Inflammatory words compromise case

For many people regardless of their politics, the most damming part of the Texas 2 case has been the claim that David McKay and Brad Crowder intended to target and injure law enforcement officers. This intent has been used to discredit both men and write off an entire movement of people as inherently violent.

The basis for this claim is the affidavit of FBI agent Christopher Langert, in which he details an alleged September 2nd, 2008 conversation between David McKay and FBI confidential informant (CHS1), otherwise known as Brandon Darby. This conversation has, until now, been widely reported by the media without question or authentication. The text is as follows:

During their conversation, CHS 1 asked McKay, “what if there’s a cop sleeping in the car?” McKay responded, “he’ll wake up.” CHS 1 then asked McKay, “what if he doesn’t?,” to which McKay did not respond. CHS 1 also asked McKay if McKay could leave the scene with a cop burning or dying, to which McKay answered “yes.” McKay also told CHS 1 that “it’s worth it if an officer gets burned or maimed.”

This one piece of information is arguably responsible for finding David McKay and Brad Crowder (and all "anarchists" or "protesters", by default) guilty in the court of public opinion, and destroying any chance of a fair trial. Now: shock, horror, it comes out during the January 27th trial of McKay that the FBI have no recording or transcript of this alleged conversation, even though Darby was wearing a wire during this investigation and many less consequential conversations were recorded and transcribed:

Earlier Tuesday, an FBI agent testified that although agents listened in on the conversation between McKay and Darby, he was the only one who took notes and that the conversation wasn't recorded. - Austin American Statesman, January 28th, 2009

...so to recap, "although agents listened in... the conversation wasn't recorded." We only have written notes by a single FBI agent, taken of a monitored conversation that clinch a flimsy case and are substantiated by an informant, Brandon Darby, who broke FBI rules in ways which compromised the case in terms of entrapment and who, more tellingly, was caught out in multiple lies (see trial notes day 1/day 2) during the trial. That's not justice.

More general information about the reliability of the FBI informants, as well as a history of FBI abuses in politically motivated investigation, can be found here and here.