Known as the "Hillbilly Donnie Brasco," FBI agent Scott Payne risked his life to expose violent neo-Nazi cells threatening national security, including the KKK and biker gangs.
Payne began his law enforcement career at the Greenville County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, where he worked for five years as a uniform patrol officer and a vice and narcotics investigator. He signed up for the FBI in 1998 and was assigned to the New York, San Antonio, and Knoxville field offices, working against drug trafficking, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. In 2005, he went undercover with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts. In 2017, he helped arrest a white nationalist who planned an attack on a synagogue. In 2019, he embedded himself with US extremist groups as part of an FBI investigation to avert a mass shooting planned by a white nationalist group called The Base.
Payne talks to Business Insider about undercover protocol, creating legends, whether agents use burner phones, the ethics of undercover work, and surveillance techniques. He also voices his opinions on changes to the FBI since he started and what the future holds for the agency's leadership.
Since leaving the service in 2021, he has become a professional speaker with Eradicate Hate. He is the author of "Code Name: Pale Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis."
For more:
@ScottPayneBigCountry
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Code-Name-Pale-Horse/Scott-Payne/9781668032909
Payne began his law enforcement career at the Greenville County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, where he worked for five years as a uniform patrol officer and a vice and narcotics investigator. He signed up for the FBI in 1998 and was assigned to the New York, San Antonio, and Knoxville field offices, working against drug trafficking, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. In 2005, he went undercover with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts. In 2017, he helped arrest a white nationalist who planned an attack on a synagogue. In 2019, he embedded himself with US extremist groups as part of an FBI investigation to avert a mass shooting planned by a white nationalist group called The Base.
Payne talks to Business Insider about undercover protocol, creating legends, whether agents use burner phones, the ethics of undercover work, and surveillance techniques. He also voices his opinions on changes to the FBI since he started and what the future holds for the agency's leadership.
Since leaving the service in 2021, he has become a professional speaker with Eradicate Hate. He is the author of "Code Name: Pale Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis."
For more:
@ScottPayneBigCountry
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Code-Name-Pale-Horse/Scott-Payne/9781668032909
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TechTranscript
00:00My name is Scott Payne.
00:02I served in the FBI for 23 years as an undercover agent.
00:05I infiltrated biker gangs, the KKK, and America's neo-Nazis.
00:11And this is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:15We were all worried about my safety.
00:16We had quick response teams, you know, like, but the bottom line is, is if I'm in the middle
00:20of 100 acres and the crap hits the fan, what are you going to do for me other than avenge
00:25my death unless I take care of it on my own?
00:28So, you know, that's kind of that undercover mentality.
00:30If you're only going in because you're expecting three SWAT teams and HRT to be there for you,
00:35you probably shouldn't go in.
00:42There was an opportunity to do the Outlaws motorcycle club in Massachusetts out of the Boston office.
00:49My game plan was to just go in cold.
00:51I think I went into the Outlaws case around July of 2005.
00:56Taunton, Massachusetts was what we were going after.
00:59They had pretty good intelligence.
01:00I'm like, hey, you know, what do you know?
01:02And they were like, they showed me, hey, this guy right here, he loves to be surrounded by big guys.
01:07He loves to be the center of attention.
01:09So they had that down.
01:11And I'm like, okay, cool.
01:12That lets me know, all right, I can do, I can be me.
01:15We knew that they frequented a strip club.
01:17And for those that don't know, in the biker world, you have a mandatory meeting every week, and that's called church.
01:24And depending on the club and the chapter, sometimes that's where you talk about your criminal activity.
01:29You know, you cut your phones off, airplane mode, leave them outside, go inside, you know, and that's all ways to thwart being infiltrated, to thwart law enforcement detection.
01:39I kind of made some stops at that bar when they weren't there and kind of got to know the crowd a little bit.
01:45And then one night when we're ready to swing for the fences, the surveillance is like, hey, they're leaving.
01:52They're on their way there.
01:53I'm already at the bar.
01:54I'm like, cool.
01:54I had asked them, I'm like, hey, can they wear their colors in the bar?
01:59And they're like, no, we don't believe they can wear them in the bar.
02:01And I go, oh, that's good.
02:02That's an advantage for me because now I'm just a tattooed dude drinking, staring at half dressed women listening to rock and roll.
02:12And so is that guy.
02:13But that part of the intelligence is wrong.
02:16So I'm in there and I'm on one side of the bar.
02:18And here comes about, I don't know, 12, 13 outlaws all with their colors on.
02:23And they take the whole back section of the bar.
02:25Well, that changes any kind of approach for me.
02:27Right.
02:27Well, what do you do?
02:28Do you walk up and go, hey, especially this accent in Massachusetts?
02:32Come on.
02:32Would you walk up and go, hey, you boys like to ride?
02:37I'm probably getting I'm probably getting smacked at the minimum.
02:40Right.
02:40You know, so I just started.
02:43It being me trying to ingratiate, just getting to know some of the outlaws, just shooting
02:48guys at a bar.
02:50And then they had somebody kind of check me out in the bathroom.
02:54That was a little weird.
02:55This big jack dude named Scott Towne, who I got to befriend and know very, very well through
03:02that case.
03:03Door swings open and here he is, barrel chested, big muscles.
03:07And then I see him eyeballing me and start to walk up.
03:10So for that split second, I'm thinking I'm getting jacked.
03:13He's probably going to slam me or something.
03:15I'm just ready, preparing for anything.
03:17Well, he starts questioning me about where I've been, this, that and the other.
03:21Don't bluff because I did throw out some stuff.
03:24McAllen, Texas.
03:25He'd been to Brownsville.
03:27Greenville, South Carolina.
03:29He'd been to Spartanburg.
03:30He knew all the places I was talking.
03:32So had I been bluffing and not knowing what I was talking about, I probably could have blown
03:36it right then and there.
03:37For protection and safety, I got me, I don't have a gun, you know, I'm pretty sure I wasn't
03:44even wired that night because me personally, I don't like to be wired in the beginning.
03:50I mean, if we would have started fighting, it's just been me fighting, you know, hopefully
03:53a cover team can hear me.
03:57You should have a cover team on you if you're out.
03:59A cover team would be like my case team, but they're a response team.
04:03You might have multiple response teams and they may do shifts.
04:07But for the outlaw case, it was basically me.
04:09For the two years, it was basically me, the FBI case agent, who was a friend of mine, Massachusetts
04:17state trooper, task force officer, and it was a Brockton PD detective.
04:22And we had a DEA counterpart.
04:25But for the most part, it was those two task force officers, the agent and me.
04:33Sometimes gaining trust from somebody takes a long time, but I just started hanging.
04:38And that night, that first night I bumped them, they invited me to their Northeast regional
04:42meet, which was called the Lobster Fest.
04:44I made sure I came back for that and started meeting more people.
04:47And I was just hanging around, you know, but you know, what is a country guy doing in Massachusetts?
04:54I'm going to have to have a reason that's believable.
