Newswoman: We turn now to a story out of Austin, Texas,
that's shocked social justice activists nation wide.
Brandon Darby has admitted to wearing recording devices
and wearing a transmitter embedded in his belt.
He's expected to testify in the trial of two Texas activists
who were arrested on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails.
Newsman: Two Texas men are charged with plotting to attack police with Molotov cocktails.
Newswoman: David McKay and Bradley Crowder could face up to ten years in prison.
Man: To say that Brandon Darby didn't give those guys a fair chance
It's a travesty what he did. It's a travesty what he did.
Where am I looking?
Interviewer: Look straight into the camera.
It's not looking straight at me.
You're looking straight at it right now.
- Am I? - Yep, yeah.
- Tell me when. - We're ready. We're rolling.
I'm gonna start over. I'm sorry, man.
I've received a lot of direct death threats.
I've had to go to trial and testify
against someone sending me death threats.
People put images of me with "kill him" on the Internet.
The U.S. Attorney's office offered me
the witness protection program, but this is my home.
This group, they use Molotov cocktails, they threaten violence.
No it doesn't work, man.
Because it's not about them, it's about the whole fucking Left
and their support of these fuckers.
Okay, let's just get you, just talk, speak your mind.
- Okay... - And just try to focus on this...
- and just tell it to us. - Okay, go ahead, man.
This is my home. I'm not going to leave.
(helicopter blades whirring)
as the founder of the New Orleans-based group Common Ground Relief,
which he helped start after Hurricane Katrina.
How's this?
- What is that? - Interviewer: Interview...
Where do I look?
- Always in the camera. - Into that thing?
Strange.
One second for the focus.
All right, I'm ready.
My name is Brandon Darby and I work with the Common Ground Collective
in New Orleans, Louisiana. We're in the Lower Ninth Ward.
We've been here between four and five months,
working with... with people from around the country, and with locals.
To get water and food and medicine, medical care...
The people here were left to die.
What I saw was awful. You know?
If I'd had an appropriate weapon
I would have, I would have attacked my government
for what they were doing to people. I honestly would have.
Newsman: Much of New Orleans is flooded, and now we're having to deal with it.
Newsman 2: It's just this incredible misery.
We were at the New Orleans Convention Center today...
You turn the TV on and you see these images,
and you're like, what's going on?
Newsman: ...with their babies, literally living in raw sewage.
Brandon: It was like wow, this is fucked up.
You know, this is wrong. How could this happen?
Newsman: Just a horrible scene down there.
And my friend's there, and I couldn't get him to leave before the storm.
I had no idea if he was alive or dead.
And it bothered me... profoundly.
'Cause you can't really know the guy and not, not care about...
you know not like the guy, you know, like he's one of those people.
I began to call people, and I said hey,
"You know, we should go get King, you know?"
We're talking and he says, man, let's go get him.
So we arrive.
We had gone through what used to be a neighborhood.
And we saw dead bodies everywhere.
I wasn't even ready to deal with it.
Brandon: Some people had returned, to look for loved ones.
There was a guy whose dad stayed in a yellow house.
A little ways up the road we saw a part of a yellow house,
and we had this big debate on whether we should go tell him
or let him find it for himself?
And we decided that emotionally we couldn't handle it.
So we let him find it for himself.
And we had a lot of those experiences,
going into the city of New Orleans.
And it was really fucking sad, you know?
Scott: So he gets in his truck and he goes across the bridge.
Brandon: I was just determined that,
there was no way in hell that I was not go and get King,
or at least know if he was dead, you know? There's no way.
That's it there.
So this was all underwater.
I parked my truck and I started walking.
I ended up under an overpass.
The law enforcement on the overpass stopped me and told me I couldn't be there.
And I said you're up there, I'm down here.
Sorry. Tough shit, you know?
And they talked and they were like, let us call you an airboat.
I get in the airboat-- it's Army Rangers.
And they're like, well, this is gonna take too long.
And I started getting this really weird feeling that they weren't actually
trying to help me go get my friend.
The one thing I had going for me was everyone was afraid of the water.
And then I said, "You can get me at my friend's house at this address."
I got on a fencepost. And I think it's that fence post.
And I just held on to the fence post, so I could stay up.
And they were saying things like, "You're gonna get so sick from that water.
You need to get out the water now. Come back."
And I was like, "No-- Go get my friend, and I'll get in your boat.
Sorry, go get him and then I'll get in your boat."
And then I had a cell phone call.
Cause I had my phone in my mouth when I swam from here to over there.
And it was him. He was like, "Brandon."
And I was like, "Oh shit, where are you at?
You don't know what, the situation I'm in.
Where are you? Don't tell me you're in Texas."
And he was like, "No, I'm in this boat with these Rangers."
And I was like, oh shit.
It was the Army Rangers who had initially picked me up.
And they, they went to his address and got him.
In a moment, in a, you know, flash of an eye,
how the whole infrastructure could just dissolve.
I had been surrounded by water by this time about maybe ten days.
"Your friend sent us to get you. Do you know Brandon?"
I said, "Yeah" and I just laughed and said, "Wow."
Brandon calls. "I got King." And man, I cried.
And I cried, like it was one of the most joyous times of my life.
Cause I'd almost given up hope that he would be alive.
You have all kind of signs all over the community
saying that we kill looters, but what constitutes a looter?
Scott: They put all these really hateful signs.
But then they decided to take it on themselves
to have armed militia patrols.
These guys were policing their community,
and they identified enemy as black.
And so they had in fact become racist and because
they were armed and they were using that, they were using force,
they had become racist militias.
Scott: We go and we cover up a dead body that was bullet-riddled.
And the question is, who killed this man?
And then there's another one two streets over.
And I'm like, who killed this man?
- Was it the vigilantes? - We shot 'em!
- Woman: They were looters! - You had to do what you had to do.
If you had to shoot somebody you had to shoot somebody.
Don't go into a white woman's home and tell her you're gonna take it over.
- Woman: No. You don't do that. - No.
We don't allow that around these parts.
No way is this happening. Not in front of me, you know?
Not in front of me, I'm not letting this happen.
Even if it kills me, it's wrong.
It's just wrong, I'd rather die saying hell no to this.
And that's what we-- that's the decision we made.
Brandon and I, when we brought guns,
we brought a lot of semiautomatic weapons,
we brought a lot of high-powered rifles.
And we fucking... and us and people from this community
sat on the porch and said, "no more."
Get the fuck out of here. This is not a place to fuck with.
Like this is... it's over.
You know I was ready for guerrilla warfare
and Scott was the one who was actually
and he was like well we need to be prepared for that,
if indeed something else happens and they start trying to kill black people again.
But we also-- here's a chance to organize.
