Letter From Austin
The Unusual Suspects
Did Austin anarchists torch the Governor’s Mansion?
Uncle Herman says: Well, I think this is an interesting article but I find it unlikely that anarchists were responsible for the arson fire at the mansion. I mean, this is all conjecture. No one has been arrested yet. But my reasoning is based in the fact that anarchists don’t really operate like this. They are capable of resorting to violence, most definitely, but they generally do so in two circumstances and pretty narrowly at that: a) against fascist and racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi organizations, at political demonstrations by racist and fascist groups, b) at major meetings of financial institutions, political parties, where a lot of media attention is concentrated. In other words, the Republican National Convention, the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, and so on. Otherwise, they’re more likely to hand out food to the homeless or loiter under bridges than strike out at historic buildings. Again, this is all conjecture. What strikes me as disturbingly likely was that this arson attack was an example of far right nationalist violence. You mention Alex Jones in the article -- a lot of his listeners have been very upset with Gov. Perry over his highway program -- they fear that further links with Mexico is part of a conspiracy to undermine the strength of the nation and that through revolutionary violence the nation can be cleansed of undesirable influences. More than that, though, this could have been a response to the raid on the fringe Mormon splinter sect in El Dorado, Texas. Far right nationalists saw the federal raid on the compound as a repeat of the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. As we should be well aware, the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out as a response to the raid. There has been a lot of talk of far right violence recently, and there have been many examples: neo-Nazis arrested for plotting to kill the President, the recent shooting of the late-term abortion doctor by a right-wing anti-abortion activist, and so on. I haven’t seen any examples of anarchist violence except at the 2008 political conventions, which is ordinary for radical leftist groups. What I’m saying is that there is a pattern here of "lone wolf" style attacks by nationalists, and the fire at the governor’s mansion might fit the pattern. Yes, Austin is a left-wing kind of town. But there’s a significant presence of extreme nationalist politics, the kind of people who wave Revolutionary War flags and think they embody the mythical spirit of the Founding Fathers -- and are willing to engage in redemptive violence for the sake of violence as a result. I.E. fascist violence, Alex Jones, etc. I’ve said this before to friends, and they look at me and say: Rick Perry is a right-wing crazy person! Why would the far right have a problem with him? A cursory study of the far right terrorists I’m talking about shows that they view "the system" as corrupt, and that only a revolution against both major political parties, a complete upending of the government, can save "the nation" from disaster. The movement around Ron Paul is a good example of this sentiment. (June 5th, 2009 at 10:29pm)
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McKay then apparently had a falling out with others in the group and devised another plan. On an FBI audio recording that a federal informant secretly taped during a meeting with him on September 2 in St. Paul, the Austinite described how Molotov cocktails that he and Crowder had made would be thrown at vehicles in a parking lot cryptically described in the affidavit as a place that is “used by marked and unmarked law enforcement vehicles and is visibly patrolled by individuals wearing U.S. Secret Service vests.” (Crowder was already in jail, having been arrested for disorderly conduct.) When the informant asked McKay about the possibility that police officers might be injured, he allegedly replied, “It’s worth it if an officer gets burned or maimed.” The following day, St. Paul police raided the apartment where McKay and the informant had met, seizing gas masks, helmets, and eight Molotov cocktails, as well as some rather quaint weaponry: slingshots. Crowder and McKay are now being held without bond in Minnesota as they await trial on federal weapons charges.
Though the connection between the St. Paul case and the Governor’s Mansion fire seemed tenuous to me—Molotov cocktails are hardly difficult to make—Fred Burton, a counterterrorism expert for Stratfor, a private intelligence company in Austin, told me that he believed the similarities between the two cases warranted further examination. “I don’t have access to the current investigative file, but in my humble opinion, the nexus is very compelling,” he said in October. “You have an Austin-based anarchist group that has constructed Molotov cocktails before, has demonstrated a willingness to commit acts of violence, and has the philosophy and the psychological mind-set to carry out this kind of crime. And then you have a very symbolic target, the Governor’s Mansion, where our seated president used to live.” Whoever committed the crime had conducted “extensive reconnaissance beforehand and was very methodical,” he added.
Burton, the former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, predicted that any Texas-led investigation of Crowder and McKay would first focus on the electronic record—text messages, e-mails, cell phone calls—to see where they were at the time of the fire. “That will either bury them or refute that they were involved,” he said. Burton also suggested that any fragments of the Molotov cocktail that were recovered from the Governor’s Mansion could be compared with the eight Molotov cocktails seized in St. Paul, which were made using empty wine and liquor bottles, a mixture of gasoline and motor oil, tampons that had been soaked in lighter fluid, and rubber bands.