04:56I said I was a site survey specialist because I grew up landscaping and I started looking for
05:02something that I felt comfortable talking about and being able to do for a living.
05:07But eventually I start letting it be known that I'm not just a legit businessman.
05:11I do some criminal activity too.
05:13And then I started doing some things.
05:15What it turned in for them was in the beginning, they would report vehicles stolen.
05:20They would get their own insurance money.
05:21I would buy those vehicles off of them at a stolen price.
05:26And what they believed is that I was moving them to Mexico.
05:28And then we start gaining more trust because we're hanging more and they're learning more
05:32about me and I'm learning more about them.
05:35And then it becomes, hey, we just carjacked somebody.
05:37So now they're saying, Tex, we got a hot car, we need to get rid of it.
05:42I'm like, okay, I'll get rid of it.
05:44So take that one.
05:45I started dropping breadcrumbs about the fact that I did used to be in the dope game.
05:52And I did have contacts in the cartel, but I got out of it because some of my boys got
05:58locked up and the heat was getting too close.
06:00In the outlaws case, there wasn't a part where I was going to get taken down.
06:05But there were several times during that case, I did get stopped by law enforcement.
06:10As our team surveilling me and I'm getting questioned with outlaws in my car and I'm
06:14getting browbeat by a state trooper and I've got to stay in role and hopefully not go to
06:19jail, you know, kind of thing.
06:21So if that would have happened on a case like that, I'd just go to jail.
06:25I would not, I wouldn't break cover.
06:26I'd let somebody come bail me out and we'll figure it out after that.
06:29Hell, it might even bolster my reputation with the outlaws, you know.
06:33The biggest lick we came is a year and a half into the case.
06:37I'd laid out that I was actually involved in the drug game.
06:41And we did a deal where we had a load of dope transfer to another vehicle.
06:49So we ended up doing 40 kilos of real cocaine, 1,000 pounds of real weed.
06:54What they thought was it was a drug crew selling it to another drug crew and they got paid for
06:59helping protect it.
07:01But the big issue in that case that most people like to talk about is the night before the
07:08op was supposed to happen, Joe Dawgs, who was the president of the Taunton chapter, said,
07:13hey man, I want you to come over to the clubhouse.
07:15They were having church, that meeting I was talking about.
07:19And Clothesline, the enforcer, who's supposed to be my good buddy, says, hey Tex, you got
07:25a minute?
07:26And I said, yeah.
07:27I'd been in that clubhouse umpteen times, man, who knows how many.
07:31There's only one door I'd never been in.
07:33And that's the door he opened.
07:35And we went down a tight stairwell to a basement.
07:39But I'm being generous when I say basement, northeastern home, split level, more like a cellar.
07:44You know, I couldn't stand up straight.
07:45I mean, I'm 6'4", and I could probably touch the wall on both sides.
07:49Well, they brandished their weapons.
07:51And he's got me down there, and just walking down into that dark, tight area, one outlaw
07:56in front of me, one behind me, I'm like, something's not good, man.
07:59This is not good.
08:00And everything starts slowing down in your head, because you're having an adrenaline
08:03dump.
08:04He walks me down there, and he says, hey, there's a lot of s*** going on.
08:08It's my job to protect my brothers.
08:10I need you to take all your clothes off.
08:13I need you to write down your full name, your address, your kids' names, your wife's name.
08:19And I start s***ing gold bricks at that point.
08:21I'm like, oh, hell.
08:24Because being stripped in a basement at gunpoint is not a big deal if you're not wired.
08:33You're just naked.
08:34It's uncomfortable.
08:35It's cold.
08:37When you're wired, it's a big deal.
08:39And I went to write my name down, Scott Calloway, and I couldn't remember my middle name.
08:45It's because I was having an adrenaline dump.
08:48I couldn't remember nothing.
08:49Everything I'm having, I'm having the auditory exclusion.
08:52Everything's going woof, woof, real slow.
08:55You can feel your heart beating, your hamstrings get rubbery.
09:01And I was trying to remember, I was going, Scott Calloway, Scott Calloway, Scott Joseph
09:04Calloway.
09:05And I'm like, nope.
09:06That wasn't my middle name.
09:07That was another alias.
09:08And I'm just going through this Rolodex in my mind.
09:11And then I do something that we train.
09:13I had no idea I did it, though.
09:16And it was basically a distraction technique, but it's also me trying to get information.
09:20Must have been my subconscious doing it, right?
09:22And I say, what else do you need?
09:25And he says, what?
09:26And I'm like, my name and what else?
09:28Then I hear them yell up to a probate and say, hey, what else do you need for that website?
09:32So now I'm doing active listening.
09:34I'm like, oh, okay.
09:35I'm gathering intel.
09:36I'm like, okay.
09:37They're going to Google search me.
09:39Back then there was a huge thing called whosarat.com, you can go on that.
09:43Anybody that was, like locals that get popped, if they can ID the narc and put a picture,
09:47they put it on whosarat.com.
09:49I took my jacket, my shirt off.
09:51I took my boots off, and I dropped my pants and underwear down around my ankles.
09:55And I did remember my middle name finally, and I wrote that down.
09:59But the whole time, I'm doing things that we teach.
10:01I'm like, I'm talking.
10:02I'm looking at clothesline, and I'm like, I didn't say it, but my eyes were saying, tell
10:07me everything's going to be okay.
10:09What the hell's going on?
10:10I look for plastic.
10:11If I'd have seen plastic on the floor, I probably would have tried to fight my way out
10:14of it.
10:14But I mean, what the hell could I have done?
10:16I don't care how tough you are.
10:1713 outlaws, you're downstairs.
10:18You've got to get upstairs, get out the door.
10:21So I'm talking.
10:24But in his look, he's kind of looking back, and he says, at one point he tells me, he
10:27goes, trust me, man.
10:28If somebody accused me of being a fed, I'd smash them in the mouth.
10:32And I looked at him, and I said, I'm not happy.
10:34That was true.
10:35I was not happy.
10:37And he said, I wouldn't be either.
10:38So I think we're done.
10:39Then he grabs a piece of clothing, and he says, hey, I'm not going to find anything in
10:46here I don't want to, right?
10:47Like some naked pictures of my old lady?
10:49And he laughs.
10:50He goes, ha, ha, ha.
10:50My laugh's like this.
10:53Because without giving too much away, there was something in that piece of clothing.
10:58And he starts needing it.
11:03He starts looking at it.
11:04And he's going over this whole piece of clothing.
11:07And he looks right at it, but doesn't see it.
11:10And I pass.
11:12And we immediately go back into business.
11:15Now, several things to be learned from that.
11:18A lot of people ask me, what would you have said if he would have found it?
11:24And to this day, I remember it like it was yesterday.
11:26I got two responses.
11:28One would have been by myself some time.
11:30If he would have said, what is this?
11:31I would have said, I don't know, some naked pictures of you old lady?
11:34Because he already threw that bone.
