McKay, 23, of Austin, Texas, blamed no one but himself for making the explosives. He claimed no entrapment. He no longer insisted that an undercover government informant persuaded him to break the law.
Another Austin man who was arrested and indicted with McKay, Bradley Crowder, pleaded guilty earlier.
"So it was just the two of you, Mr Crowder and you, who came up with this plan?" US Chief Judge Michael J Davis asked McKay.
"Yes, sir," McKay said.
McKay and Crowder and a separate Molotov cocktail case involving Matthew DePalma represent the biggest convictions to come out of the 800 arrests made during the four-day convention in September.
McKay had intended to plead guilty on Monday, the day his retrial was scheduled to begin. At his earlier trial, McKay had insisted that Brandon Darby, who was secretly working with the FBI, had come up with the idea to make Molotov cocktails.
McKay, Crowder and Darby were part of a group from Texas who came to St Paul as part of a larger collection of protesters. McKay and Crowder made the Molotov cocktails after police seized a trailer containing shields that protesters had hoped to use in street demonstrations.
The FBI said McKay and Crowder made the bombs to get back at police. McKay had said he made the bombs only after Darby suggested it.
That entrapment claim was enough to result in a hung jury a month ago. It was a hard one for McKay to drop on Monday, which prompted Davis to reject McKay's plea and to adjourn until yesterday.
Yesterday, while McKay still insisted that he, Crowder and Darby had talked about Molotov cocktails, he said he decided on his own to buy the gasoline and motor oil on the eve of the convention and to fill eight empty wine bottles. When Davis asked McKay why he had earlier testified that Darby had persuaded him, McKay told the judge that it was what he'd wanted to believe.
But Jeffrey Paulsen, the assistant US attorney who prosecuted the case, said after the hearing that McKay was accepting responsibility because Crowder had been granted immunity from further prosecution and was going to testify at McKay's new trial.
Crowder, Paulsen said, had repeatedly denied that anyone else influenced him to make the bombs and was expected to inject doubt into McKay's claims.
In fact, Paulsen said, when McKay confessed to the FBI months ago, he never mentioned Darby. Neither did he blame anyone else when he later wrote a letter to the judge claiming responsibility. Nor did he blame Darby during recorded telephone calls from jail.
Yesterday, Paulsen said, McKay stopped blaming anyone else.
"And that was what the judge needed to know," Paulsen said.
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