Getting Out Alive - An Undercover Tell-All

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So they just finished their church meeting, so all the Taunton chapter outlaws are there. Clothesline comes up, and he goes, hey, Tex, you got a minute? I said, yeah, man. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm getting the tunnel vision. I'm getting the old crap moment. And Because I know something's not right. And he says, look, there's a lot of going on, and it's my job to take care of my brothers. I need you to write down your full name, your date of birth, your Social Security number, your address, everything. And he said, and then I need to take all your clothes off because I need to check you for a wire. Had I not been wired. Embarrassing. Yeah. Take me down to the basement, strip me. Standing there naked in front of two grown men, you know? Yeah, embarrassing. But I'm not wired. I'm fine. I was wired. Like, wired wired and wild. Take my jacket, all my shirts and stuff off. I take my boots off, and I drop my pants and underwear down to my ankles. So from my ankle up, butt naked. So I think I'm done. He checks me, I write my stuff down, and I pull my pants back up. And then he grabs a piece of my clothing, and that piece of clothing had a recording device. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Man, I knew I was going to love this interview, but I had no idea how much in common I would have with this cat. We had fantastic conversation before, during, and after this podcast interview. I hope you can appreciate as much as I did hearing about his harrowing experiences working deep undercover with the FBI, infiltrating everything from motorcycle gangs to neo Nazi groups. But his perspective on the people that he dealt with is unique and it's refreshing because, again, not every bad guy is just a bad guy. So we get to really dig down deep and find out about these people as people. It helps us to solve crises, and it helps us to understand one another a lot better. So I hope you'll join me in welcoming author and former undercover FBI operative Mr. Scott Payne to the Uncommon Souls Tcast. So I guess starting at the beginning, and I won't make you just completely trench through the whole thing, but how does a knuckle dragger turn into a heroic undercover star? The humble beginning. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, the opinions vary on that one. First of all, there are plenty of people who don't like me, and they have. They have Instagram me. [00:02:26] Speaker B: Oh, cool. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Under a fictitious account. We're not using their true name, but whatever. I pretty much know who they are. Anyway. I. Man, I just did. For me, it's just being blessed, right? I I. Because my skill set doesn't take me to Wall Street. Right. I mean, the FBI works everything. I mean, you could have an embezzlement thing. I mean, you've seen the old. The Donnie Brasco. You've seen the AB scam, investigations, all this stuff. I didn't. I mean, if I did that, I was probably helping another undercover and I was just muscle, you know, standing on there, being a. Being a bodyguard or something. But mine, I don't know, it just took off. I. Once I got. I started at the sheriff's office, and I got certified at the state level to do undercover work. So I got the bug there. [00:03:13] Speaker B: And what kind of certification process was that? [00:03:16] Speaker A: It was a one week school at the Criminal Justice Academy in South Carolina. I don't know where they do it now, but they still have the. The Criminal Justice Academy is still in Columbia, South Carolina. I just don't know. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Like a state run program. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:27] Speaker A: And so you could go there for a week. If you pass, you get certified in undercover techniques. You go there for a week, you might get certified in surveillance techniques, you know, okay. Building cameras and stuff and following and whatnot, doing recordings. Technical. Technical surveillance is what it was called. And then once I got hired by the FBI, I knew I wanted to do undercover because I'd already been doing it at the state and local level, and I really wanted to get in the program. And I just started kind of weaving my way and just looking for stuff. And when I was, New York City was my first office, so I wasn't certified undercover through the FBI program yet, but I was already being grabbed to do cameos and stuff because of my background. So me and another NYPD detective might deliver a load of dope to some Jamaican gang, you know, and that was our role. Almost like a buy a bus kind of thing. Yeah. [00:04:24] Speaker B: And you look like a tough dude, but you also don't necessarily look like you'd fit a bunch of different parts, which was the. You know, what people might assume. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Is that. And that's what a lot of law enforcement guys do, is they feel like they have to fit into a role and change their look some extraordinary way. [00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't. I didn't do that. I mean, even at the sheriff's office, I talk about this all the time. How many ways can you shave your facial hair or cut your hair on your head? What's left of mine anyway. And change your clothes and change your cars before everybody knows in that city you're an art? You know, how do you how do you do that? For me, I always stay close to who I am. You know, the tattoos were mine. I didn't get anybody. I didn't get them for a case. I didn't have a target do them. I could have had a target. I could have had the government pay for some of them, but I didn't. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:13] Speaker A: If you've ever had tattoos, you're sitting in a chair for five hours with somebody, you get to know them. I didn't want them knowing my personal stuff on my tattoo. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Putting your date of birth and your mother's name. [00:05:22] Speaker A: Yeah, my daughter's names. [00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. [00:05:24] Speaker A: All hidden. Yeah. [00:05:25] Speaker B: I think an aspect, having read the book, to try to understand about you too. And part of the essence of the undercover work that you did, I think has a lot to do with your personality. And I don't even know if you're as keenly aware of that or not, because I know you've been through so much training, but you said coming up through high school and stuff, you were the cat that hung out with. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:44] Speaker B: Smoking section guys and jocks and heads and whoever. Right. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Yep. [00:05:48] Speaker B: Do you attribute part of your adaptability to that? Is it just an inherent personality trait? [00:05:54] Speaker A: For me, yes. I wouldn't say you have to have that to be a good or great undercover, but for me, yeah, that's me. I love connecting with people. Doesn't matter. Craziest of the crazies. [00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Smart, dumb, big, small. It doesn't matter. I love it. And that's something that I'm. I do miss about the job. I miss getting those call outs at 2, 3 in the morning, because you may have a reputation as a good interrogator, a good interviewer, and they won't. They call you to come in. And I miss that, you know, But I get to. I'm filling the void by doing a lot of this. The book launch, going and meeting new people. I still teach and speak to different conferences and stuff, but I'm also an alert instructor, which is based out of San Marcos, Texas. So the alert is the national standard for training law enforcement on active shooter response. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:47] Speaker A: They married the FBI in 2013, or the FBI married them. However, to say it. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Well, the FBI is kind of the. The standard, which a lot of state agencies and certainly city agencies follow in terms of arrest techniques and everything else. I'm sure they. [00:07:01] Speaker A: It trickles down. Yeah, yeah. [00:07:02] Speaker B: Of course. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Comes from the. A lot of it comes from the sandbox. It comes from your special forces. Then it trickles down to right you know, maybe it comes from our hrt, which is like a tier one team as well. And then it starts trickling down the. Those in the street. But yeah, I, I started doing those undercovers in New York and then I landed in undercover that was classified, so I still can't talk about it. Technically it's been outed, but we're on the cusp. Usually they classify something for 25 years. It was 2001, so we're close. Oh, man. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Call me in a year. [00:07:36] Speaker A: I know, right? But I landed that. I got to do it for like 30 days, and then I got approved for another 60 days. [00:07:47] Speaker B: For the same case. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah, for my management. Just to extend. Yeah, for my management. And because of my, my training and already being an undercover, I excelled in that, in that case, and they wanted me to be the primary undercover. And then that's how I got transferred out of New York City. Because it's a full time undercover. I'm living in San Antonio, Texas. I'm working a job, and that allowed me to get transferred to the San Antonio division, and that helped me get a slot at our undercover school. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Okay, so talk a little bit about the travel arrangements and stuff like that. Like how does. When you're taking on gigs, I assume whether it's long or short term, each new gig you have, you've got to go in. And whether you're either starting something or somebody has a case where they need to insert you into somewhere. Are you flying back on a weekly basis, a monthly basis? Daily basis, yeah. [00:08:38] Speaker A: It might start with maybe like once a month. But if once the case starts going, generally the paperwork says we're only asking that you come out once a month. And the management will improvement, but we'll approve it. But if you, if you've been in the game, you know, with this thing takes off, we're going to be going more than once a month. [00:08:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:55] Speaker A: It's just kind of getting the approval up front on the front end. But sometimes, yeah, I'm traveling every two weeks, every week. Or you're doing multiple undercovers. And I'm not just an undercover. You. The only thing I was supposed to be and required to be is a case agent, an investigator. Right. Because in the FBI, all those extra things, they're collateral duties. They're voluntary. Trying out for swat. Being a SWAT operator, if you make it, firearms instructor, tactical instructor, defensive tactics instructor. You can be evidence response team undercover. That's all collateral duties. [00:09:28] Speaker B: But you still got to handle cases. [00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Until the day they say, hey, you're full time undercover or. Or you're a full time firearms instructor, then you're medicated from casework. But no, I never. I've only. I think only twice at the bureau was I labeled full time undercover. [00:09:43] Speaker B: Hey, if you're like me and you grow frustrated sometimes about ways that you can make a positive impact, I can tell you that one of the simplest things you can do that goes such a long way is to like and subscribe to this channel and share some of these videos that you're enjoying. It brings other people into the middle, regardless of their perspective, to start engaging into that productive conversation that we all need. Thanks in advance. [00:10:05] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm traveling back and forth. I mean, in a perfect world, it'd be great if we had, like, kind of like our hrt. It'd be great if the hostage rescue team is. It's. It's multiple teams of SWAT on steroids. It's former Navy Seals, former Green Berets. You name it, they've come in the Bureau, or it could just be a former cop that. That wants. Went up or whoever and made the team. But they're based out of Quantico, they train all the time, and they're ready to go. In a perfect world, that'd be nice if you had some season undercovers and they were all there, and we could use Hogan's Alley and we could keep, you know, like, say you got a case and you call us and you're like, man, this is the issue. We're worried about this. We need to get into this. Then, then we could do that. [00:10:47] Speaker B: You could, like, work scenarios and get trained up first, get. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Get ready for it or come into town. And they kind of had something that we tried to do that with, but it crapped the bed because of. There was. Let's just say there was some administrative issues. [00:11:01] Speaker B: It's the government. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I know there were some administrative issues. And yeah, I was on the. I got to say, I didn't reap the benefits from that group. I. As an undercover coordinator at the division, we. We got. We had to start logging everything, and it was just more oversight because of things that went wrong. But in, again, perfect world, it'd be great if you. If you were thinking like, hey, man, here we are with this core team, and we're fully backstabbed. I've got however many aliases that are fully backstopped. Maybe I can slide into town and. [00:11:36] Speaker B: And you could have cover teams also trained up the same way. [00:11:39] Speaker A: Good. Yeah. [00:11:40] Speaker B: And do you use TFO's for that kind of stuff on a regular basis. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Some of the best. Not some of the best undercovers I ever. I've ever seen were task force officers. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Because again, if you're a task force officer, I say again, like I've said it. I haven't said it to you yet. If you're a task force officer, you've kind of been signed over to us by your sheriff or your chief anyway, and you're not necessarily have to carry cases. You could just be. I mean, I've known some of that. Pretty much just working nothing but undercover, you know, and that's. That's cool. [00:12:14] Speaker B: And go and create cases a lot of times too, because they're familiar with the. With the turf and stuff in their area they can bring up. But I. But I also know that there's a ton more paperwork when it comes to transferring from a department into a TFO role. Figure out how insane the paperwork is. Putting in IOCs for everything, going up the chain for everything. How does that work when you're working undercover? Because everything seems so fluid. How do you. I. Now that you're retired, I would expect you explain how you maybe work around it or work well or what? [00:12:50] Speaker A: I just got better at it with the experience. I mean, you know, like, hopefully you've got somebody experienced in there that's. Or you've got a really good undercover coordinator in your division. And they'll be like, okay, we need to get this, this, and this in place. We know in this case, like, you're sitting down in the beginning stages and you're going, okay, you're going to want this. Well, that's project generated income. That is a attorney