Jeff DeGree, McKay’s attorney in St. Paul, told me that to his knowledge, Texas investigators had had one brief interview with his client but no follow-up conversations. (Crowder’s attorney would not comment for this story, and Crowder himself, in a letter from jail, wrote that he’d been advised not to discuss his case.) If Crowder’s MySpace page is any indication (yes, anarchists now have MySpace pages), the two Austinites are not shy about advertising their political activism. His profile, ThoughtRebel, boasts a photo of him dressed in black ninja gear at a protest, another of McKay holding up a sign that says “Abortions Are Neat!” and a snapshot of Crowder standing with three grinning friends who are holding Molotov cocktails. Could these guys possibly have kept quiet all summer about the Governor’s Mansion fire if they had had any involvement in sparking it? And wouldn’t the FBI, which began investigating the group as far back as February 2007, have heard something about the fire from its informant? “There is absolutely no connection between us and that event,” McKay wrote to me from jail about the mansion fire. “I think it has been just another way for [the FBI] to justify their actions and to turn us into domestic terrorists. We are nothing of the sort and we are proud to [be] Austinites and Texans and Americans.” He denied ever wanting to harm police officers, and as for the informant in St. Paul, he wrote, “Many questions about his motivations to crucify us go unanswered.”
Damian Roberts, a friend of McKay’s and Crowder’s in Midland, where the two men are originally from, emphasized that they were nonviolent. Crowder was “the common punk kid who was interested in politics and sharing his point of view with others,” Roberts e-mailed me, while McKay “liked to have fun, he was kind of a wild child, but never a danger to anyone.” Both were “very peaceful” and “wanted to get people to work together more and be less reliant on government.” They had protested the Ku Klux Klan when the group had marched in Midland, and they shared an interest in community building. “They are two of the most compassionate people I know,” Roberts wrote. “They are very intelligent and got led by the informant to the point they are at. Their community-organizing tactics were more of the potluck-skill-share type than of violence. They know more effective ways to get communities working together in gardens than in riots.”
Whether an anarchist, a lone nut, or someone who had an ax to grind with Governor Perry is to blame, and whether an arrest ever comes, there’s still the fate of the mansion itself to consider. To many of the people I interviewed, the notion that someone wanted to destroy the building—a living, breathing piece of Texas history that Ann Richards famously called the People’s House—remained unfathomable. News of the fire had left the mansion’s docents “stunned,” “heartbroken,” and “heartsick,” they told me. Perry himself summed up the sense of loss in a statement he issued in the wake of the destruction: “Though it can certainly be rebuilt, what Texas has lost today can never be replaced.” A former mansion tour guide, Robert Perez, expressed similar sentiments. “I loved the fact that the home was always bigger than those who had the privilege of occupying it, precisely because it belonged to the state of Texas as a whole,” he explained. “The residence was above party affiliations or ideologies.”
Those who are in mourning for the mansion can take solace in the fact that the Legislature, when it convenes in January, will likely appropriate the funds for a renovation to proceed without delay. When I spoke to Dealey Herndon, a State Preservation Board staffer and the new project manager of the rebuilding effort, in October, she was upbeat about the prospect of the building’s being restored to its original glory. “A remarkable amount of it is intact,” she said, crediting the mansion’s meticulous construction and high-quality materials for its structural integrity. “A modern house couldn’t have withstood a fire of that magnitude. But the mansion is beautifully built; the exterior walls, and even the dividing walls that separate each room, are thick and made of brick. When the roof began falling in, a lot of pressure was put on those walls, but the house remained standing.”
Herndon, who oversaw the restoration of the Texas Capitol and the construction of the Capitol Extension, specializes in large historic preservation projects. The portion of the mansion that was hardest hit, she told me, was the entrance. But each of the rooms is still intact, and many signature elements of the house remain standing, including the grand half-turn staircase (Governor James Hogg once drove nails into its banister to prevent his children from sliding down it) and the carved mantel in the library (beneath which Sam Houston reportedly burned a letter from Abraham Lincoln offering the assistance of federal troops if Texas remained in the Union). All the mansion’s furnishings, as well as its windows and doors, have survived, because they were in storage during the time of the fire. The longleaf pine floors, sixteen-foot ceilings, and deep veranda will be restored, and the decorative woodwork that extends throughout the house will be salvaged or, where necessary, re-created.
“We think we can get the mansion back to the way it was,” Herndon said, although she was reluctant to say how long the project might take, because the Legislature still has to determine the timetable for funding. “Once it’s finished, you won’t be able to tell that there was ever a fire.”
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