Steven C. McCraw, the head of the Department of Public Safety, said on Friday that investigators had linked the arsonist to a group of anarchists known as Austin Affinity. He said two members of the same group had pleaded guilty to making and possessing gasoline bombs during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., three months later.
But one of the men who pleaded guilty in Minnesota said the anarchist group that the rangers are focusing on did not exist. The man, Bradley Crowder, said it was an ad hoc collection of young anarchists who had pooled resources to hire a van for the trip north.
“It was like an activist car pool,” said Mr. Crowder, who is 25 and served two years in prison for his role in making eight gasoline bombs in wine bottles, which were never used.
The rangers, however, see things differently. A break in the case came several months ago, they said, when a ranger who was helping review thousands of hours of surveillance tapes from 11 cameras around the Capitol and mansion spotted something strange.
Four days before the fire, three men in a white Jeep Cherokee stopped in front of the mansion about 2 a.m. and a person in the back seat snapped photos of the building. The ranger thought the men might have been casing the place.
But the video camera did not capture the license plate number. So the police began a painstaking hunt through 3,000 similar Jeeps in Texas, eliminating them one by one, Mr. McCraw said. “Every one of them had to be looked at,” he said, “and it had to be done in a way that you are not letting the person know.”
“It was good, old-fashioned police work,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the minutiae and the tedious that links you to something.”
Months later, investigators found the car and interviewed the owner, who turned out to have a connection to people who were part of the Austin Affinity anarchist group, Mr. McCraw said. The owner also identified the two passengers, one of whom was near the mansion at the time of the fire.
All three men in the Jeep have been questioned in connection with the arson and are considered suspects, though they have denied involvement, the police said.
Mr. McCraw said the arsonist is believed to be a fourth person, whose shadowy figure can be seen in video taken by another camera the night of the fire. Released last week, the video shows the figure tossing a blazing gasoline bomb onto the porch of the mansion, then sprinting away. A third camera on an adjacent street captured a grainy image of his face. The police enhanced the picture electronically and released a sketch based on it.
The fire destroyed much of the historic two-story brick home across from the Texas Capitol where governors have lived since 1856. Renovations continue, but Gov. Rick Perry has been moved to other lodgings. For two years, the search for the culprit has been a priority for the rangers and the state police, and the lack of progress had been an embarrassment for the department.
In recent days, rangers in their trademark cowboy hats have fanned out across Austin and penetrated the city’s counterculture hangouts, where the fashion accessories tend toward piercings and tattoos, the music is alternative rock and globalization is a dirty word. Toting pictures of suspects and offering a $50,000 reward for leads, the lawmen have questioned several self-described anarchists about the Affinity group and the identity of the bomber.
Not surprisingly, the investigation has been met with some suspicion. Many self-described anarchists in Austin do not advocate attacking all forms of government, a concept they regard as dated. Their vision of anarchism holds that people should take action themselves to fix social problems. Local anarchists run a recycling center, a food-distribution program, a bookstore, a cafe, and even a thrift shop.
Yet federal agents accused two men from these circles of plotting to make firebombs and hurl them at police cars during the convention. An F.B.I informant from Austin, Brandon Darby, was traveling with the group and told the authorities of the plot, which he had encouraged.*
David Guy McKay, 24, pleaded guilty to firearms violations in the case and was sentenced to four years. Mr. Crowder, 25, received a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting Mr. McKay in the possession of an illegal firearm, which is how the law classifies a gasoline bomb.
Mr. Crowder, who is living and working in Austin, said he had nothing to do with the mansion fire. He called the theory that there was an anarchist organization behind both crimes “categorical nonsense.” “It never existed,” he said. “It’s not a real entity.”
Scott Crow, an Austin anarchist who knows Mr. Crowder and Mr. McKay but did not go to St. Paul, said the state police were “grasping at straws.” He said the group that had traveled to Minnesota was never a coherent organization and split up on returning.
“Anarchist groups, you know, they have no leader,” Mr. Crow said.
*Correction: March 16, 2011
An article on Feb. 23 about developments in the investigation of a 2008 arson fire at the Texas governor’s mansion misstated the role played by an F.B.I. informer, Brandon Darby, in an earlier case in Minnesota. In that case, two men were accused of making and possessing gasoline bombs at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in 2008. Both men eventually pleaded guilty. Initially, however, one of them implicated Mr. Darby, saying Mr. Darby had persuaded him to make the bombs. He later conceded that Mr. Darby had not entrapped him.
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