions. They have PTO options. Plus there are ways to modify drivelines for power towers or engine mounted PTO's. But in the case of special license, trucks weighing up to 26,000 lbs (11.8t) gross weight (class 6 and below) do not need an
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
"the undercover investigator brought Crawford X-ray tubes to examine for possible use in the weapon, followed by their technical specifications a month later. ... Investigators gave Feight $1,000 to build the control device and showed the men pictures of industrial X-ray machines they said they could obtain."
Hmm.. wonder whose idea this whole plot was. We've only heard one side so far.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Funny)
Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year! They oughta have 'em, too. --Dr.J.Frank Parnell
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"Ionizing radiation includes both subatomic particles of matter moving at relativistic speeds and electromagnetic waves on the short wavelength end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Common particles include alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, and various other particles such as mesons that constitute cosmic rays.[2][3][1] Electromagnetic waves are ionizing if their wavelength is short enough that the photons have enough energy to ionize. Gamma rays, X-rays, and the upper vacuum ultraviolet part of the
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
" i was surprised that microwaves aren't ionizing rads since they are often referred to as cooking from the insides.."
But they don't cook from the inside out.. Extremely old microwaves used to come with a thermometer that stuck down into the middle of what you were cooking so they could slowly cook from the outside in and would stop when your food was fully cooked. Newer microwaves realised that ppl quickly catch on to how to use them and a billion microwave cookbooks out there and removed the mostly redundant piece of equipment.
Not sure why you are spreading that old myth, and haven't worked it out yourself when you undercook something your self and find its still cold in the middle, but eh.
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Visible, Infrared, Microwave, and Radio can all cause heating (it is energy after all), but this is not ionising and not considered damaging unless it exceeds your body's thresholds for temperature regulation.
Microwave and Radio can penetrate deeper and create heat through a dielectric effect, but the end result is still the same.
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Tissues are not very transparent to UV-B, so this problem is limited to outer skin layers. Moreover, we adapt over generations by varying the melanin content. It takes about a 100 generations to go from full white to full black, and vice versa (there go the racial arguments, LOL). I'd say that given DNA's efficiency of storing information, the UV-B sensitivity is but a nitpick.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, Crawford was an industrial engineer for GE and a KKK member -- which just makes it all that much weirder that they'd try to sell it to Jewish organizations.
http://news.yahoo.com/york-men-accused-plotting-build-radiation-weapon-204445880.html [yahoo.com]
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Funny)
Do you seriously expect something refined from a KKK member? Their sole existence seems to be oriented towards being used for parody.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you seriously expect something refined from a KKK member? Their sole existence seems to be oriented towards being used for parody.
It's kind of a nuisance that the biggest fans of the 'white race' tend to be walking arguments against it. Why don't they try the "Ha! I'll show the mud races what's what by being a successful human being!" a bit more often?
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Why don't they try the "Ha! I'll show the mud races what's what by being a successful human being!" a bit more often?
They do. Have you not noticed how practically all of our leaders are old, rich, white men? The "biggest fans of the white race" are not rednecks who fly the Confederate flag, they're the rich white assholes who make policies that keep black people from becoming successful. e.g. the war on drugs, three strikes laws, welfare reform, and just investing more in white people than other people in
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Informative)
No, what I'm saying is that black people are disproportionately affected by those laws. Rates of drug use are roughly the same between white and black communities. Black people get arrested for drugs 4-5x more often than white people. You can figure the rest out for yourself.
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The thing that surprises me is that this person went to Jewish organizations and thought "Hey. Jews trust the KKK, right?" (Helpful tip for other KKK members: We tend not to trust KKK members. They tend to be grouped along with Neo-Nazis and other hate groups.)
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Funny)
No, The Judean Peoples Front.
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is this whole thing a joke? why would the terrorists solicit money from jewish organizations?