This is gonna be a chance for us as anarchists to do something
that is not just fighting in the streets or resisting corporate power, state power.
Scott and Malik really used their activist connections in a really positive way.
They'd started a clinic, I mean they did amazing stuff.
Man: They were giving out food, water.
If you had medical problems, they were there with everything.
It was amazing.
We put it on the Internet
and we ask people that are activists or organizers in those cities
to print as many of those out and bring them to the churches,
bring them to the shelters, and bring them to the hotels,
and bring them, that will get the word out.
We want to get as many people back home as we can,
as soon as possible.
'Cause they trying to put a time limit on us.
We don't have a church for people to organize it from.
This pastor right here, he says that he's willing to open his home up,
it's called Eagle Wings, open his church up for people to use.
So we already had had a lot of support in the community,
but law enforcement was not happy with us.
I'm Scott Crow, I'm one of the co-organizers, co-founder.
You got any paperwork saying officially who you are?
What kind of group you are?
- I have my ID. - Let me see that.
You know here are a bunch of radicals hanging out
and associating with former Black Panther Party members.
Frankly, I really felt-- and the literature that I read on Common Ground--
That... a mission to overthrow the United States government.
Chief Bryson, the head of the Fifth District showed up,
and he had two U.S. Marshals with him.
He just said "Okay, what the hell are you doing in my city?
What are you doing here?" And I told him, I said,
"I'm trying to foment radical social change, that's what we're trying to do."
We're gonna shine a light on the neglect that has happened in this community.
Lisa: Common Ground was this convergence.
There's the anarchist influence, obviously the Black Panther influence.
We're showing the city of New Orleans that the days of old is gone.
That a new progressive city will be built.
Malik: Brandon Darby, one of the true heroes of Katrina,
is staying in the Lower Ninth Ward, in an act of civil disobedience.
Woman: I first met Brandon Darby two months after the storm,
and my first impression of him was that he was an ego-maniac
who was pretty full of himself.
Very, very strong. Very direct.
Very alpha male, kind of top dog.
I do hope that you all figure out a way to communicate
with the people of the Lower Ninth Ward and make sure their needs are addressed,
make sure they're not kicked out of hotels,
Scott: Brandon had never organized anything in his life.
Because of what he and I had done,
dealing with the vigilantes and coming to find King,
Malik elevated him to a status that was beyond anybody else.
My name is Lisa and I work with Common Ground,
and some folks from Common Ground,
Brandon Darby who's been coordinating this project...
I think Malik trusted me, and he just said,
well I want you to do the Ninth Ward project.
We're willing to do whatever we need to do,
to be in solidarity with anybody in this area, in the Lower Ninth Ward.
I appreciate the people that are here,
because I'm gonna tell you, without you... shhhh...
Brandon: The Lower Ninth Ward was the most affected area from Katrina,
and it was on the other side of the industrial canal.
And that's where people saw the image of the barge,
and every day there were news helicopters seeing this barge sitting on the land,
where there had been homes, you know?
And no one was allowed no matter what to be in their houses after dark.
So you couldn't, you couldn't even move back and stay in your house.
So we had to figure out a way to challenge that,
and get residents back to their homes.
I'm gonna be in this house every night. I'm gonna try to challenge that law...
the curfews they're doing to people.
So for residents that wanna stand in the homes,
and they wanna stand in the homes even if a bulldozer's gonna come,
Caroline: I wouldn't say that I've changed my mind about his ego.
But I've seen him use that ego to achieve some pretty incredible things.
I mean look around, you know?
These are people, these people have nowhere else to go.
I think if we could get one house on each block rebuilt,
I think that that'll do a lot to inspire people.
That was the glory days of Common Ground. And also of Brandon.
If your stuff got damaged, and you wanna help your neighbors,
you wanna help-- the tools are gonna be here.
Caroline: For several years after the storm,
Brandon was considered this hero, this god.
We're gonna have everything people need in this area.
Caroline: He was the symbol of what radical activism could do.
Brandon: I can't really get into when I became politicized, so to speak,
without acknowledging some of my past,
some of my history.
And I was raised in an area
where there wasn't a lot of political awareness.
I'm from Pasadena, Texas.
It was a refinery town.
I had a situation in my life
where I have a mother and several relatives that are very sick,
because of a Brio Chemical site.
The people bury stuff
and then they built a subdivision on it,
and they know they did it.
I watched no one get in trouble for it.
And I remember at a very early age thinking, uh-uh, that's not cool.
And so I have, intense experiences to draw from that push me,
with my activism.
At a fairly early age, when my parents divorced,
I began to run away a lot.
When I was a kid, I used to come down here and,
so miserable about stuff with my family and my life,
And there's a lot that comes with that, there's a lot that happens
as a runaway 13 and 14-year-old.
Like the concept of people taking advantage of 13-year-olds,
you know runaways, kind of pisses me off, you know?
Those experiences I had, as a runaway,
had a lot to do with why
I had a strong disdain for people abusing power.
I moved into Austin,
which is more of a progressive community.
I was exposed to a lot of different people,
a lot of different ways of thinking.
I met this Black Panther, Robert King Wilkerson.
Brandon idealized King in a lot of ways,
and the struggles that King went through.
He's a former Black Panther, did 32 years in prison,
I began to have a fascination with the Black Panther Party.
That kind of attitude towards the U.S. government.
That was pretty influential on me.
I identified as a revolutionary.
I felt that the U.S. government was an obstacle to having a peaceful world.
As a revolutionary I really believed at some point
that I was going to join a revolutionary movement.
One day I got this call.
It was King and he said, Brother, me and so-and-so,
I'm not gonna say the guy's name, we're coming to pick you up.
Scott: The story is,
it was bunch of former Black Panthers.
They called him and they were like, "Hey, man, we wanna meet you.
We're gonna take you on this private ride."
Brandon: And I was like, what's going on?
He goes, "Well I want you to meet some people, brother,
and I think this is gonna help kick off the revolution, bro."
And I was like, oh shit, this is an honor, you know.
Scott: He's thinking it's gonna be a heist.
That's what he wants it to be in Brandon Darby's head.
And I'm over here thinking that he has
some big revolutionary act planned or something.
Or I didn't know, you know?
Scott: They like make him sit in the middle,
and he's a little uncomfortable with it.
And they're like, are you ready for this?
Oh man, what's going on? Are we really gonna do something?
And I'm like, well who're we going to meet?
And he goes, "That's the thing, my brother.
We have these things called business units,
What they wanted to do was get into multi-level marketing.
"Anybody you sign up, is gonna get some.
You're gonna get a percentage."
And I was like aawwh, "Is it an Amway meeting?"
These are products that are designed to help the planet."