11:36The only other line I had was, the gig is up.
11:40I'm an undercover FBI agent.
11:42I can walk out of here, and we can see each other in court, or all hell's going to break
11:46loose.
11:47However, that would have been a bluff on my part.
11:51Because, to my knowledge, every time I was in that clubhouse,
11:56the cover team really couldn't hear me.
11:58That night, when I turned in my equipment to the case team, what I found out was Sergeant
12:04Higginbottom, Higgy, was the Massachusetts State Trooper, and Joe was the Brogdon Police
12:08guy.
12:09That first exchange between me and Joe Dawgs at the door made their spidey senses go off.
12:14Or if you're me and you're a believer, it's the Holy Spirit talking to you.
12:17Divine intervention.
12:18What Higgy and Joe did is they suited up vests and everything, ready to respond.
12:23But because they knew how fortified that door was on the clubhouse, the cinder block wall
12:28around it, their plan was to drive the vehicle into the cinder block wall to breach it there.
12:33Because it would be easier, in their opinion, to breach that door.
12:36I can't tell you how many people in my law enforcement career, or even today, that I
12:41would know, and I'd say, they would have pulled the trigger.
12:43They would have went in there.
12:45They wouldn't have waited.
12:46But Higgy and Joe knew me enough to listen to my voice.
12:49And I was in control enough to where they didn't, and we passed the test.
12:56The case was very successful.
12:58I will tell you, there's a whole other side to that three-year period.
13:02I had been going at a pace for three years where I'd stopped taking care of myself.
13:07I'm a workaholic.
13:08So in order to work these cases, I would take my days off.
13:11I would be undercover in Oklahoma over the weekend, come back, not take a day off, go
13:15right back to work because I wanted to make my bosses happy in McAllen so I could go do
13:19the undercovers and be on SWAT and do all this other stuff I was doing.
13:23And it eventually caught up to me.
13:24By the time the case was ending, I was a zombie.
13:27I was on antihistamines, decongestants.
13:30I was taking hydroxy cuts after drinking three cups of coffee.
13:34It's a cocktail for anxiety, and that's what happened to me.
13:37I crashed physically and mentally.
13:40I probably slept like an average of 16 hours a day for a week, but I bet you the first two
13:45days, I was close to 20 hours.
13:46I wasn't depressed or sick.
13:48I know what they both feel like.
13:49I was just that daggum tired.
13:50The case finished with a reversal.
13:52I helped set up the deal to get the cars, and then the guy that asked me for that deal
13:57when the undercover truck drivers that were working for me on the case were picking up
14:02the vehicles, he pitched them for the 10-kilo deal.
14:04They said, yeah, we can get it, and they delivered it to him, and we took it down.
14:07Everybody pled guilty, and I don't know if the taunting chapter ever came back, but it
14:12was pretty much defunct after that.
14:15Do I believe that white supremacy in the domestic terrorism realm of the FBI is probably the
14:26most violent and most dangerous?
14:28Yes, based on my experience, because the militia groups that I infiltrated and stuff, a lot
14:33of them are just pro-gun, and it goes back to what it's always been.
14:36If you come to take their guns, you're going to have a Ruby Ridge or a Waco.
14:40In 2019, we started hearing about the base.
14:44So the base was an organization considered accelerationists.
14:48They want to accelerate the collapse of society.
14:52They don't believe there's a political solution to save the white race.
14:54They believe that society is going to collapse on its own or for man-made events, and they
15:01want to speed it up.
15:02We've got people out there to just call in and say, hey, I was on this Telegram channel,
15:06and there's this guy going by TMB, and man, he is saying some crazy stuff.
15:10So we start watching.
15:12And it's just spewing hate, and that's not illegal.
15:15You know, First Amendment protection in the United States.
15:18And we knew that pretty much the leader was a guy named Ronaldo Nazaro.
15:24His online monikers were Roman Wolf and Norman Spear.
15:28And then I would kind of post, hit them, hey, man, I like what you're saying.
15:33I train all the time, blah, blah, blah.
15:35And then they might like it back.
15:36Well, at the end of all their stuff, they were always recruiting.
15:40And it said, if you're interested, email thebase underscore one at ******.
15:45So I answered it, and that started a series of questions through emails over probably
15:50a week or two.
15:52And then it got to the point to where, I mean, they're asking you your ethnicity,
15:55where you live, what's your background, what's your belief system.
15:59And I was instructed to download the app called Wire, kind of like a WhatsApp kind of thing.
16:04You can do calls on it too.
16:05And I think it was July of 2019, I did approximately one hour and 15 minute of an interview.
16:14It was basically a panel.
16:16I think I remember hearing like five different voices, and some of them were really young.
16:20But Ronaldo was on there.
16:22And I get peppered with questions.
16:24And I'm answering them back.
16:26About 24 hours later, I got a ping on Wire, and it said, we'd like to have you.
16:31Okay, we'll hook you up with the cell leader closest to you.
16:36The base wanted three to five man cells all over the world, waiting for that call for
16:41the boogaloo.
16:42And it turns out that Al-Qaeda, translated to English, is the base.
16:48Don't know if that was a coincidence, or that's why Ronaldo chose it.
16:52I go down to Rome, Georgia, and I meet TMB, the Militant Buddhists, and Pestilence.
16:59Now, listen, they're pretty squared away, because even though they're young, like 21
17:03and 19, they told me where to go in the town.
17:07They told me where to park.
17:09They told me to take a picture.
17:10In the town of Rome, Georgia, there's a Capitoline wolf.
17:13It's the Roman wolf statue.
17:15They wanted me to take a picture of that and send it to them.
17:18So I met the case team right before that.
17:21They want to put a tracking device on my truck, because again, we don't know who we're meeting,
17:24technically.
17:25We don't know where we're going.
17:26They don't want to lose me.
17:27I don't want them to lose me.
17:29I go and meet them, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get checked.
17:32I mean, if they're worth anything, they're going to check me out, you know.
17:35So they come up.
17:36I go, hey, man, how's it going?
17:37I go, at that point, I was white warrior.
17:39I changed it to pale horse shortly thereafter, once I was in the group.
17:43He's like, hey, man, put your phone on airplane mode.
17:45I need to check you.
17:46I said, okay.
17:47Airplane mode.
17:49He pulls out this wand I'd never seen.
17:52To me, it looked like some kind of Geiger counter.
17:53I mean, it had all kinds of lights and buttons on it and a triangle card.
17:56And I'm like, and he's running it all over me.
17:58And I'm like, okay, cool.
17:59He starts going down the truck.
18:01He starts getting to the back of the truck, which is where they had installed a tracking
18:05device.
18:05And that thing starts going nuts.
18:07And I'm like, oh, I'm like, it picks it up.
18:10And it turns out that piece of equipment that kid who doesn't have a job is holding is $500.
18:17It's not chump change.
18:18And it does detect everything.
18:23Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, any signal there is, it'll color code it and make a different sound for
18:27it.
