Two men in upstate New York built a portable X-ray gun to kill Barack Obama and Muslims, it has been claimed.

Glendon Crawford, a Ku Klux Klansman and Tea Party activist, and Eric Feight, an electronics expert, were charged in Albany with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists.

Targeted: two men have been arrested over a plot to kill Barack Obama with a ray gun. Credit:Getty Images

The FBI alleges that the pair worked to create a remote-controlled ray-gun-style device that would shoot lethal doses of radiation at their targets, who would go on to die later.

"Everything with respiration would be dead by the morning," Mr Crawford, 49, is said to have told an undercover FBI agent. "How much sweeter could there be than a big stack of smelly bodies?"