And I was like, oh man, let me out of the fucking car.
the Black Panther Party was about... all about guns and stuff.
He wanted to form a revolutionary cell of underground people
to do something with a gun.
That's what he would want to do, in his ideal world.
(pages shuffling)
I was involved in a lot of causes
with people that I believed to be political prisoners at the time,
and I wanted to make sure I had sussed out a place for them to go,
because there was a lot of talk about that. We called it Plan B.
And we figured ways of like, would we ever break them out of the prison.
- Oh my gosh. Oh my god. - (interviewer speaks quietly)
He made that shit up!
Nobody was... Listen... what's the story?
Well Plan B is, the concept, and it wasn't something I initiated.
(indistinct chatter)
Brandon: When it looked like there was no way they were ever gonna get out
the concept was for me to get a job as a prison guard.
And then find a way to break them out of the prison.
...here, here, and there.
Nobody tried to... he wanted to do that.
That is a total fabrication.
Maybe in his brain someday he was gonna do that,
but it wasn't a story I ever heard, or anybody else ever heard that I know of.
How serious were you about Plan B?
I was pretty dedicated to it.
You know? I was pretty dedicated to it,
but I never lost hope that there was a way to get people out without that.
But I thought it was probably pretty wise to do.
There's a few stories that run into Brandon's head, over and over again.
One of them is that he wanted to be a revolutionary so that he could go to prison.
He wanted it so bad.
But not really. But that was the ideal.
And so, so he has this whole prison story and like he'd just start,
he'd just meet somebody and start telling them this story,
and you're like, why are you telling that story?
It's like, this is a story he made up.
So he's gonna learn to cage fight, and do all these things,
and somebody tries to rape him, he can defend himself.
And he like goes into all the details, like, "When the cell door closes,
and it gets dark and somebody tries to come in,
this is what I'm gonna do to him."
And it just made me want to pull my hair out.
I was like, shut up already.
That is the stupidest story I have ever heard.
Interviewer: What should people who are living,
what should they ask themselves in order to understand the situation.
The U.S. government has a tendency to criminalize,
people that disagree with it politically.
That's why we don't have political prisoners,
is because if you're someone who's political and they wanna incarcerate you
for your politics and your organizing,
they find a charge against you, like they did Marcus Garvey,
or like, we could go on and on. They criminalize you.
His, his, what he called revolutionary rhetoric,
to me was also just completely reckless.
I can't say anything else about it.
Somedays I think, I only wake up and I think to myself,
like how on earth could we attention to what's happening here?
And the concept of going to Congress and burning myself alive,
I've thought of that, you know? And I think about stuff like that a lot.
Sounds drastic, but you know,
there's a lot of things happening here that aren't okay.
I don't want to minimize Brandon Darby's work at Common Ground,
because he did a lot of good things.
But I also saw this recklessness.
He didn't want to be accountable to anybody.
Brandon: I had the skill-set to run the project.
What I didn't have were the organizational skills to learn how to,
I think, deal with people who had different opinions.
Brandon did support hierarchy... and did want to be in charge.
really what we want is direct democracy and participation from people.
Ken: If you know anything about decision making by committee,
that's a long and drawn-out process.
Brandon: I just didn't want to spend five hours a day in a meeting,
arguing with 17-year-olds.
Scott: He didn't participate in the meetings.
Or he would come at the very end and just tell everybody what to do.
And that created huge amounts of resentment.
I'm not an activist.
I was just trying, trying to help my community.
But a lot of these people were activists
and were looking for this utopian type of thing.
Well, utopia doesn't exist.
Brandon: I understand that the consensus model
meant a lot to all the folks who came out.
I understand you got here yesterday
and you think this is a fresh, virgin environment.
Every week, somebody's come here
and started a composting toilet.
We have no sawdust, and y'all are pooping and peeing in a bucket,
and then y'all go off to the next like,
Chiapas or the next wherever.
I've dealt with 20 of you,
and y'all all leave me to clean up the shit in your bucket.
You can't tell us not to, it's like, I'm telling you,
don't shit in a bucket or I will have you removed.
I'm not cleaning up your shit in that bucket.
Bryson: I was amazed that he was so aggressive.
Mr. Darby was anti-police, anti-establishment.
I was very skeptical whether or not they were here to help or to hinder.
Brandon: Chief Bryson called and he said,
"Hey, I found these young people who said that you had,
you sent them around with medications,
you know for the elderly people and I know these people."
And I said, "Well that's what we do." And he said,
well, I have a hard time disliking you when you do things like that.
And I said well I'm having a hard time disliking you
And shortly after that he started really working with us.
That was the first time in my life
that I'd really started having those interactions.
Police were no longer "them." - (Bryson laughs)
It was breaking that down a little bit, to have to interact.
Woman: How do you see in the future empowering people in this community,
as they come back to a devastated area?
We're willing to do it, often times, and don't get scared,
I say by any means necessary, that doesn't mean by violence.
You know, but when we say that what we mean is like next month,
we're gonna have a delegation going to Venezuela.
The intention with that is to try and ask foreign nations
to pay for a couple of health clinics.
To pay, to fund, legally,
but to fund it, to fund education.
When Brandon told me he was gonna talk to Chavez in Venezuela,
I asked, "Are you fucking crazy?" I'm gonna say it the way it is.
He wanted to go and see what revolutionaries were doing,
Interviewer: What was the goal in going to Venezuela?
It doesn't really make that much sense to me.
the overt goal of going to Venezuela was to get resources to buy shelter
for people in New Orleans.
And we figured if we did that,
then it would embarrass the U.S. government enough that they would,
they would then do what they were supposed to do.
Which in itself could be construed as very illegal.
And I knew it, and I didn't really care.
So, we go to Venezuela. And it was beautiful, you know?
This revolutionary fervor in young people.
It was lovely, seeing so many people caring
and wanting to make change.
It was what I'd always dreamed of. It was my dream.
Then it got much more complicated when they were on the ground down there.
We connected with the government.
And we ended up in a fairly high official's... you know,
a high level of government.
The minister I had met with
asked me to meet with friends of his from the oil industry.
And then the oil industry said "Well, we think
if any money comes from Venezuela we should do it through the oil industry.
I just need you to give us a sense of what happened here in this room.
You start talking to me about getting into wanting me to go with you to Columbia,
I don't know if you're somebody who's just trying
to help the FARC kidnap an American.
You know what I mean? I don't know what you're doing.
Director: Good. Okay, let's go with that.
Action!
They mentioned to me that they knew what was going on in New Orleans,
and they knew what we were doing.
And they wanted me to meet with, with the FARC.
Newsman: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, or FARC.