18:27Right when he's getting to it, I was on a hill and the power lines were pretty low right
18:33there.
18:34And Pestilence says, I wonder if it's the power lines.
18:37And he said, hang on.
18:38And he walks over.
18:39I'd already dropped my right leg back because I thought we were getting ready to throw down.
18:42I'm like, here we go.
18:43He walks over to the power lines and that machine goes nuts.
18:46That detector goes nuts.
18:47He's like, man, all right, it's the power lines.
18:50Follow us.
18:51So now I'm following him and I'm like talking.
18:53I don't know who's watching me or what.
18:54So I've got like a cup.
18:55I got my phone.
18:56I'm driving with one hand or my knee and I'm going, hey, can you guys hear me?
18:59And they're like, yeah.
19:00And I go, you need to shut the tractor off.
19:02They're like, well, we're afraid if we shut it off, we won't be able to cut it back on.
19:05And I'm like, well, I'm telling you, if you don't shut it off, it's probably going to
19:08be the quickest undercover I've ever done.
19:10We pull into an abandoned concrete plant is what it looked like to me.
19:14And it turns out that TMB, which stands for the Militant Buddhist, his real name is Luke
19:20Lane, and his dad had 100 acres in Rome, Georgia.
19:23And that's where we start training.
19:25And that's where I start meeting more members and identifying members of the base as they
19:30come down to train.
19:32So we're out there and it's semi-automatic AR-15s.
19:35And you got to remember, at this time in my career in life, I've been the lead, the principal
19:42tactical instructor for the division forever.
19:44I've been a firearms instructor.
19:47I can't go out there and tell them what they're doing wrong.
19:50I can't go out there and make them better.
19:52That weekend, a 19-year-old kid led firearms and tactical training and it was good.
19:58And as I'm watching, I'm going, if they really wanted to go bad, they're probably going to
20:03get the drop on a lot of people because they're doing magazine exchange drills, fast firing
20:09drills, speed, accuracy.
20:12No, I did not show my, what I consider above average marksmanship skills when I was shooting
20:20in front of them.
20:21I threw some rounds.
20:22I jacked up some magazine exchanges.
20:27Everybody was always building their kit.
20:29And by building your kit, I mean bulletproof vests, plate carriers, rifle repellent plates.
20:36They call it battle rattle, which would be duty bail if you were a cop.
20:39But you got your battle rattle, you got your pistols, you got everything.
20:42They wore fleck tarn camo.
20:44Only fleck tarn because that's the German pattern and they're white supremacists.
20:48In the domestic terrorism world, if you've got a base member who's predicated and you
20:53can open a case on them, but they live in California, well, California, LA's division
20:57is going to have to open that case.
20:59You got one here in New York, New York's going to have to open that case.
21:02So you got all these case teams and it got to the point to where every Monday was a meeting
21:07between like the higher ups and they blessed me enough to have me on the phone, which was
21:11good because I'm the ground level person that can be like, hey, this is what they're
21:15doing.
21:16And then every Tuesday was a meeting between all the United States Attorney, the assistant
21:20United States Attorneys and locals.
21:23It got pretty big, pretty fast.
21:24There's a couple of different ways that the base was recruiting.
21:27Online was huge, but the accelerationist groups seemed to be really big into what they call
21:33stickering or postering or flyering.
21:35It would say, save your race, join the base.
21:38And there'd be a picture of a swastika and a dude with a military hat on kind of thing.
21:43And then it would have a QR code.
21:46So you scan that QR code and it takes you right to bit shoot to a video.
21:50And it's a propaganda recruitment video that the base did.
21:53I was in tons of them.
21:54We did a lot of filming down in Rome, Georgia for the base.
21:58You know, it might be like a voiceover.
22:00It might show, it might be some, some strong heavy metal, black metal song.
22:05And it would just show us running and like fighting and, and shooting.
22:09And there's always like a magazine dump at the end where all of us on the line, just
22:12emptying a mag.
22:13And the rule was every recruitment video had to be better than the last one because we
22:18want to be better.
22:19And again, you got to remember, these guys call your mass murderers, your white supremacy
22:23mass murderers, they call them saints.
22:25They have a leaderboard.
22:26The leaderboard shows scores.
22:29And then it gets down and it says, what are you going to do to make the board?
22:33Saints, a leaderboard.
22:35What the hell's wrong with you?
22:36Generally, you, you're going to find somebody that's satanic in that group and there's groups
22:42like Order of Nine Angles and there's some other ones that are out there that are, I
22:47mean, the stuff they spew and write down is pretty horrific.
22:50I mean, like mutilation of children and, and a lot of satanic stuff.
22:56So fast forward to Halloween of 2019, we held a hate camp in Georgia, probably about 13 base
23:04members from all over the country came that Halloween night, they stole a ram from a local
23:09property.
23:10We went down and held a pagan ritual, um, which nothing is pagan.
23:15I got plenty of friends that are pagans.
23:16I mean, I got vacuum stuff, Viking stuff all over my arm, but, uh, they twist it just like
23:22Christian identity twisted the Bible.
23:24Um, so they kidnap the goat, ram, we sacrifice it at a pagan ritual, drink its blood.
23:31A lot of the members do acid.
23:33The next day we did a training and then we had another little hate camp where built a
23:39fire down there, burnt Bibles, burnt American flags, screaming F your Jewish God, you know,
23:46F America, F Jews, that kind of thing.
23:51Um, but after that I'd gained enough trust.
23:54We uncovered several murder plots that, uh, Luke, uh, wanted to bring me in on.
24:00Um, they had found a couple that they believed were an Antifa couple in a couple of counties
24:05away and they wanted to murder them.
24:07Luke had already started making a list of lefty journalists and, and reporters.
24:11And I'm like, so you actually want to start killing people who are in the news and on TV
24:15and stuff? And he goes, yeah. And I go, okay, well, it's a good thing. We're going to take
24:18a run at this family. It'll be good practice.
24:21Meanwhile, the Baltimore, uh, Delaware crew, uh, believed that the huge gun rights rally
24:27that was going to be happening in January of 2020, their idea was they thought this was
24:31going to be the set off of the boogaloo. They had also started getting really crazy talking
24:35about like breaking out saints from the prison, using that 6.5 Creedmoor with a $6,000
24:41thermal scope to shoot cops at night. The big thing for us was try to
24:46make this timeline work and get all the evidence we needed to get an airtight case,
24:53which we had good ones going anyway, but you can always like, Hey man, if we could find this
24:57out kind of thing. I flew to Baltimore on a Friday, uh, drove up to Delaware, was with two
25:05of the base members there, sighted in their weapons, uh, hung out all day, went, got something
25:09to eat, started having a few drinks. I flew to Atlanta on Sunday, drove up to North Georgia,
25:17met with those base members to finalize the murder plot. I picked Luke up to take him to
25:22lunch. I feigned that my truck had had issues and pulled over on the side of the road, got
25:27out to work on my truck. And then, uh, that's when another truck came over. I started talking
25:31to that person. But while that's happening, the SWAT team's coming over the hill in their
25:36Bearcat armored vehicle. And I jump in the truck, drive off. They take down Luke without
25:41incident. They pick up pestilence at his house. So by Friday, it's starting to come out. And
25:46now I'm in the main chat. I haven't respond. I'm not answering anybody, but like, has anybody
25:50seen Pell Horse? Look at this, so-and-so and so-and-so. And it's going and it's going.