Not sure whether to believe this story or not. But the summary clearly states that the terrrorists where pro-Israel terrorists, which means it makes sense to solicit money from Jewish organizations. Not every terrorist in this world is a Muslim you know. ( If you were joking, I was appropriately whooshed)
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Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy mistake. I made the same mistake when I first read it. Had to go back and read it a couple times before I saw it. Yeah, we all know know that not all terrorists are Muslim. But we're not used to it.
Short memories. I remember when a large proportion of terrorists were Catholic.
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Here in the UK, most of our terrorists for a long time were Irish.
Re:A conspiracy... proving you wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Timothy McVeigh. Blew up Oklahoma building.
Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.
So many idiots going in and shooting up schools.
Not one of them muslim.
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Koresh and the Branch Davidians were hardly terrorists. The FBI shot first.
The idiots shooting up schools are just that, idiots. They're not doing it to terrorize for some political or religious end.
I'll give you McVeigh and Kaczynski.
Re:A conspiracy... proving you wrong (Score:4)
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Chechyan rebels? And what religion do you think their creed flies under?
Re: A conspiracy... proving you wrong (Score:4)
I think you are part of the problem. If we call everything that is harmful to a civil society terrorism, the word loses its meaning.
However, it has already lost its meaning because white folk are no longer being classed as terrorists. The classic example being Anders Breivik -- when he struck they cried "terrorist". When it turned out he was a white supremacist, the word disappeared.
Re: A conspiracy... proving you wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason they stopped calling him a terrorist is because they decided they were not going to be terrorized or give him a platform. They didn't want him to be seen as a soldier fighting a war or on some kind of crusaded. They demoted him to a simple criminal, a deranged murder.
We could learn a lot from that.
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Paul Ross Evans: attempted bombing of an abortion clinic.
Kevin W. Harpham: attempted bombing of a civil rights parade.
Marie Mason: firebombing of a Michigan State University research lab.
Muslim terrorists are in the minority in the US. It's just that the others don't usually get more than regional coverage.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Informative)
There is all the Irish ones that you spent decades shielding from justice back in the U.K. because it suited you. They where allowed to openly raise funds, and convicted terrorists where not extradited back to the U.K.
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is this whole thing a joke? why would the terrorists solicit money from jewish organizations? also, doesn't the TSA have similar vans already?
It's possible (read, likely) that this guy was not exactly a mental giant. That said, there is an interesting subcultural twist in certain subsections of American conservatism: they don't necessarily like judaism; but their particular flavor of Christian millennialism requires Jews in order to fulfill assorted 'prophesy' related events shortly before the end times.
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That, and 'the enemy of my enemy.' The religious aspect of the conflict around Israel comes down to Muslims vs Jews. Even if the conservatives aren't big fans of Jews, they detest Muslims - and that makes Jews their allies.
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This is just CIA/NSA propaganda. Grocery store celeb news mags for people "afraid". Something "terrible" is gonna happen one day if we don't justify our fucked society.
If what you say is true ... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just CIA/NSA propaganda. Grocery store celeb news mags for people "afraid". Something "terrible" is gonna happen one day if we don't justify our fucked society.
If what you say is true, not long from now they will arrest some "terrorists" from China, some other "terrorists" from Cuba, from Russia, and from North Korea will be arrested too, and their "weapon of choice" will be ranging from "portable gamma knife" to "dirty bombs" and everything in between
Yep, NSA is here to save the United States of America, and they will catch the "terrorists" and parade them in front of all of us to gawk at
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Funny)
In case you haven't noticed, not every terrorist and terrorist-wannabe is a genius.
Bitch, please. Muslim terrorists build bombs out of pressure cookers. These Jewish terrorists wanted to build a fucking death ray.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitch, please. Muslim terrorists build bombs out of pressure cookers. These Jewish terrorists wanted to build a fucking death ray.
Except that the terrorists are not jewish. They were trying to get funding by jewish organizations by promising to target enemies of Israel.
Instead of funding them, the jewish organizations contacted the FBI.
So no, the jews in this story are not the terrorists, in fact, they are the heroes.
