But if you're going to agitate someone into a fight, you have to have someone that's willing to get into one.

You're assuming that's the only victory condition present. If it were 100% paid actors that went into ("stormed") the capital, would that shut it all down and media would just say aw phooey? The victory condition for the event was a smear job, which can be done entirely without consent.

I'll present a generous argument for what you're interpreting as backpedaling. They want no claim to the event because they didn't feel like they got a chance to participate. The job was done badly, wasn't it? I'd be pretty irritated if I got blamed for a bad job done by some jerk wearing my symbols when I was still preparing to do the job right. But I wouldn't give up afterwards, so we'll only really know if this is true by the end of the month.