25:54It's like, wait a minute. This, this report says there's a federal agent that infiltrated
25:58it is. And they're like, who the hell is the Fed in here? And I'm going, I'm just waiting
26:01and I'm waiting. And, and Nazaro figured it out. Uh, he goes, he attended every training,
26:05which could be a red flag. I should have picked on something like that. And as soon as he started
26:09saying that, I go, he knows it's me. He's figured it out. And somewhere around like 515
26:13on a Friday night, it was like, Roman Wolf has removed you. So I screenshotted that and sent
26:18it to all the case teams. And I put, and I'm out. And, uh, and that was it. We took that
26:23one down. Your story has to be straight. Your, we called it your legend, but your backstory.
26:35And in other words, especially if I'm planning on going deep undercover, it may not work,
26:40you know, but plan for it. Cause if I came in here with crappy backstopping and a name
26:45that I don't have anything associated with, you know what I mean? If it's not real, if
26:49it doesn't look real and it's not real and tangible, you can't touch it. Then all of a sudden
26:53something breaks and you can go deep undercover, you're screwed. Cause you had a bad foundation.
26:56So know your stuff cause you're going to get tested on it. Um, don't bluff because if you
27:02got my luck, you're going to get called on it. Another big one that I, that I saw and
27:07personally dealt with, uh, is you need to be able to, you need to be able to see that a
27:12situation is deteriorating and be aware of it and get out if you got to, or maybe everything
27:19was heating up and they're like, do it, do it. And then you fake it. And then they're like,
27:22all right, everything's cool, man. Then now, you know, that the situation is back, you know,
27:25for me personally, the way I was trained, um, and the choices I made, I always stuck close
27:32to, very close to who I am. I mean, it's still me. The jokes are the same. I just may or may
27:37not be married, may or may not have kids, may or may not have played college ball, may
27:41or may not be a musician and a singer, but I mean, I probably ride motorcycles and lift weights.
27:47Is there a danger staying close to the truth? Uh, I, again, case by case, subjective, uh,
27:54because it could be if I've got it way too close, you know, like you can figure out that
28:00I'm married and my kids and stuff, but I generally felt better and more secure being close to who
28:05I am. There's a few rules for undercovers. That really goes for sources too. We can't be involved
28:11in an act of violence unless it's in self-defense, right? We can't lead and come up with the criminal
28:17idea. You know what I'm saying? That'd be an entrapment issue, right? Let me say this,
28:21operational security, you should never have anything personal that ties to you. I mean,
28:27of course I'm wearing my personal clothes. What if I went and picked up my coat from the cleaners
28:31and it says Scott Payne on it and now I'm undercover and somebody grabs my jacket and you know me
28:37is tech Scott Calloway and now you see Scott Payne in the jackets. You got to be totally clean.
28:43One of the things I would do to kind of get enrolled for almost all my cases, um, is I take
28:47the cross off. I take my cross off my necklace and I put a skull on. When I got home, I'd switch them
28:53back. This might be tradecraft. Why would you ever alert your cover team if you were in trouble?
28:57It's not tradecraft. Um, if I, it's actually, it gets kind of funny because you go and you meet case
29:03teams and case agents all over the country and if you've been in there and you're getting along in the
29:06tooth working under covers and stuff. And, uh, it's always like, Hey, what do you want? What's
29:10your code word? What's your safety word? And I'm like, how about this? If I yell help multiple times
29:17in a row, that's my code word, you know, and I get it. Do you want to set them off or not? But
29:23I've been on, especially at the narc level that I got so much experience. You say, okay, your signal,
29:29your physical signal is going to be, you're going to take your hat off. You're going to tap your head
29:33and put the hat back on. Person's never done it. Their baseline's never done it. But for whatever
29:38reason, subconsciously it's in there and they don't even realize they do it. They're talking
29:41to the bad guy. They take their hat off, tap their head and put it back on. It wasn't time for the
29:45signal. They did it by accident. Now my go word, you know, like we could come up with something like,
29:51if you want a word where for me to let the team know, I got the evidence, like for something quicker,
29:57maybe we're, we're doing crimes against children, we're ordering escorts or whatever. And once I get
30:04that money in exchange for sex thing, I can, I can come up with something, you know, bathroom,
30:11something simple. But yeah, I always, I always tried to keep it simple.
30:20People ask me a lot, you know, what, what was it about undercover work that drew me? I've always loved
30:25connecting with people. I've always, I'm a people person, gift to gab kind of guy. But I will tell
30:31you this, I was always fascinated with undercover movies. I don't care if it was the cheesiest
30:36undercover movie. I love it. I was a cop first from 93 to 98 and for three years uniform patrol,
30:43two years vice of narcotics. So I was already certified to do undercover work in the state.
30:47And then I was applying with the FBI and I got accepted in 1998. It's a selection process. Every field
30:53office has an undercover coordinator. If you have a seasoned undercover coordinator,
30:57they should be sitting you down, not giving you things that are going to be in this,
31:01in the certification course, but talking to you about, I mean, if you came to me right now,
31:05I'd be like, okay, so what do you think undercover is? What are you picturing? You know,
31:10do you have a family? How long have y'all been married? You got kids? How old are your kids?
31:16Things like that. But again, the undercover program is completely voluntary. Even if you're
31:21certified, let's say you make it through the certification process. Nobody can make you work
31:24undercover. They can make you be a case agent, but they can't make you do undercover. Then at some
31:31point you're going to have to go do psychological testing. We have something called the safeguard unit.
31:37So you do psychological tests during the day and you're going to sit down with a clinical psychologist.
31:42That may be an FBI agent that's taking a position at safeguard unit, or it could be somebody we've
31:48contracted in. And then you sit down with somebody like a Pistone or like hopefully me later on in
31:53my career, somebody that's seasoned to talk about things outside of that. Like, man, how are you
31:58doing? How's your family doing? How's your division? Do they support you? Or do you get a lot of grief
32:03for being an undercover program? They might run you through a scenario or two, and then they're going
32:08to, they're going to do all their crunching back at headquarters and stuff. And they're going to
32:12come down with 40 candidates. It's a 20 slot school, but they have 20 backups just in case
32:18somebody falls out and you can slide another one in. I got certified in 2002 with the undercover
32:25certification. I think in 2003, I started role playing at the school and eventually started
32:31teaching blocks at the school from 2003 till I retired 2021. I've never seen a hundred percent
32:38graduation rate. That doesn't mean it's hazing. I mean, to me, it gives the course credibility.