It lookes like the slashdot editor (samzenpus) is either trying to discredit the jews on purpose or is too stupid to write a decent summary.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the terrorists are not jewish. They were trying to get funding by jewish organizations by promising to target enemies of Israel.
Instead of funding them, the jewish organizations contacted the FBI.
So no, the jews in this story are not the terrorists, in fact, they are the heroes.
It lookes like the slashdot editor (samzenpus) is either trying to discredit the jews on purpose or is too stupid to write a decent summary.
There is nothing like THE Jews in this story. Some Jews were heroes.
But what other kind of terrorists would ask Jewish organizations for funding? Muslim terrorists? definitly no. Anti-Gouvernment homegron style terrorists? No, don't think so. Neo-Nazis as "pro-Israel"? Aeehmm.. most definitly no.
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Read the article after writing my comment (in good /. tradition...)
I never would have KKK terrorists to support Israel.....
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the terrorists are not jewish.
Has anyone said they're not Jewish? Or that they are Jewish?
It lookes like the slashdot editor (samzenpus) is either trying to discredit the jews on purpose
How? By not implying that they're Jewish? The only person who's stated that they're Jewish is FatLitteMonkey.
or is too stupid to write a decent summary.
a) samzenpus didn't write it b) samzenpus probably didn't read it
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
The summary does imply that they are Jewish,
Where? It says they're pro-Israel, that's all. One can be pro-Israel without being Jewish.
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One can be pro-Israel without being Jewish.
Also, one can also be Jewish and anti-Israel [wikipedia.org]. Things can be complicated.
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Like United States three-letter agencies that are dominated by professed Christian Armageddonists?
Oh, good point. The armagaddonist nutjobs only sponsor pro-Israeli terrorism so that Israel will be around to be destroyed in the Last Days, and the unrepentant Jews sent screaming into Hell.
It's always amazed me how mu
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Funny)
Oy! Why get messy with animal carcuses? (Score:2)
Mine is purely for target practice...
Targets -look- like animals, :-)
but not one of them has to die.
pro-Israel terrorists? (Score:4, Funny)
No such thing!
Re:pro-Israel terrorists? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, they're called "Americans" ;-)
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OH, SNAP!
No, its spelled "Oy Vey!"
They were probably just broke and ... (Score:2, Insightful)
They were probably just broke and got solicited by undercover FBI goons to make a "terrorist" plot.
Whatever gave them that idea? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever gave them that idea? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, when god is on your side (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything is acceptable. burning witches, executing gays, xraying muslims, rocketing israelis, raping kids, car bombing protestants. its all good as long as god agrees....and if you read your books there are passages that'll help you along :)
"X-Ray Weapon" (Score:2)
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also known as "Ark of the Covenant". Moses should thank God that the Egyptians didn't have the NSA.
it belongs in a museum!
Is that it?! (Score:3, Funny)
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Gotta say, after everything I've heard on the Internet; the Zionist conspiracy really doesn't live up to the hype...
Creating a nation by force and using it to foment hate in the region isn't sufficient for you?
Ironic in light of history (Score:3)
weeeeak (Score:2)
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Informative)
no, you should read about the foot x-ray machines some shoe stores used in the 1940s, they gave some people 20 REM of dose! It doesn't take that much power to make dangerous levels of X-Ray radiation.
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, the gear could be man-portable. This is actually an amazingly brilliant plot, you're not around when the victim dies, you leave no evidence on the victim, even if someone spots you during the assassination they couldn't tell you're killing the person (just holding a suitcase near them or backing them with a backpack). This is the most impressively clever thing I've heard of in ages, I'm kind of jealous I never thought of it myself.
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Need I remind you: Kids! Don't try this at home!
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Insightful)
I was really hoping that no one would think of portable radiation generators for this. The only way to stop this is to control some very broadly useful technologies - high voltage generators, vacuum equipment. The basic problem is that a clever person can do a huge amount of damage with readily available, difficult to regulate equipment. Unless we eliminate the situations that motivate terrorists (politically very difficult), we will either need ever increasing security and monitoring, or we will need to accept that a fair number of people will die. I'm willing to accept the deaths, but I don't think most americans are.