Newsman 2: The FARC, a rebel group that for years controlled large swaths...
and on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Brandon: I wasn't opposed to meeting with resistance movements,
and I wasn't opposed to making sure I had support
if indeed the U.S. government did what we though they would do,
which is kill us because we're disagreeing with them in a successful way.
Challenging their power.
Part of me hoped that the FARC was just noble people
who wanted to end oppression.
Part of me didn't want to meet with the FARC
because I felt as though
I'd be meeting with narco-traffickers who kidnap people.
Part of me felt like it could be a CIA plot.
I don't think I'm gonna go meet with these people.
I don't think I'm interested in it.
"No come with us. Come with us."
These people are really dedicated to me crossing
national boundaries into Columbia with them.
Why? Like do they want to kidnap me?
Is it the CIA trying to bust me? Am I gonna get arrested if I don't go?
Or if I do go am I gonna get arrested,
- I didn't know what to do. - Interviewer: How did you shake them?
How did you get them off your back?
I told other parts of the--
leaders in other parts of the government what they were doing.
Tell me about that. Tell me what happened.
Ummmm, I'm gonna take a break.
Lisa: Maybe it was Brandon trying to find out
what revolutionary really means.
Maybe his vision of what he saw wasn't what he thought it was.
I don't know what he thought it is... or was.
Caroline: When Brandon came back from Venezuela,
I would describe what happened maybe as a mental breakdown.
He was withdrawn, very paranoid and very depressed.
I left Venezuela feeling very confused.
I came back, I couldn't sleep.
As a person, I was breaking.
Scott: Brandon, as much as any of us, had post-traumatic stress.
You can't go through the things we went through in New Orleans,
and then pile on Venezuela, and be okay.
Brandon: And it was just the internal politics were killing me.
Caroline: There was a lot of tension in the ranks.
A lot of people left because folks didn't like him.
They didn't like what he was doing,
they didn't like his top-down approach.
He no longer believed in the collectivist attitude,
the anarchist approach.
(phone chatter)
He ended up going off the radar for a while.
Brandon: I went back to Austin.
Everything I had kinda believed in for so many years...
started crashing a little bit.
(sighs)
You know over time, I guess...
yeah, I guess my views just really changed.
I'm not so sure that--
I'm not so sure that I'm completely right anymore.
You know, I'm not so sure that turning my country--
because that's what would happen, right?
Like we'd have a resistance movement and if we were successful
and didn't get killed right away or put in prison,
you know, then the best we could hope for is to have what Columbia has, right,
which is just a sustained war where everyone in the country knows what murder is,
deals with murder, deals with kidnappings.
And it's like, you know, I don't want that in my country.
What kind of thing could happen to be that bridge between being a revolutionary
and going undercover with the FBI?
And it's like well, a lot of experiences in life.
A lot of doubts about views,
because of experiences and growing older
and more perspective.
And then something absolutely that radical coming up
that you have to say something about or else you're complicit in it.
Interviewer: Let's talk about when you first came in contact with the FBI.
I had met a man named Riad Hammad-- a local teacher.
And he was the guy at the protests who always held up a Palestinian flag.
Represented for the Palestinian people.
He had devised a plan that, you know,
as a white American I could open a fake business account...
a fake business, get a DBA, and open the account,
and then he could put money into the account,
and then he would be able to send a debit card to Israel.
And he was pretty clear with me what he wanted to do with that.
And he did talk about Hamas and he did talk about Hezbollah.
And he talked about the struggle in Israel
and he talked about the fact that money
that the organization was sending can't get to people,
and he said all these things to me,
'cause we were pretty close. And I just told him,
I was like, you know, umm-mmm, I'm not doing that man.
and I said, "Hey man I have a real problem. This is what's going on."
And a lot of people said, just stay away from the person.
No one said turn the person in, or stop it.
It was just stay away from the person.
But then other people who I knew began to approach me and say "Hey"--
they were younger people--
and say, "Hey, this man approached me with this, too."
With me it's one thing, you're gonna ask me to do this
But with these people they don't know what it's even for.
You know they're gonna get their house--
their door kicked in by federal agents at some point for funding terrorism,
I find it hard to believe that Riad was doing anything of this kind...
providing material support. He was too smart for that.
This isn't something that I just said, "Hey, I'm not doing it"
and he got scared and backed away from.
It was something that he was gonna go ahead with.
This guy wasn't the most militant person I ever met in my life,
he didn't even talk militantly.
He wanted, he wanted a free Palestine,
but welcome to the world.
I remember watching the news and there was a suicide bombing in Israel
and I remember thinking, "If I don't say something about this,
I'm gonna have some responsibility for that happening."
You know? And so I decided I was gonna say something.
I did get a call from Brandon and he told me about the situation,
and I stopped him in the middle of the conversation.
I said stop Brandon, let me hook you up with a handler.
I reached out to law enforcement, and I told on him.
And when I told on him I did so very tearfully.
Regardless of how right I felt like that was to do,
My entire adult life, it had been so foreign to talk to the FBI, you know?
That was such a taboo thing to do.
That's when I first met my handler.
And he just said okay, "In this situation,
we have a very hard time getting anyone in this person's life.
Something needed to be done."
I just told him what was said. And that was it.
As much as it seems crazy that a revolutionary would work with the FBI at some point,
under the particular circumstances,
I don't think it's that crazy.
I felt really strange when I left that.
And shortly after that, a body was found...
in Town Lake, in Austin.
And it was just like, oh no.
Newsman: Developing news coming out of East Austin
where a body bound with duct tape...
Newswoman: ...bound with duct tape and his arms appeared to be tied
Detectives with the Austin Police Department are investigating...
the IRS and the FBI showed up and took documents.
Riad did something quite extreme.
Went down to the lake, took a roll of duct tape,
wrapped it around his ankles, and then around his mouth
and head, then threw himself in the lake.
The agencies putting pressure on him
caused him to feel that he had no choice
but to relieve his family.
I do think that these agencies are responsible,
even if they didn't directly intend his death.
In that sense it's homicide,
and they bear responsibility for it.
At the time I really felt like I played a role in that.
You know, I really did.
And it was really upsetting.
And the thing that was really, really difficult
was that I couldn't talk about it, you know?
And I just felt, it was just such a bad feeling.
And you feel for his family...
I mean you just can't talk about any of it, you know?
The only one I could talk to about it
was the guy from the FBI, you know?
And I did every day, cause I cried. I was upset.
By the time the Republican National Convention came up
came up I felt very bonded with my handler.
So that played a part, in my decision to go undercover.
You know? But then it's just this realization
like, wow, you know, I'm privy to information,
and there are people,
regardless of how much I can see their human side
and what I like or dislike about them,
I'm privy to information, about people and communities
who are openly expressing,
and some privately expressing, which is even scarier,
that they are gonna hurt people. And I need to do something about it.