32:44You go through that process and if you make it, it's two weeks, no days off, pretty big on sleep
32:51deprivation because it really brings out the weaknesses. And we want to see that as trainers,
32:56as undercovers. We want you to feel it if you're going through it. You know, if you're going to drink
33:01while you're undercover, which of course you can, and we want to see how you are. Do you lose your
33:06stuff and start wanting to fight everybody or, you know, do you take all your clothes? I mean,
33:12you know, the thing is we would want a red flag, you know. New York City was my first office in
33:17the FBI out of the academy. And I was already doing some cameos here. And cameo is just like
33:22it sounds like in the movie thing. Like I hopped in a truck with a task force guy and we delivered
33:263000 pounds of weed to a Jamaican gang. That's a cameo. I mean, I'm not, we're just going, we're
33:30delivering it and then they're going to get it. And when they pop the box, everybody runs in and
33:34arrest them. Well, there's, there's huge differences from when I started undercover
33:38to when I finished. Um, hopefully you get wiser as far as me as a Greenville County narcotics officer.
33:46And, and the first time they rolled me down the street in a high trafficking drug area.
33:52And they gave me a $20 bill and told me, they said, all you got to do is pull down the corner.
33:55They're going to run up to your car. You just tell them you want a 20. I don't know what the hell
33:58I'm doing. I mean, I, I bought and smoked weed prior to becoming a cop, but you know,
34:04multiple times, but I, I didn't know about pulling in, you know, to those areas. And I
34:10remember I rolled down there and I was so scared. You know, the guy comes up and he's like, what you
34:14want? He's in my window. He's like, what'd you want? I cracked the window just enough to get a
34:19$20 bill through it. Like I'm trying to insert into the vending machine. You know, I'm like,
34:24I wanted to, I'm sure my voice was high. Cause I was scared. I was like, I want a 20.
34:28I handed it through, he slid it through. He's rolled down the window so I can hand it to you.
34:31You know, he hands it to me and it was probably a sliver of, I don't know. It could have been
34:35soap. Who knows? You know, I'm in New York. I'm assigned to New York. 9 11 happens. I come back
34:41as soon as you could fly commercially and I helped cover leaves running up and down West Side Highway
34:47and other highways. That was a very surreal, but I saw a canvas for some undercover work in San Antonio.
34:56I put in for it. I got approved for 30 days. And once that happened, I became the primary and they
35:01ended up transferring me. So I went to the border of Mexico for six and a half years. And while I was
35:08there as a case agent, I'm working cartel stuff and this, that, and the other. I can tell you
35:13transparently, I can't talk about the case cause it was only like one of the only ones I did that was
35:16classified. It's been outed, but I don't want to be put on a box.
35:25Operation Poetic Justice was a public corruption undercover operation.
35:31And it took place, man, I want to say around like 2009 to 2011.
35:36The FBI is looking for systemic public corruption, which means more than just one person, generally
35:42speaking. And that was the reporting. And it had been reported for years and years, but nothing was
35:47found. And so I went in and then, you know, tried to infiltrate, ingratiate, get to know people.
35:55I was a relatively new to the Tennessee area that we were in. That was right when the big opioid crisis
36:03was happening. I went in there to try to give me something to, you know, some kind of
36:08something to be a little dirty. And I came in with purported stolen cigarettes and those things went
36:15like hotcakes. Cause out there in the rural Tennessee area, they had no problem getting
36:20their opioids, but man, they did not like paying that much money for cigarettes. So once that happened,
36:24I was like, Oh, this is our end. And I started bringing in reportedly stolen cigarettes and selling
36:30them. And I was selling for $20 a carton and, and they would give me like two Oxy 80s, which were going
36:36for a dollar a milligram. So they just gave me $160 worth of drugs for the $20 carton. And then we
36:42started trying to wrap in some local law enforcement and we did, we did good. We got a, a constable,
36:49uh, who was dirty. We got a guy that was a reserve who became a cop while I was in that case.
36:56There are a few things a good cop hates worse than a bad cop. Don't tarnish the badge. I mean,
37:02dadgummit, we did get the constable on some dope charges. We got the cop and he was still buying
37:08stolen cigarettes from me. I mean, I'd seen him do cocaine and stuff, um, which is just heart wrenching
37:15when you're a cop, when you are blue, you know, you took the same oath I did. What the hell's wrong
37:21with you? You know, but we got him, um, because he was buying what he thought were stolen iPads and
37:27stuff from me, TVs and stuff like that. But most of the charges were drugs, uh, just from the pills
37:33and the cocaine. And we did like 51 indictments, but most of them went state. That was a year and
37:39a half case. I kind of broke my own rule. Don't underestimate earlier. I talked about you need to
37:44be able to tell when a situation's deteriorating and not stay in it. If you can get out, uh, early on in
37:51the case, I'm at this trailer of Mike and Sherry and there's other people there. And I just, I guess
38:01I wasn't paying attention. All of a sudden everybody's gone and it's just me, Mike and Sherry. And what I
38:05had done is to validate my knowledge about drugs. I had picked up some cocaine the previous trip there
38:12and, uh, and I bitched about it as a good drug dealer would do. You know, I'm like, that was,
38:17that wasn't worth it. It was stepped on because I knew the purity of it. I go, that wasn't,
38:21that wasn't nothing. Well, that was Mike's end. He goes, well, not my stuff. Try this.
38:29You're talking to a mountain man with no teeth in his head, uh, who drinks all day, does cocaine and
38:37pills all day. Good guy that I could bond with when he was good, but when he was bad, he was bad. I mean,
38:43he, he would just go off hard, hard to trust, hard to be around kind of thing. Violent. It's a chess
38:50game, right? You're always trying to think of the next move. I missed it. Now I'm sitting on a couch
38:55leaning backwards. I got a red bone hound in my crotch growling, mean, mean dog, uh, growling teeth
39:03showing. I'm leaning back as far as I can on the couch. There's an open bag of cocaine in my face and
39:08he's going, do it, do it. If you're not a cop, do it. If I find out you the law, you a dead man.
39:13You hear me? He also had a, uh, short barrel, double barrel, uh, 20 gauge shotgun with a hammer's
39:21cock back sitting right next to him. What was going through my head immediately was you idiot.
39:26Like, I can't believe I let my guard down and I, and now I'm in this position. I'm like, I'm not doing
39:32it. I mean, I've told you, man, I got heart issues. I got, I used to do tons of it. I was a power lifter.
39:36I ain't doing that shit no more. Well, then he's like, well, uh, Sherry's on the rescue squad.
39:44So-and-so on the squad has had heart attacks. He's got a bad heart. He did this this morning.
39:48He's fine. And I'm thinking, well, that's great. But eventually what happened was he said, well,
39:53just taste it, just taste it. And he wasn't backing away. Clearly the situation's deteriorating.
39:58I did a slight of hand move and I faked the taste test. I did not stick it in my mouth and it was fine
40:04after that. Don't want to give away tradecrafts, right? But you don't do dope.