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually not a new idea. In East Germany, the STASI is alleged to have done that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/352461.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Pretty scary and brutal stuff.
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It's hard to re-direct an x-ray once it's made, but typical X-Ray tube Bremsstrahlung sources are fairly directional to start with. Orient the tube in the right direction, and you can be standing in far lower flux than your target. The Cobalt-60 sources used for industrial radiography to X-ray whole buildings (while keeping the operator shielded) would also be nasty in the wrong hands.
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I remember them!
I used to go into shoe stores by myself as a young child to look at the bones in my feet - totally oblivious of any possible danger...
This was when I lived in Wallasey, United Kingdom.
This sounds familiar... (Score:3)
This sounds almost like what the government is already deploying [csmonitor.com]. In one context, x-ray trucks are terrorism. In the other, they're part of the counter-terrorism effort.
And yes, I know the doses would be different, but where do you draw the line?
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This sounds almost like what the government is already deploying [csmonitor.com]. In one context, x-ray trucks are terrorism. In the other, they're part of the counter-terrorism effort.
And yes, I know the doses would be different, but where do you draw the line?
That's like saying giving someone an injection with a needle that's been sterilized with bleach is the same as giving them an injection of bleach. Hey, they both contain *some* bleach!
Quantity is important.
Nazi scum! (Score:4, Funny)
I used to work with stuff like this (Score:5, Interesting)
Big old X-ray tubes that are used for taking pictures of welds in bulkheads, etc. I heard a story that some guy in the '80s killed one of his co-workers on purpose by aiming the tube through a wall at his victim. Having worked with the bigger tubes, I can see it.
Odd morning (Score:5, Funny)
"What's that big truck in front of our office?"
"I don't know, and why is your spleen showing on my laptop?"
radical terrorist (Score:3)
Re:radical terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
"radical terrorist" is something interesting. That suggests there could be some "moderate terrorist". Anyone encountered that weird kind of terrorist?
They don't tend to be called 'terrorists'(because, by virtue of being moderate, they use violence to achieve ends that good, upstanding, people agree with); but nothing about being a terrorist actually requires any particular flavor of agenda, just the presence of somebody opposed to whatever your agenda is, and the willingness and capability to employ coercive violence and fear.
Somebody like Sir Arthur Harris [wikipedia.org] would arguably qualify. He was an ideologically unexceptional commander of British air forces during WWII, and implemented the British 'saturation bombing' efforts against civilian targets and infrastructure. As he candidly described it:
"the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."
If that doesn't qualify as 'terrorism', I'm not certain what would; but he's a deeply un-radical figure, pretty much heading to the office every day to implement the (widely prevailing) logic of "Total War" in the service of his government, a not-exactly-radical line of business.
(I don't particularly mean to pick on the British, relatively staid people who execute what are unambiguously terror tactics aren't especially uncommon, or confined to any particular nation, he just happened to be a good example that I hit on quickly.)
"The Guild" (Score:2)
"both said they were committed to building the device and named the group 'the guild,' the indictment said."
Vork and Zaboo, no!
Really now? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.labx.com/v2/adsearch/detail3.cfm?adnumb=491358#MoreDesc [labx.com]
Mobile unit, runs on batteries, would fit in a van. However....its only a mobile xray unit. Claims ~1900 exposures per charge. I doubt it is made to run in continuous output.... and still only going to be effective at a very short range.
Maybe if you parked a van along a route that your target walked several times a day, for multiple days.... and his path took him within a few feet of the side of the van....and the van.... its not a metal body is it? That's going to be a problem too. Not entirely impossible that a dangerous dose could be delivered, and by dangerous I mean like, increasing his chance of cancer and possibly thyroid or kidney issues in his old age sort of dangerous.