I need to do something about that.
That's a moral obligation.
And the way I decided to do it was to work undercover.
Interviewer: Can you talk about, in 2008,
when they asked you to start following the group
that was going to the Republican National Convention?
All right.
Well... I was contacted by the FBI.
They said, "Hey you know there's a meeting coming up
for a group called the RNC Welcoming Committee.
We've had some reports that they've said some frightening stuff.
And so we need to send someone who's trusted to go hear it,
and see what's going on."
I don't know that I wanna get involved in that, man."
And they're like, "We really need you to."
Kinda wondered at the time initially like why are you asking me
to go to a meeting at a bookstore.
Once it was clear to me what was being said,
I thought it was important to do.
Two people came from Minnesota.
They showed videos and talked about what their hopes were
for the Republican National Convention.
They said they would use a diversity of tactics.
Well, okay, a diversity of tactics.
That's the word that the Earth Liberation Front uses for arson.
That's the word that the Animal Liberation Front uses for arson.
They went as far as to show videos of people throwing Molotov cocktails.
Even though it was done in somewhat of a theatrical sense.
It was clearly a satire.
So it's very, very open to interpretation.
(Blondie's "One Way or Another" plays)
It's set to the Blondie song, "One Way or Another."
It's kind of a wink-wink spoof on the black bloc,
the most radical activists.
There is a scene in it that involves a Molotov cocktail.
A guy throws a Molotov cocktail into a barbecue.
I don't think that you needed to infiltrate these people.
There's a side of Brandon that's just very dramatic
and conspiratorial and a little bit paranoid.
Brandon: I thought that there was a likelihood
that somebody would go to an extreme.
They asked for a group of people in Austin to get together
and meet and form an affinity group.
Michael: There's no doubt in my mind that the FBI made a terrible mistake,
sending Brandon Darby into that situation.
They put a 33-year-old, renowned, militant activist...
in a group with two guys ten years younger than him
who look up to him, but he's not supposed to be the leader.
Brandon: At the first meeting, there was James Clark,
David McKay and Brad Crowder and myself.
I felt like David and Brad both wanted to go,
I felt like they probably had good intentions but I also felt like
there was probably a lot of youthful anger.
David reminded me I guess more of myself.
He was more of an action-driven kind of person he seemed like.
With James I was always kind of torn I guess.
He's really like a process-oriented anarchist,
who traditionally I haven't gotten along with too well.
It was a very macho atmosphere.
There was definitely a sense of like...
everybody trying to like, toughen up.
It was the cycle of everybody's machismo feeding on itself.
Brandon: The group went around
and everyone just talked about their goals.
David and Brad expressed more of a willingness to serve some time.
My initial reaction was to discourage that.
I don't think prison's a good thing.
I don't think you realize what it is.
Don't get me wrong,
like when I go I'm gonna shut the fucker down, too.
James: He said we needed to like toughen up,
stop looking like we ate a bunch of tofu.
To my knowledge none of the three of us were vegetarian.
I mean, I've never been a vegetarian. I'm just skinny.
And I'm sorry that I don't measure up
to your standard of toughness or masculinity,
but I mean don't tell me to stop eating tofu.
Like, what does that even mean, like?
He made comments about how Brad specifically, and me too,
were kinda like weaklings.
We weren't men's men.
The coffee that I ordered I remember one time
he made fun because I ordered a latte, and not like a coffee.
We didn't want to just be these guys
that just like showed up without any credentials.
That's everything that Brandon was.
He was the activist guy from Austin.
Brandon: Brad and David both
were from working towns like Midland,
similar to where I was from.
I felt a sense of camaraderie with that.
I could see a lot of myself in them.
I understood some of their anger.
I really understood it actually.
David, he had a really rough adolescence, you know?
David: There was always a lot of conflict in my house.
I had a lot of fear of my dad.
He is a very controlling individual.
I have always tried to be the kind of a person who's a man,
or tried to prove that I have that kind of manliness.
(camera clicks)
My first real conflict with law enforcement
was a protest against the KKK.
- That one ended pretty bad. - (camera clicks)
I ended up being tased and arrested.
I did not want to go be vulnerable to that situation again.
If I was gonna go, I wanted to have protection.
To start you're gonna need to take one of these big,
orange traffic barrels,
and we're gonna be turning it into this.
Brandon: They had taken these shields
that had these little screws to screw in a plexiglass window.
And they had modified them again to have long deck screws.
That way if police pushed against them it would puncture the police.
David: There were no screws, they were all bolts.
You can't be punctured by a bolt.
It was non-threatening.
It was a way we could go be a part of it.
so we wouldn't get any kind of like real trouble.
Brandon: David and Brad rented a trailer,
and put their shields and stuff in it.
Yeah, I got in the van and we started on a road trip.
On that trip I remember feeling like if I had said my experiences,
starting in Austin, and finished by the time we got to Minnesota,
I probably could have influenced them to not be so radical.
But the role I had embarked upon was,
I was working undercover with the FBI.
His attitude from the point that he got in the van,
all the way through, was kind of like that agitated level.
Very aggressive, and very on-edge and very demanding.
I don't think he was capable of being in the situation that he put himself in.
(protesters chanting)
(man talks indistinctly on megaphone)
Man: An attorney for the city said,
on the first day of the convention
the city of St. Paul was on the verge of being overthrown.
- (loud crash) - (cheering)
We're Minnesotans, we're not accustomed
to people being out in the streets protesting and throwing things.
(quick explosion)
Protestors are scared, police are scared,
everybody was scared, you know?
(spray can spraying)
All the dumpsters along the way were either pushed into police cars
or to other people's cars or dumped over.
(siren blaring)
(camera snaps)
I pulled out my video camera.
And I just did my best to try to watch the activists.
I look over, and then Brad and this group of others,
they have this gigantic construction sign.
The seventy-mile-per-hour interstate is below us.
They throw it off the overpass.
I remember I was texting the Bureau, like "Emergency! Emergency! Emergency!"
(glass breaking, cheering)
(siren blaring)
(quick explosions)
David and Brad came running into my room.
And they were like, everything's gone.
And I thought that they were joking and I just kind of looked at them for a second.
We were pretty upset because, you know, we'd spent a lot of time making them,
and we felt like they were stolen from us.
David kept saying that there must be retribution.
I thought he was probably gonna be a real asshole in the streets,
but I didn't think he was gonna do anything like what he did.
Hanners: Here are these anarchists,
buying the material for their bombs at Wal-Mart.
It struck me as an odd thought,
anarchists shopping at Wal-Mart.
Gabby: When David asked me to buy tampons,
I definitely like wasn't going to be like, "Why do you need tampons?"