40:11Now, if your life's in danger, yeah, I'll do the dope. And then I need to tell the case team
40:16and I need to tell the United States attorney's office and I need to get to an emergency room
40:21and let them know that I've ingested a drug to make sure I'm not going to OD, especially today. I mean,
40:25look at the day with fentanyl and everything. Hell, you can touch that and die. Let me give you an example.
40:29Narcotics street level. I'm a narc in the middle of the nineties and our MO was kind of like,
40:39you can get three buys from a location. That was good enough for a search warrant.
40:42You know, wasn't always the exact, but roughly we get three buys out of a house. We hit it.
40:47So I'm going to buy from you and I'm, I'm, I'm a user. I can probably come up with a reason not to
40:51do it in front of you two or three times, but can I come up with a reason not to do it for two months?
40:56No, it's all your story and it's got to be believable and you got to believe it and you got to sell it.
41:08Myrtle beach happened because, uh, I did see a canvas. There was a, uh, a young man who had
41:14already been to prison. He was a felon. Uh, he shows up at a Klu Klux Klan rally, but he is so radical
41:23that he is scaring the white supremacists. This guy, uh, was attracting attention because he was
41:30so radical and wanting to hurt people. And it got turned over to us. I come in as it's a role
41:36I like to call closer. I don't know if there's a correct term for it, but to me, a closer is this.
41:42You want to do something, you want to blow something up. I'm the guy that can get you the bomb. I'm the guy
41:46that can get you the gun. I'm a closer. In this case, Benji McDowell was his name, uh, lived about
41:5245 minutes outside of Myrtle beach in Conway. Uh, so I meet Benji. We go down to Myrtle beach, uh,
42:00meet the hotel room and talk. What are you really planning on doing? We saw what you posted. We've
42:06seen what you've said, but are you, do you have the means to do it? How many steps have you taken
42:11to make it happen? If any, those are things we're trying to find out. And if any kind of murder or
42:17harm to innocent people is going to happen, we got to stop it. So basically he just kept saying,
42:21I got the heart. I got the heart. I got the heart. I just don't know how to do it.
42:25I need some guidance. I'm not going to guide you on how to shoot the synagogue. He'd already looked at
42:30the synagogue. He knew that they were having a, like a Saturday family day. And I did point out to him,
42:36hopefully in this kind of slow things down because he wanted to do it in the county had been arrested
42:40that. And everybody knows he's a felon. So I was like, I talk like a criminal does. I'm like, Hey,
42:45you know, aren't you on the radar here? You know? Oh yeah. Yeah. You know? So day ends,
42:52I'm sitting at the bar at the hotel. Cause I fly out the next morning. I've already turned in my
42:57recording equipment. My undercover phone rings. It's Benji. He goes, I like what you were saying.
43:03And you're right. I am too known here. I'm going to find another spot a little further away.
43:08In other words, another target, another synagogue or whatever, a little further away.
43:13But until then you think you could hook me up with a 40. I didn't even miss a beat. I said,
43:17yeah, man, what do you need? Glock? Sig? What do you want? He goes, I like a Glock.
43:21All right. He tells me how many rounds he wants. He tells me he wants a hollow point. So if you're a
43:27felon, you can't have a weapon. I was doing some more calls coming up with a gun. And then he sped
43:34things up because he said, Hey man, I'm leaving. I'm moving. He was staying with his mom. And we
43:37were like, where are you going? He said Alabama. But I'm like, the case team's like, dude,
43:42we've got everything written up. We can't let this dude hit the road and lose him possibly,
43:46or him hurt somebody. Number one. And I drove through the night or whatever to Myrtle Beach.
43:51And so then we go and pick him up and, and I sell him a gun at the gun he requested at a decent price.
43:58He wanted to be safe. You know, I gave him a gun. The gun was inoperable. And then we were both
44:04arrested by the, by the case team. The case team came in and, and I remember getting my head slammed
44:12off the side of the SUV I had rented. So like they come rushing in and I'm looking at Benji and I'm
44:18like, be cool, be cool. Don't say nothing. Don't say nothing. And they grab us and, and they get him.
44:22And actually one of the cops in Myrtle Beach used to be NYPD. So it's total New York accent.
44:29And, uh, and you know, cause we connected right off when we met, I'm like, I was in New York. He's
44:33like, oh man, you know, so he's the one that slams me. And then he goes with his New York accent,
44:38your friends from New York say, say hello, you know, something like that. And I was like,
44:43when did the ad living come in? What was that? But I will tell you, I said,
44:46do you guys need me to stick around? Whatever. They go, no, we got it, Scott. Thanks.
44:49As I'm driving back to Tennessee, they called me shortly. I mean, probably within an hour.
44:54And they said, listen, he confessed to everything. I congratulated the case team because see that was
44:59going on while the bowl haircut, Charleston church shooter was in trial and he represented himself
45:11in trial. When you teach tactics, we never named the shooters names because that's what they want.
45:15I'll name the victims all day long. I'm not giving them any more, any more publicity, right?
45:21Mass murders. But Benji told me he, when he was explaining what he is, I want to do something.
45:27And he goes, I want to do something on a, I want to do something in the spirit of Dylan Roof,
45:33but on a grander scale.
45:34So don't know how many lives we saved that day, but we saved them.
45:46So the true definition of undercover work is you are forming relationships that you are potentially
45:53going to betray. And you need to figure out and rationalize in your mind how you can do that
45:59without it having an adverse impact on your psyche. It's not always easy. At least it wasn't for me.
46:05Like that Scott Town guy, I bonded really, really tight with Scott, um, even to the point to where,
46:11you know, I'm rocking his newborn daughter at his house. We finished each other's sentences,
46:16love working out, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, if you're breaking the law, I mean,
46:21there's going to be that point. Hopefully the case agent sits down with you and says,
46:25you're an adult, made a decision to break the law. You got caught. Let's start here.
46:29Hopefully that's what happened. But, um, I will tell you that the last night,
46:33the last words I spoke to Scott, uh, he didn't, of course, he didn't know I was FBI. He called me.
46:38I was actually in Nevada helping putting on undercover training and I got back. I always kept
46:43my undercover phones on. He's like, Hey, uh, I just heard your two truck drivers and, and, and
46:49big Timmy got arrested. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah. He goes, I just wanted to let you know.
46:53And I said, well, you know, they do things on the side. He said, Hey,
46:56I'm going to get up and take a shower. I'm going to find out what's going on. I'm going to call you
46:59back. And I said, okay. His last words were to me, beep. I love you, brother. And I went,
47:07I love you too. And I hung up and probably within 45 minutes, the SWAT team was hitting his house.
47:14That's the last time we spoke. I know he's out now.
47:17I would talk to him. He might punch me. I don't know. It might be a throw down.
47:24We, we might finally have the fight we always wondered about, you know, but, uh,
47:29I don't hate the guy, you know, he made some decisions. Hopefully he's doing well.