So two things:
1. He went to jewish groups, after going to the Klan:
But Doesn't the Klan hate the Zionists? Huh? This guy is just playing the I hate muslims thing....ok, that works I guess. Still, a bit of a douche move to pitch it to the Klan and then adopt the "Enemies of Israel" spiel. Good salesmanship I guess.
2. This seems overly complex and expensive. Shit, at that point, why not just buy some laser diodes and have a hand portable device capable of blinding someone permenantly from a safe distance, and instantly? Oh.... wait... that would only cost a few hundred bucks.
So I am thinking the scam artists who were looking to take some people for some cash they couldn't rightly sue him for the return of, got caught up in a bigger con game where the FBI set them up to con us into thinking that we really need their protection.
I bet you if they didn't arrest them when they did, they would have driven off with the van and disappeared, gone back to the KKK and offered their services, and then shopped around for more suckers. If they finds out it doesn't expose film, they would have had some films made up and claimed its too dangerous to be nearby while it runs.
NSA and Prism to the rescue (Score:3)
So if we are supposed to accept the NSA recording our phone meta-data and storing email and internet traffic so they can stop terrorists, why is it they didn't stop these people? It always seems that it's regular people on the plane noticing someone trying to light their underwear or whatever. Nobody stopped the Boston bombers. But at least we have this backtrack of meta-data to look at. Who cares about the dead, we give up the freedom so we can have the full picture after the fact. That way the movies made years later can be accurate.
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There's plenty that Israel has done that could be considered crimes beyond survival. However, "Israel" and "Jews" are only slightly more synonymous than "Muslims" and "Iraq".
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Re:Every pro-israel is a terrorist by default (Score:4, Insightful)
Fascism combines elements of both the right and the left while being moderate on few, if any, aspects.
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The biggest crime of the Jews is the fact of their survival, and as such, every person not supporting their demonization, dehumanization, and double standards against Jews and Israel is a terrorist by definition. Truly, how low can those Juice stoop? What will they think of next...
Calling out Israeli oppression, torture and killing of Palestinians is not demonisation, and it is not dehumanisation. The majority of those who call for the Israeli government and military to be brought before judges in The Hague do not condone the Palestinian suicide bombers, so it is no double standard to say that serving soldiers should not be firing live rounds into school playgrounds.
I feel sorry for the people of Israel, I really do. Prior to World War 2, Europe was a horrible place, defined by xen
Re:The two were also apparently plotting (Score:4, Funny)
to demand that people take off their shoes.
Maybe they can get jobs with the TSA.
Re:Supremely Irresponsible Reporting. Shame on /. (Score:5, Funny)
1) The editors at Slashdot who curate the submissions don't bother to check the basic sources
That's OK, we were all new here once.
Re:Supremely Irresponsible Reporting. Shame on /. (Score:4, Informative)
2) The editors at Slashdot have some sort of Antisemitic agenda
Why would I say that? If you bother to read the second sentence of the article you will notice that the weapon builders were not Jews.
The summary neither says nor implies that they were. It's perfectly compatible with the linked article.
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I've read the article several times and can't find any mention of them being pro-Israel. It seems like the only real "Israeli" connection is that Jewish people were the targets of a scam and did the right thing and alerted authorities...
Look for "that they intended to use to secretly sicken opponents of Israel", in the very first sentence.
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The summary DOES say they were pro-israel terrorist, which is incorrect. They were not, they tried to sell this same thing to the KKK (who are anti-jew). Just because you attempted to sell it to a group, and ESPECIALLY if you try to sell it to the opposing group, does not
Please don't feed the troll. (Score:3)
Dan Rather has been doing this for years.
Re:Supremely Irresponsible Reporting. Shame on /. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How were you modded informative? From the article:
"Crawford approached Jewish organizations last year looking for funding and people to help him with technology that could be used to surreptitiously deliver damaging and even lethal doses of radiation against those he considered enemies of Israel."