When I think of tampons, I don't think of Molotov cocktails.
Even now. Errr, a little bit now.
(rattling)
David: We made them in about 15 minutes.
Gasoline in a bottle
with a little bit of oil and then he duct-taped the top.
It was incredibly easy.
I got a text I think it was, and it said, "Hey they bought"--
or "The whole group is in a big fight right now."
And I was like why is the group in a big fight?
These are the things that Brad and David bought.
I know that those can be made to make Molotov cocktails,
and I think that that's why they bought them.
And they're like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Okay."
And then I let the FBI know.
James: There's a definite sense of what the fuck?
We came up here to protest, make our voices heard.
Now here we are
more than just feeling like lied to or something.
Feeling used.
When we found out like how the group felt about the situation.
What you're doing is ridiculous, stupid and dangerous,
the romantic revolutionary kind of idealism quickly left us.
Reality kind of came crashing in.
We need to rethink this.
Maybe this is a bad idea.
(chickens clucking)
Brandon: Being undercover is tricky.
I really wanted just to grab him and be like, hey,
"What you're doing is so stupid.
You're going down the wrong path.
This is ridiculous."
But my role was to provide information
and try to not influence.
Not to be more radical, but not to be less radical.
To fit in.
But it tore me up, it bothered me.
Sometimes like I felt like I was using Brad and David.
That's something I had to live with afterwards.
But it wasn't my place to talk people out of things.
And I think about that though,
like what if I had just been like, you know what?
I couldn't of though, I would've probably went to jail for that.
Maybe not went to jail, it wouldn't have been good.
Michael: There's a side of Brandon that's a huge anti-authoritarian.
So why did he do what his FBI handlers told him to?
For him it was just, his loyalty was with the FBI.
Those guys had stood with him
through the devastating Riad Hammad suicide.
So I think loyalty trumped anti-authoritarianism at that point.
Brandon: I was asked by the FBI to get re-involved.
"We'd like you to find out from David whether or not this is true,
and what he made, where they are."
My handler warned me, he said, "Brandon this is where it gets tricky.
If you don't want to do this, we won't blame you.
But there's a high likelihood your name is gonna come out,
if you go past this point with us."
I ultimately decided to get involved.
I got ahold of David and we sat on the roof, behind us.
I said, "Hey I heard that you had made some things."
And then I said, "Well, I don't have a problem with it, that's why I'm here."
And he said, "Okay, well yeah." So then he told me what he had done.
And he said that he had made eight Molotov cocktails.
And I asked him if they were somewhere safe,
and he told me that they were in the basement.
I tried to get a gist of what his plans were,
and that's when he pointed off in a direction and told me
there was a parking lot full of police cars.
So the parking lot behind us, which was the target,
they had 35 people there,
loading and unloading cars, getting in and out of cars.
And it was right at the end of summer so the foliage was still thick.
what was on the other side of the tree line, down the hill.
These were these big bottles
of this homemade napalm mixture.
I knew that if he did it, it was gonna hurt people.
I knew it would.
David: Never did I plan to do anything to hurt anybody.
I wouldn't throw a Molotov cocktail on a car with a cop in it.
We were gonna do property damage.
People getting hurt by the Molotov cocktails
was not a consequence that I even considered.
And I didn't know that just having them
was the crime that it was.
Woman: Hello, this is a collect call from...
Woman: ...an inmate at the Sherburne County Jail.
David: Brandon brought upon the romantic aspect
of you being a revolutionary instead of an activist.
That we weren't just going here to protest,
we were coming here to fight for our beliefs.
To actually fight.
With him, we felt like we were legitimate.
Brandon felt like he could take these young guys,
who reminded him of himself,
under his wing and at the same time,
inform on them for the FBI.
Brandon: I would like to be able to tell them
and that they should try to get out of it before it's too late.
"Late" being defined as being in prison,
being dead, having to live underground,
or having to then realize that a mistake was made.
Or having to live with one of their incendiary devices
having fucked up and killed someone.
It was very difficult, you know, and I was very honest about it.
It was almost like journaling to the Bureau.
I was very honest about it. I didn't just write the facts,
I would say here are the facts and here are my thoughts.
Here are how I feel about these thoughts.
"I feel as though they are some strange form of collateral damage.
Not exactly, considering what they're trying to get involved in.
But in some ways they are just that,
considering that I'm not attempting to talk sense into them."
I didn't go into as a seasoned pro.
I went into it as a person with a lot of mixed feelings.
You know?
I don't think he thought through this very well.
I don't think he really realized the situation he was in
until it was way too late.
He had to choose whether to go ahead
and put David in prison for a long time,
or piss off his FBI handlers.
He had to make that choice. I think it was a painful choice.
Brandon: So the last night, before the raid happened,
the FBI had asked me to wear a wire.
That was very intense.
I realized that David's window of opportunity to back down,
was starting to shut.
So this is approximately
where David and I sat down for our last discussion.
We had come to a cafe here,
the night that he was gonna throw the firebombs.
I was wearing a wire for the FBI.
Brandon: Are you sure they're gonna burn?
David: Yes, okay? They'll burn.
It might take a while to get them lit,
but they'll go off when they break.
What if someone's sleeping in the car when you firebomb it, man?
- He'll wake up. - What if he doesn't wake up?
What if he can't get out?
I was torn. I was wanting to insinuate to him,
like, dude, you're gonna get fucking busted.
You're gonna go to prison for a long time. Stop.
But I couldn't come out and say that.
David, what if someone's in the car, and they die?
That's life, right? That's how it goes.
"If he gets burnt or he dies in the process, tough."
Okay.
When he said that, I realized that that gate just went bam.
And it shut, completely shut.
He was probably gonna be in an immense amount of trouble.
We were at the Hard Times Cafe.
We've made no plans to do anything. I've agreed to nothing.
Director: So the first line's gonna be Brandon's.
It's "What if there's a cop sleeping in the car?"
Dude, what if someone's in the car and they die?
- David: What if there's a cop in the car? - Actor David: I don't care.
David: What if he's sleeping? I think he's joking.
When those quotes were taken away from me,
I was laughing at that situation.
I wouldn't throw a Molotov cocktail on a car with a cop in it.
Would you leave the scene if a cop's burning or dying?
A cop gets burned or maimed, it's worth it, okay?
David: I've never used the word "maimed" ever in my entire life.
David: That's what he acted like. That's what he acted like.
I think I agreed to him saying that.
"Do you think it's worth it if a cop gets burned or maimed?
If you're fighting for something you believe in?"
And I agreed to that.
Michael: I think it's pretty obvious that during that conversation,
David was saying a lot of things just to appease Brandon.
Brandon's comfortable, almost thrives on confrontation.
