Flyers have been seen in coffeehouses across Austin reading “Wanted: Brandon Darby An Informant Rat Loose in Austin.” The vitriol that seems to chase Darby to this day is due to the fact that two young activists David McKay and Bradley Crowder have been sentenced to a combined six years in prison for possessing several Molotov cocktails that were to be used during demonstrations at the 2008 Republican National Convention and were convicted in large part through the testimony of Brandon Darby.
The possession of the cocktails is not in question, but what seems peculiar is why Darby an older, seasoned activist would agree to take part in a plan to firebomb a flock of police cars at the RNC, according to the FBI, and not just persuade the younger protégés to avoid instigating violent action?
According to the defendants, Darby had encouraged the violence and had provoked the younger activists to take this direction, an allegation Darby denies. Darby admits that he was asked by the bureau to be the “eyes and ears" to monitor the small, loose-knit group of activists that included McKay. Jeffrey DeGree, the defense attorney for Mckay is quoted as saying it was more accurate that "he wasn't the eyes and ears. He was the mouth — a violent, firebomb-obsessed mouth."
More recently, one of Darby’s closest friends, Scott Crow, a fellow anarchist activist and member of Common Ground, confessed that Brandon Darby had a long history of trying to recruit activists for what the two men were eventually convicted of. Crow’s admission, that in 2006 Brandon tried to recruit Crow and others “to firebomb a bookstore in Austin called Brave New Books,” was discovered on the Internet site PMPress.org.
This plan was hatched at a time when Darby was already in the employ of the Feds according to FBI documents. Crow says, “that for years he [Darby] advocated ‘blowing things up’ and later using arson.” Scott was unsure that Darby had ever committed any acts of terrorism but according to him, Brandon was intent “on getting others to do it.” So according to Scott Crow’s testimony, a known FBI informant with a history for provoking violent action had his sights set on Brave New Books.
Scott Crow was so adamant about Darby’s plan to bomb Brave New Books that he was willing to testify under oath in David McKay’s second trial to show that Darby had a history for initiating terrorist actions which would have given the defense the precedent needed to prove that Darby was in fact the instigator and not the innocent spectator he claimed he was. It also speaks to the fact that Scott Crow was very likely telling the truth about the plot to firebomb the bookstore, due to his willingness to testify under oath.
Why was Darby choosing a bookstore as a target for a direct action? Was his plan a way to ensnare fellow activists in a plot that would eventually be foiled by the heroic FBI? Or was this plan another classic government provocateur attempting to firebomb an actual threat to the FBI and the state, wielding his useful idiots as his accomplices all the while knowing he would be provided the full protection of the FBI? The latter seems justifiably more accurate given the history of the FBI and its long train of abuses using agent provocateurs to carry out its dirty work. One need not look any further than the FBI’s clear infiltration of Elohim City using Timothy McVeigh as their asset.
One could also look at the semi-retarded young religious men in Florida that were drafted by the U.S. government through the work of a joint terrorism task force agent who had infiltrated their group and persuaded them to express that they would be willing to help the terrorism task force blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Also, one should never forget that the FBI helped train an informant and provided materials to the informant that were used in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The bombing was allowed to occur with full knowledge of its planning by the FBI. There are loads of other examples that support the notion that the FBI routinely uses agent provocateurs in an effort to undermine its political enemies and swell its rank and budget.
In regrards to Brandon Darby, it is interesting to note that he was committed to seeing the Molotov cocktail bombing through at the RNC. According to the radio show This American Life, that featured Darby and people who knew him, Darby was willing to go ahead with the plan to bomb the police cars with David McKay in the early morning hours but the younger McKay never materialized and the plot was called off. This doesn't describe the behavior of an innocent observer and sounds more like the actions of an active participant willing to commit an act of terrorism and then scapegoat a pair of useful idiots. So would Darby's same zeal for terrorism had occurred if there would have been someone that would have been willing to help in Darby's plan to attack the bookstore? Luckily, we will never know because he was never able to execute his plans.
So with a review of the bureau’s history still fresh in one’s mind, considering Brandon Darby’s wavering personality in the mind of the public between the heroic Dudley Do-Right and nefarious government spook we see that Brandon Darby fits neatly into the second camp as a classic model for a government provocateur. So why did this FBI employee allegedly target Brave New Books for bombing? Is it possible that the bookstore was targeted because Brave New Books represents a genuine populist revolution, based on individual liberties and freedom of information? Or was it targeted because it threatens the state monopoly on violence and the fake opposition’s monopoly on dissent? This author for one thinks so.
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