How are they not pro-Israel? Not everything that you disagree with is anti-semitic. Really the only bias evident is your own.
And if they wanted to request funding from Iran they would have offered to use their weapon against the enemies of Iran.
Would that mean they are pro-Iran?
I don't know if you are anti-semitic or not, but an anti-semitic would jump to the same conclusion you did without a really thinking about it. Perhaps you are not anti-semitic, you just don't really think.
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Nowhere does the article or summary say or imply this was an Israeli operation. Rather, a couple of nutcases decided on their own to attack those that they perceived as enemies of Israel.
Re:The system worked (Score:5, Insightful)
Really glad to hear that it was Jewish Americans who turned the crazies in. Hopefully many of the mosques in America that encounter radical and/or terrorism sympathetic persons will rise to the occasion and do the same when they hear something actionable, instead of waiting for the government to find the bad guys without assistance.
That is, in fact, the norm rather than the exception.
Did I dodge the knee jerk liberal piling-on?
No, you just told us that you don't know how liberals think.
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That is, in fact, the norm rather than the exception.
To some degree, but not enough yet.
No, you just told us that you don't know how liberals think.
My observation is that some liberals, when they encounter a statement against Islamism, respond with knee-jerk defense of "Islam" as this idealized, peaceful religion that is cruelly maligned for no reason whatsoever by mentally deficient redneck American Christians. They can't get it into their minds that the actual core religion (not a perversion thereof) of a substantial fraction of humanity wants to kill us. Case in point: a professor at a local university who regula
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Hopefully many of the mosques in America that encounter radical and/or terrorism sympathetic persons will rise to the occasion and do the same when they hear something actionable,
Yeah, they never do that! [independent.co.uk]
The FBI wasn't spying on mosques to eavesdrop on people agonizing over temptation to eat bacon
Yeah, that's totally why american muslims distrust the FBI.
Man, they sure are dummies to think the FBI was spying on them because of pork!
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Actually from reading the article it was the KKK that called the FBI. Talk about strange bedfellows.
""Crawford has specifically identified Muslims and several other individuals/groups as targets," investigator Geoffrey Kent said in a court affidavit. According to the indictment, Crawford also traveled to North Carolina in October to solicit money for the weapon from a ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, who informed the FBI. Crawford claimed to be a member."
The FBI led the pair along for a while by supplying parts and money to build the device.
Sounds like FBI was helping them in hopes of incriminating a lot of KKK members, but KKK saw right through (:P) FBI sting.
FBI is trying to salvage another failed self manufactured terror. They will probably claim NSA spying helped them catch this.
This might be a result of an order from DC to somehow pull 50 foiled terror plots out of their asses.
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It's been awhile since TV repair class, but I seem to remember that it's the high voltage tube, not necessarily the CRT, that was the primary source for x-rays.
Not the damper diode.... (Score:3)
The damper only sees several kV pulses, not enough to generate X-rays strong enough to get out of the tube.
The culprits in old color TVs were the HV rectifier, the HV shunt regulator, and the CRT itself.
Good article on the TV X-ray issue in the April 1968 issue of Popular Science, available on Google Books.
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Headline says the they're accused of building a weapon. Summary says they're accused of conspiracy to commit murder. Who to believe? I could RTFA, but what if that lists a third possibility?
These two things are not mutually exclusive. In this case, I'd assume that he is accused of attempting to build a weapon; but that the 'weapon' he was trying to build (by virtue of having no ballistic, explosive, or even particularly sharp, components) probably doesn't fall under any of the stock weapons possession charges, so the feds, in lieu of maybe getting some hilariously tiny occupational health and safety violation fine assessed, are going after him on the 'conspiracy to commit murder' angle, which
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There are a couple of operating X-ray lasers, at DESY in Hamburg, at SLAC (where I work) in California, and in Japan near Kyoto, with a few more under construction around the world. They are great research tools, but they are not useful for weapons: cannot be pointed, required enormous (kilometer-scale) equipment, and have average powers that are just not very dangerous.