If you challenge him, Brandon will argue for hours.
David: It was easier to play along.
I fell into like a role.
I had never let my guard down with him.
I didn't want him to think that I was scared.
You know, I ended that conversation with him,
and I thought that was it.
I didn't want to touch the Molotov cocktails.
I didn't even want to think about them.
The next thing I remember,
I'm waking up to an assault rifle to the back of my head.
Newsman: Two Texas men are now charged with plotting to attack police
with Molotov cocktails during the Republican National Convention.
Newswoman: David McKay and Bradley Crowder
could face up to ten years in prison.
Man: David McKay and his co-defendant Bradley Crowder
were both charged with three counts:
manufacturing Molotov cocktails, possessing them,
and three was a count which charges possession
of an unregistered destructive device.
It was Molotov cocktails.
But under federal law,
you still have to register those, oddly enough.
And there's even a form that you're supposed to fill out.
Needless to say they did not fill out the form, so they broke the law.
The U.S. Attorney's office said, "Look you know, if you want,
we'll drop the charges, so that you don't have to have your identity revealed.
But if we do that, he's gonna get away with what he did."
And I didn't want him to-- you know--
and I said no-- don't. I'll testify.
And they're like, "Well, it's gonna change your life.
It's gonna be life-changing, it's gonna be different.
It's gonna change where you hang out.
It's gonna change everything about your life."
And I was like, "I don't know."
And he was like, "So let us know, think about it for a while."
And then I decided to do it, you know?
I had figured out that the informant was Brandon Darby.
I was covering one of the early evidentiary hearings.
One of the public defenders, in her question,
used the name Brandon.
David Hanners outed me and my name.
And I said, "That's not true."
And Scott said well, then we need to do this and this,
Scott: "I stand by Brandon Darby.
If Brandon was conning me, and many others,
it would be the biggest lie of my life
since I found out the truth about Santa Claus as a child.
It's absurd."
Scott Crow called me up and reamed me out
and called me all kind of names,
and said "There's no way in hell it could be Brandon Darby.
I mean he's the last guy on earth
who would ever be a confidential informant for the FBI."
David and Brad were saying that Brandon was the informant.
And people were like we don't trust them. We don't trust them.
But we got the files.
I went to Scott's house to look at them.
He's like, Brandon's with the FBI.
I was like...
Scott: Was he my friend
or has he been gathering information for the FBI a long time,
playing me for the biggest dupe has ever happened in my life?
Brandon: At that point I had begun to see Scott in a very different light.
When I was younger and was getting into radical politics,
he really took me under his wing.
I felt like I was a lot more radical by the time I was done knowing Scott Crow.
Interviewer: Brandon seems to have this idea
that you radicalized him.
That you kinda turned him towards violence.
What do you make of that?
I'm not even gonna answer the question.
Yeah, it's like, it's a moot point.
What's that based on, do you think?
I mean, my answer is Brandon's a liar.
Well, look at 200 pages of documents that we have,
and he tried to put me and Lisa Fithian in prison.
He tried very hard to get me to participate
in the Republican National Convention.
And I just refused to because I wasn't interested in it.
I look at these documents
and he tried to put me in prison for doing nothing.
They could never trust him again.
And I think that was what really hurt them,
and I think ultimately it's what probably really hurt Brandon.
"To all concerned,
There are currently allegations in the media
that I've worked undercover for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This allegation no doubt confuses many of the activists who know me,
and probably leaves many wondering
why I would seemingly chose to engage in such an endeavor.
The simple truth is, that I have chosen
to work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Somebody's who's a psychologist did a little profile of him,
reading his letter,
and it shows, you know,
it says his personality clearly shows he has a lot of stress and trauma.
And my belief, it's because he's been living a double life for years.
(laughs) Right, what is the truth?
The Molotov cocktails would not have been made
had it not been for Brandon Darby.
I have no problem saying that and I believe that.
He wasn't saying, "Oh we should make Molotov cocktails."
But he was creating the groundwork for something like that to happen.
David was manipulated.
I don't care what anybody says.
You know what, I'd put a lot of money
that those kids would not have built those
if Brandon had never been involved.
The idea of Molotov cocktails came from Brandon
and it was, "Go look on the website.
Here's the website that I know about.
Brad what do you think about this?
Brad thinks it's a good idea. David what do you think about this?
I think we can do this.
Do you think you can do this?"
"Yeah we can do it. What do we do?"
"Well, you know, you get the supplies.
We'll be implementing, this is a tactic.
Call me when you're done."
Well he really got into detail there, didn't he?
Yeah.
Michael: That was a complete lie that David said
so that he could get off for his crime.
The way that he rationalizes and also Brad rationalizes
is that the government was also lying.
They were trying to say that they were domestic terrorists,
that they had intent to use them, that they were planning to kill people.
And in the face of those giant lies that made them look like monsters,
this was a minor lie.
Well, you can justify...
there's a lot of people justifying things in this story.
(protestors cheering, chanting)
Resist! Resist! Raise your fucking fist!
I think that there's very legitimate questions about whether the FBI
They have to have something to justify thousands of riot cops,
and tear gas and mass arrests.
And sadly I think Brad and David became that justification.
Lisa: Who cares that a few windows were broken in St. Paul?
The magnitude of violence our government is wreaking on the world.
Right, I mean, it's like the scope and scale
of what we pay attention to is so warped in our country.
There's a time and a place for corporate property destruction.
(cheering, glass breaks)
The fact that Brad and David built Molotov cocktails
I do not believe is a violent act.
Property destruction is not violence.
(police screaming)
There's a million problems with anarchists using arson,
but one of the problems, even if you're looking at it from their perspective
and you do take their world view,
is that they're not-- they don't have Ph.D.'s in determining,
you know, risk assessment.
What if you hurt someone?
What if your fire goes out of control?
Hanners: I kinda got the feeling that some of this was overblown.
What you have at the core is, you know,
a couple of 22-year-old guys
who really didn't have a strong clue as to what they were doing.
I think they got in quickly over their heads
and got caught up in the moment.
They hadn't gone up there planning to make Molotov cocktails.
When they made Molotov cocktails
was in response to the shields being taken.
Brandon hadn't have been with them,
shields wouldn't have been taken,
they never would have made Molotov cocktails.
It's those kind of details that defy simple explanations.
Did he entrap them? No.
Would they have made them without him? No.
It's... it's... that's sort of the tragedy at the heart of it.
David: Never did I plan to do anything to hurt anybody.
There's no good guy and bad guy in this situation.
I'm not completely innocent, but neither are they.
It's not a black-and-white case like that.
(Gospel music playing and singing)
At this time, I'd like to introduce someone
who met with the pastor after the storm.
He said we will help you put this church back together.