47:34That's what I hope. I hope he's doing great. Uh, I love a success story.
47:38Have you ever witnessed somebody hearing that you were undercover for the first time
47:45in person? Have you ever seen that?
47:46Yes. Plenty of times. One of the ones that's usually funny is, uh, you arrest them and maybe
47:52the case team's talking, it doesn't have to go like this, but maybe the case team's talking to
47:55them. Now I'm in another room listening. Right. And they're lying to the case team and lying and
47:59lying and lying. And no, I didn't do this. No, nothing, nothing. And then you walk out and you say,
48:03Hey, how's it going? And they go, Hey, Scott, how is it? And I go, Hey, just so we're clear,
48:07boom, whip out your creds, special agent, Scott Payne with the FBI. This is what you usually get.
48:12Oh, I knew it. I'm sorry. What? I knew you were undercover. I'm getting more country accent.
48:21Cause the one guy I'm thinking of is what he said. And he goes, I mimic and mirror. I can't help it.
48:25He goes, Oh hell, I knew you was an undercover. And I went, you did. He said, yeah. And I said,
48:31and you continued to sell me cocaine for a year and a half. And he's like, well, hell I like you.
48:37I always like to have more than one recorder because, um, there's a chance something can go
48:47wrong. You want it to be concealed comfortably, especially if you're deep undercover. These are
48:52my personal opinions. And I would always have a backup because, you know, video and audio eats up
48:57a lot of memory. So you might just be spot checking, but picture now we're at trial and you're the defense
49:01attorney and you say, well, how come you only recorded that five minutes? Why can't we see everything else that
49:05was going on? Were you doing something? It's just about creating doubt in a jury's mind and the
49:10undercover technique gets such great evidence. It's usually so overwhelming that the only thing
49:17a defense team can do is they can try to claim entrapment, which shouldn't be an issue if you're
49:23a decent undercover, because that's like one-on-one we know we can't entrap. I can't put the words in
49:27your mouth. That's wrong. They can argue entrapment or they try to make you look like a piece of trash on
49:32the stand. That's it. Because, I mean, the evidence is like there. That's your client saying
49:38it and doing it. But I always did backups. I've had multiple devices on me. And then three days later,
49:45I go to listen to the recordings and they all crap the bed. And I would document in there. I would say
49:50it should be noted that every piece of equipment died, you know, malfunctioned. I wouldn't say crap
49:57the bed in the 302, but yeah, it malfunctioned. I have never had to testify in an FBI undercover case.
50:06As I said earlier, the evidence is so overwhelming. Now as a case agent, I have, but for me as a law
50:11enforcement officer, I took an oath to the entire constitution, not just one amendment or two, all of
50:19it. And if you're breaking the law, don't be mad at law enforcement. We're just enforcing the law.
50:25You got caught. I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm not saying what you did is wrong.
50:29I'm saying you're an adult and you made a choice. You chose this and you got caught and it's illegal.
50:41This is the problem with the FBI. You have a headquarters level that's disconnected from the
50:46field level. But at the end of the day, we're a law enforcement agency and we need to enforce the law.
50:52When Mueller came in, it seemed like we got further away from working cases. They started bringing
50:58people into the FBI who had zero law enforcement experience whatsoever and given them the top three
51:06or four positions of the FBI. You got somebody from Goldman Sachs coming into the FBI at the top.
51:12What do you know about national security and law enforcement? My personal opinion is, yeah,
51:17I think changes need to be made. I came in under Louis Freeh and I truly believe that
51:23Louis was the last real director the FBI had. But he was also an agent himself and an assistant
51:29United States attorney. I know that's going to be like really hard to find somebody with those
51:33qualifications to come in to be the director. And when Mueller came in, the FBI, he wanted to push the
51:39FBI into more of an intelligence agency, kind of like CIA, taking almost like a broken model from CIA
51:46and applying that to the FBI. The bottom line is case agents is what should be important. Everything
51:54else is a collateral duty. You want to try out for SWAT? You want to be a SWAT operator? Cool, try out. You
51:59want to be a firearms instructor, tactical instructor, active shooter instructor, undercover coordinator,
52:05source handler, evidence response team. All those are collateral duties. You should be an investigator
52:12first. If you're willing to stay in DC and live in DC or in that area and stay in the J. Edgar Hoover
52:18Building, you can make rank. You just keep staying and you keep moving up. But then you end up,
52:24unfortunately, you end up with somebody with a very high position who has hardly any experience working
52:29cases. And you end up with a McCabe, Peter Stroke, Lisa Page situation. And they do wrong things
52:37because they did not know what to do because they did not work cases.
52:45I retired June of 2021. After the base case, I'm sitting in Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona,
52:55putting on training for online covert employees that do domestic terrorism cases. And I just
53:00remember sitting there in Arizona and thinking, I'm completely satisfied with my career. I still
53:07travel around speaking for conferences. It could be civilian groups. It could be citizens academies.
53:13So my book is called Codename Pale Horse. And the subtitle is How I Infiltrated America's Nazis.
53:20You learn from each case how my skills got sharpened more and more. How do I balance the
53:27personal life and professional life? Mine overlap. They kind of overlap. That's just the way I work
53:32and my family works. I've shared a lot with my wife. Obviously, if it's classified, I can't. But
53:40the way my marriage and family works, it's not like that typical military mold where you can disappear
53:47and for three months and say, I can't tell you what I'm doing, but I love you. And that doesn't
53:53that doesn't work. I get not mine. I could be gone for about two weeks. And after that, I, you know,
53:58don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bring the bad stuff home. There's a whole bunch of training
54:02for years and years and years in law enforcement. Look, man, they got that imaginary bush or you got a bush
54:07outside when you step out of your car and you get ready to walk into your house to the family that's been
54:12waiting on you all day and misses you. Take all that from your job and sit it on that bush. Go inside,
54:19be with your family, be a husband, be a father. Uh, and on your way back to work, pick it up off the
54:27bush. Now I'm going to tell you something very personal. In the outlaws case, when I was in the
54:32basement, that night on the way home, I had bought my wife, uh, everybody knows Ms. Burner phones now.
54:38So I bought her that phone and I'd call her no matter what time it was. We were, we were,
54:41we were young in our marriage, pretty young, you know, uh, within 10 years at that point.
54:46And I would call her. I don't care if it was five in the morning, seven in the morning,
54:50I'm finishing up. I'd be like, Hey babe, I'm on my way back to the hotel. I just want you to know
54:54everything's good. I'll call you when I wake up. Sometimes she'd talk to me for a while.
54:57Sometimes she'd say, okay, love you can go back to bed. That night when I called her,
55:01the first thing she said was, is, are you okay? And I said, uh, yeah, why? And she said,
55:08I was driving tonight with the girls in McAllen. And she said, I got this overwhelming feeling.
55:15And she said, I pulled over on the side of the road and I started praying for you.
55:19So I matched up the time is when I was in the basement.
55:31Now I was in the basement of