He stood behind every word of it.
Helping our folks in the neighborhood.
(applause)
I'm a little nervous to be up here.
I struggle with all these things in my personal life.
Sometimes it's really easy to get my eyes off what my role in this world is,
- which is to try to help other people. - Yeah! Yeah!
And I can forget every other thing that I'm supposed to do,
but I've usually kept my eyes on that.
And for whatever reason God's really blessed me and loved me.
And he's taken a lot of my mistakes and he's turned them into really positive things.
Congregation: Amen!
And I'm glad I was able to be used in a way that was helpful.
And it really does touch my heart to see everyone here
and to see this building standing as it does.
There was a time when it had water in it... pretty high.
- So, thank you. - Congregation: Thank you!
The community? Community would love him,
take him back with open arms.
The activist community?
They might try to shoot him. (laughs)
I knew from the very beginning
that Homeland Security had infiltrated Common Ground.
I was looking at it coming from many different ways,
but God knows I didn't think it would be from Brandon.
It broke my heart.
It broke my heart,
it literally broke my heart.
It's sad that this young man,
a young man that I loved, you know,
had to turn to such dastardly deeds.
Not for patriotism.
Because he was a paid informant.
He did this for thirty pieces of silver.
With that interview, I don't really know where to begin, you know?
I did not co-found a relief organization to destroy it.
And...
and I didn't work with the FBI for money.
Brandon Darby is, you know,
he's relegated himself into insignificance.
And as far as I'm concerned he's dead.
Newswoman: We turn now to a story out of Austin, Texas,
that's shocked social justice activists nationwide.
Brandon Darby has admitted to wearing a recording device...
(crowd shouting)
Brandon: I know exactly how the movement treats people.
They're pretty intense about making you pay if you challenge them.
My entire history, everything I've ever done that was good
was not there anymore... almost like Stalin.
(makes erasing noise) Erased out of the picture.
One guy from Denver wrote,
I'd like to be alone with Brandon Darby
in a room with no windows and a box of hollow-point bullets.
Yeah, scary stuff, man.
Like, someone saying I'm gonna kill you.
Is someone gonna kill me?
When I get attacked or when I feel attacked,
I look at this.
It's the eight napalm bombs
that David McKay and Bradley Crowder made.
"Brandon, we would not have stopped this without you.
Thanks, Chris Langert, FBI.
I appreciate your hard work and doing the right thing.
It won't be forgotten.
Special Agent, Tim Sellers."
There are dangerous rivers of thought going on,
on the far Left and in the peace and justice community.
And the Left as a whole needs to hold them accountable.
They constantly beat the drum, you know,
beat the drum that I'm evil or the Man is evil,
the empire is evil.
And I'm somehow part of that because of what I've done.
My biggest concern is like,
they've gone through great efforts to protect me,
and I've gone through great efforts to protect me.
And I'm worried that I'm gonna have to live with what I do
to someone who shows up here trying to do something like that.
(alarm sounding, shotgun clicks)
Turn the camera off. Turn the camera off, dude.
(alarm keypad beeps, alarm stops)
Ah, fuck!
Hello? Yeah. I'm cool, man.
Yeah, it's just my alarm. It's cool.
All right.
Hello. Yeah.
I'm cool man, everyone and their mom
is calling me right now.
Yeah. No.
Can y'all please like have some kind of system set up
where just one person calls me,
and not everyone in the world?
it doesn't help the stress level from this shit, okay?
Fucking-A! (groans)
Hanners: When you interview people
who know or have known Brandon Darby,
you realize that everybody kind of has a different idea of who he is.
Brandon wants to be known...
for doing something big in his life.
And I think he still thinks of himself as a revolutionary.
He's a misogynist. He's a liar.
He's... sometimes... I wonder if he's a sociopath.
I mean... yeah.
Scott: It's him first and the rest of the world second.
If he can be the savior, for the moment,
if he can make the world like him cause he doesn't like himself.
Man: They called Brandon Darby a snitch.
and I said I don't care what your politics are, you're an American Hero.
(applause)
Without Brandon Darby these guys would have
thrown Molotov cocktails at completely innocent individuals
who were there practicing their constitutional right
to express their political beliefs.
He was just doing the right thing.
The radical Left hates me.
I think the moderate Left doesn't know what the hell to think of me.
And the conservatives in the country
are willing to embrace me and be supportive because of what I did.
Caroline: So Brandon's going across the nation giving talks
on how the Tea Party can adopt a grassroots, activist model.
Man: Mister Brandon Darby, come on up.
- (applause) - Brandon: We're called Citizen Patriot Response.
And what we do is we try to use the experiences I have,
and we try to encourage Tea Party groups to help others,
with low-income communities.
Because we believe that people help people
better than the federal government can.
(applause)
He's trying to introduce the best elements
of the Common Ground model,
to the Tea Party,
so that they will work on issues of social injustice.
Brandon: I wanted to help people,
and I thought the way to help people was to help the Left.
But really I wasn't such a Leftist after all, you know?
I just wanted to help people.
(applause)
The 2008 Republican National Convention.
How many of you realized there was a bomb plot against the delegates?
They made eight gallon-size homemade napalm mixtures
that they were gonna throw at Republican delegates, and at cops.
They get arrested.
...honored to have been a big part of that.
I'm very honored.
(applause)
Thank you. Thank you.
I think from day one Brandon has stories that he tells himself.
Brandon had a story that he told himself
about why he was with the FBI and what his concerns were.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Now that Brandon's main audience is the very right wing,
he's convinced himself of a new story.
How he's a hero who single-handedly stopped,
terrorists from killing delegates
at the Republican National Convention.
- Photographer: Bullshit! - (laughter)
Maybe he hears it enough and he believes it.
He certainly went in hoping that he would do something heroic.
I think that the details of this are much more ambiguous.
I ended up helping stop a bomb plot,
And they tried to throw Molotovs at police officers and Republican delegates.
In the farthest reaches of the Left we have people,
like Lisa Fithian,
organizing the most radical dredges of the Left.
All of the young people around her take that war drum
that she beats about our country and that dehumanizes you,
and they make bombs to burn you.
They burn your property down and they attack you.
Thank you for coming and paying attention.
You have to fight back, you have to speak back,
you have to do something about the people who are trying to destroy us.
- Thank You. - (applause)
Brandon Darby.
He was once part of that other crowd
that you see in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
He saw the light.
He has come over to the side of freedom.
(alarm keypad beeps)
Brandon: To all concerned.
Like many of you, I do my best to act in good conscience,
and to do what I believe to be most helpful to the world.
Though my views on how to give of myself have changed very substantially,
the motivations remain the same.
I strongly stand behind my choices.
In solidarity, Brandon Michael Darby.