general exemption. So now we got to apply for that exemption for this case. So you do all that stuff and you get it lined up because, you know, because you've been dealing with them so much, it would be very overwhelming for somebody who didn't know the system to walk in and try to get that done. But there's always. The cream always rises to the top. So even if you don't know in your division, maybe there's somebody that's over your area in headquarters, and they will just guide you through it. [00:13:34] Speaker B: And so do you have somebody that's working alongside you as a co case agent, or are you your own case agent a lot of these cases? [00:13:41] Speaker A: No, no to. I'm not my own case agent. That's be a conflict of interest. So like, if you look at the. If you look at the undercover proposal, we call it a997. If you look at the undercover proposal, there's places for me to sign my. But it can't be Scott Payne's the undercover coordinator. Scott Payne's a co case and Scott pains the undercover. You can't do that. [00:14:01] Speaker B: What's the reason for that? [00:14:02] Speaker A: It's just, it's a conflict of interest. [00:14:04] Speaker B: I mean, in layman's terms. And we got an audience. That's not necessarily all. [00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you can't do all that. I mean, if you did, it would. [00:14:13] Speaker B: It is the conflict of interest in that you're trying to accomplish things for the sake of the case that perhaps a agent wouldn't. Wouldn't want you to. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Could be. But we have, we have safety nets in place for that as well. There's those horror stories of undercovers out there where it might be a state or local whatever, but you've got the person running the case and not saying that they are all like this and they're. And I've always had good experiences. But they want. If the case agent is going to succeed in their job and maybe propel their career by this case succeeding, maybe they care less about the undercover. Right. Even though that undercover may be an FBI agent as well. But I'm your undercover on the case. I'm not the case agent. So it's just a different role. But in that case we have things called contact agents. So a contact agent will be assigned to the team. But that contact agent is completely unbiased. That contact agent is not connected to the case. It doesn't matter if the case does good or fails. They're there specifically for the mental well being and to be the contact kind of accountability for the undercover. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Okay. [00:15:24] Speaker A: So like let's say in San Antonio I was full time undercover. I'm broken from the office. I don't have any. I don't know what gossip thing. I don't. I don't know anything about the FBI really unless I see it in the news. That guy would. My contact agent for that case would come out to my hotel once, twice a week, give me my money, maybe exchange my recorders, give me some new batteries. But this might just be to be a listening board and let me for a while, you know. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Okay, that's. That's super interesting. And then. So you would be gone in a case like that. You'd be gone for a few weeks. You. When that. When we talk about. You travel out and you travel back home. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it depends. I mean it's a case by case basis, but maybe a week you go in and, I mean, you want to have. Your case team should have. They should have some goals, not just, hey, you're going to come out and hang out this week. You know, we'd like to accomplish A, B, C, and D. And sometimes maybe you don't accomplish any of them. Sometimes you might accomplish all of them in one night. [00:16:22] Speaker B: But a lot of times, hanging out is where you accomplish a lot of those goals inadvertently, too, by just spending time out there. Right? [00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah. You're trying to ingratiate. You're trying to get connected. You connect with people. And I said this on a lot of interviews. I don't think a lot of people know it because people seem surprised sometimes. There's been plenty of undercovers that I've done or I've seen. I mean, it's tonight where we go in. We've got the. We've got all the right approvals. We've started the investigation. I'm going in undercover. But after five months, there's nothing there. Like, they're not breaking any federal laws. The reporting was there. We have a legit reason to be there. There's no entrapment issues, nothing like that. But you get in there and you're like, okay, well, they're not like militia stuff. There's some of the militias. I'm like, in there for five months. I'm like, okay, they're pro God, they're pro gun, and some of them are pro Trump, and none of those are illegal. So. And then I'm out, and the case team can figure out whatever they want. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Because you're an investigator. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:20] Speaker B: In essence, you're still. You're as an undercover, you're investigating unbiased. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah. You're looking for facts that could incriminate somebody. Or not. [00:17:29] Speaker A: Or not. Yeah. And it's like. Because I don't think that gets a lot of play. That's what people are thinking. Because you usually see, like, oh, if you notice everything that Scott did, he led. I'm like, I didn't lead it. That's entrapment. You can't do that. [00:17:41] Speaker B: Right. And I think that's the impression most people have with undercover work, is that they're just trying to trick somebody into doing something that they wouldn't have done. [00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:47] Speaker B: Which obviously is in principle the opposite. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Of what I mean. It's kind of UC1 Undercover 101. Right. We can't. We can't entrap you. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:55] Speaker A: I can't walk up to you with no predication whatsoever and say, hey, man, look, man, I'll give you 40 grand if you let me. If you help me put these two bricks in this car kind of thing. Something like that. Well, I mean, now I'm dangling that carrot in front of your face, but if I go to meet you and the first sentence out of your mouth when you find out I'm at McAllen, Texas, is really, how much can you get a kilo of cocaine for? Well, okay, now we're talking. [00:18:20] Speaker B: Kind of on the right path. [00:18:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker B: Going back to your upbringing time, which was in North Carolina. [00:18:25] Speaker A: South Carolina. [00:18:26] Speaker B: South Carolina. [00:18:27] Speaker A: The other Carolina. [00:18:28] Speaker B: The other Carolina. Not only were you kind of the social chameleon, but you were a musician also, which also has a lot of it to me. Explains a lot of things in terms of just reading and reading the stories. [00:18:44] Speaker A: You're already an entertainer A little bit. Yeah. [00:18:47] Speaker B: It's just. Yeah, just you're. You're used to. I mean, it's a universal language, and it kind of. I wonder how music has played a role in your life and in turn, a role in success of your undercover work. [00:19:01] Speaker A: I've used it a couple of times on Undercover. Sometimes they may not know I'm a musician or a singer, but, yeah, I've used it. I mean, I'm. Even back when I just. All I did was I put a microphone and just a. Just a cpu. Just. I mean, it was terrible sounding, but I had the microphone, and I just had my acoustic, and I just sang a bunch of songs. The quality was terrible. But a lot of. Some of the targets, man, they're like, man, that sounds great. You know, I'm like, thanks. You know, but now there's much better quality stuff. But, yeah, for me, music is definitely. That's one thing when I get stressed or whatever, man, I go out to my barn, man, and I just jam, you know, But I play all the time. I'm at a pretty big church in East Tennessee. And that's another thing. Like, you. You retire and you meet people and. And for me, it's divine intervention. I've been blessed. But then you get people calling you and saying, you need to lay low in the tall grass. And I'm like, bro, I don't know. [00:20:00] Speaker B: Not in your. Yeah, it's not. [00:20:02] Speaker A: I'm like, what do you want? What do you want me to do? I'm retired. You don't pay me anymore. I'm on stage at least three weekends out of the month, really. And I'm. I'm up there, and they might be four services of a thousand A service. Yeah. So you do you and I'll. And I'll do me and you. [00:20:22] Speaker B: And you managed to pull that off throughout your. Most of your career, too. Right. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Once I moved to Tennessee, I used to let the job interfere. Um, but after I. In the book, I talk in depth about the mental crash and. And my physical that my body just gave out. [00:20:37] Speaker B: We'll get to it. [00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And. But after that, when I moved to Tennessee, I'm like, I'm not gonna let the job interfere. And then I landed that undercover that was close to home, but I'd only been in Tennessee for six months. But I'm like, I'm not. I'm like, I'm not gonna do it, man. I'm not gonna let that interfere with my faith. And as I said in the book, I was the headless guitar man for, like, a year. The. All the camera people at church knew. They're like, you can't. You can't put Scott's face on the camera. So all the shots are just. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Yes. Just. Just. [00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:11] Speaker B: When you're tall enough anyway, somebody's just like, oh, man, you got to get the guy that's 64 or whatever. This is going to cut us. Cut him off at the neck. So. So you got to actually, you were blessed in more than one way. More than one way, because you got to keep your faith in check and then also play. [00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:27] Speaker B: On a regular basis. Keep your chops and. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Even, like, even on that undercover, like, I. I got up, I had an undercover house. I'm like, I don't know if I want to bring my acoustic up here, but there's a music store in town. I go, I'm gonna go buy an acoustic. And then I'm like, you know what? I've got an old junk guitar. I'm gonna bring it up here with an amp and everything, and let's have some jam sessions. Yeah. [00:21:47] Speaker B: You know, play with any of the bad guys. [00:21:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not like a band band, but. Yeah. They come over and, you know, we'd be cutting cocaine deals and. [00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah. See, I think that's. That's. That's wonderful. Perfect. That's the perfect. [00:22:01] Speaker A: My real good buddy who was the other undercover trucker. Paul, man. Man, that dude can kick some jambalaya. He ruined me. Because everywhere I've been, I've been to New. New Orleans so many times, L.A. i've had jambalaya at every restaurant. None of it touches his. He's over there cooking jambalaya. I'm on the guitar. Cocaine deals are being done. Dirty cops are coming over asking for jambalaya. You know, it's like. [00:22:24] Speaker B: So what kind of music do you listen to? [00:22:27] Speaker A: Oh, boy, all of it, really. I have like an oldies, like, for whatever reason, man, the yard work I get out there alarm or something. I just hit my oldies and it's like all Motown and stuff like that. But I love blues. I love rock. I love everything, man. But I'm definitely an old 80s hair metal guy. I mean, if you hopped in my vehicle right now, it's probably hair nation to start off. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Then I'll turn it one to Ozzy's Boneyard. And then. And then maybe I'll be like, okay, let's go over and check out, you know, Turbo or something. You know, I have to listen to the 90s metal and. [00:23:03] Speaker B: And that's what's so beautiful. Is actually, I think we're around the same age, at least. Close. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:08] Speaker B: Might be a little older than you, but our music from our decade of the 80s that you're talking about is oldies. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I know you say oldies. Most people. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Well, you're going way back. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going like oldie, oldie. Yeah, all the oldie. Motown, Detroit, James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, all that stuff. I love me some artist reading. [00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you like the blues and rock and everything, too. I mean, rock wouldn't be the same without putting some soul into it. [00:23:36] Speaker A: No, you got to. Yeah, it's. I love it all. I love it. I'm telling you. And some of the. I've already said, I play at a church. These. These bands that are out here now, these churches like Elevation and putting out. The music they're putting out is. Is good. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah. The musicianship is insane. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Phenomenal. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Everybody has access to instant information, which we. [00:23:56] Speaker A: I didn't have it. Can you imagine if you had YouTube when you were in high school? [00:24:01] Speaker B: No. I mean, you save up to buy the one book that has a couple of transcriptions. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I need a tutorial on England's Team Bam. Yeah, I'd have to slow it down. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah, please slow it down. But they'll slow it down. [00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:24:13] Speaker B: It's ridiculous, but it's kind of cool, too. [00:24:15] Speaker A: It is one of the. And you got like, any tune, you can download that app and you can just pick the song from your. And you can slow it down. Or I could say, hey, man, that's too high. I want to drop it a full step. And any tune you can Take the song and drop it a full step so you can learn it and play it. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Pull the drums out. [00:24:29] Speaker A: Pull the drums out. Slow it down. Slow it down so you can hear every note being hit. [00:24:33] Speaker B: It's insane. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah. We didn't have that back. [00:24:35] Speaker B: I know. Well, that's great. That's what. The only way you keep those chops up again is to keep playing reps otherwise, right? [00:24:41] Speaker A: Reps. Yeah. [00:24:42] Speaker B: So you're still playing. You're still playing still. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a. I would say that's a perishable skill if you're not getting the reps in. [00:24:48] Speaker B: And for sure, I can attest to that. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:50] Speaker B: I went to school for music and then took a. Took my break and then came back into music, and it was all these great ideas in my head that I had to teach myself again. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:58] Speaker B: It stays up here. It just. The faculties. [00:25:01] Speaker A: How about those calluses? They'll wear off by the fourth. Yeah, by the. By the fourth service. I'm doing some bands, and I'm like. And they're like, oh, he's got the stink face. I'm like, no, this hurts. It hurts. That's what my face is doing that for. [00:25:14] Speaker B: So. All right, so now we got generally understanding your character, which is a chameleon of sorts. You get along with all kinds of folks. [00:25:22] Speaker A: The chameleon thing, we were kind of hitting on it. It's like, I didn't change my dress. I didn't change who I was. I'm just still me. I just connect with people. I like connecting. [00:25:31] Speaker B: I think that's the beauty of undercover work. Because training or not, what you do see is when people do succeed, I mean, obviously, access to training would be fantastic, as we discussed before we started. But the ones who succeed who aren't trained are usually. At least in my. In my experience, are people like that that you can just talk and get along with whomever, because in. In their natural state, that's who they are. You're right. [00:25:58] Speaker A: That's what I think. For me. Especially for me now, is that right for everybody? Maybe not. I mean, there's undercovers that may not talk a lot. They may just go straight in there and do the business. Like, if I'm doing a murder for hire, if somebody's hiring me to kill somebody, am I going to hang out with them and ingratiate? Not really. I mean, I'm supposed to be a stone cold killer. [00:26:15] Speaker B: Right. But then you're going beers with you. Getting out of character to do that. Character. [00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:20] Speaker B: As opposed to something where you pull back, kind of fit into all these different vibes. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Yeah. The jokes are the same. The other thing is this. I may not be the right fit. Like, I've gone on undercovers and I got called by the case agents, says, hey, we want you to come in on this one. We'd like you to kind of be the closer on this dirty doctor. Well, I go in and I play the stick. And by my second visit, I'm like, I'm not your guy. This guy does not like me, man. I don't know what it is, but we are not clicking. He don't like me. He doesn't trust me. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:51] Speaker A: And I even showed my butt a little bit. And I think that's it. I think I'm done. You know, I think you. I think you got to have another route. [00:26:58] Speaker B: Pushed it past the line. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, but maybe I'm not the right fit, but I'm just me. You know, I always tried to be as close. Close to me as I could. [00:27:08] Speaker B: So we'll back up. So you have two. You have several cases that you talk about in the book. So obviously want to mention the book. And, and it was great, by the way. [00:27:16] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:27:18] Speaker B: And the first significant case I think that you talked about, at least in there was. Was the biker. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah. The outlaws. Right. [00:27:26] Speaker B: So outlaw case in general, I think it's. It's fascinating. People will see you and think, oh, yeah, of course. But it's also easier said than done. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:27:36] Speaker B: Because ingratiating yourself to somebody who's. I think almost more than anyone. Those types of gangs are more suspicious than almost any other. You've got the. Anybody that's involved in the meth trade and the. Whatever else are just naturally. [00:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're thugging it. I mean, you don't have a job, but you're doing home invasions and carjackings and extortion, prostitution, definitely dope, car theft, all that stuff. Yeah. There. And you got to look, I mean, what are we at, like maybe a 40 year mark now where 1% of biker clubs have been infiltrated by all kinds of law enforcement agencies, not just federal. I mean, how many undercovers in the last 30, 40 years have actually gotten their patch? A bunch. How did the cases turn out? I don't know. Were they all super successes? A lot of them weren't. Right. But that's. You're touching on something. Like you're talking about my look. That is the downfall of a lot of departments. Sometimes they'll be like, hey, you're Black. So you can go work this black gang. Hey, you're white. You can do white supremacy. No, Right? [00:28:43] Speaker B: No, Yeah, I ran into that same problem. [00:28:45] Speaker A: It's going to take more than that. [00:28:46] Speaker B: You're going to get a tall, white, stiff nerd and then, you know, expect them like, well, you just kind of sit on the sidelines because we have, you know, this impoverished neighborhood over here is primarily Hispanic or black or whatever. It's not going to work. But it's going to work if you're you. Because again, the personalities. The personality, personality. And you add the training in. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:05] Speaker B: So tell me a little bit about how you got into that. Was that your case? And second, how did you actually get in as the, as the uc? Tell me a little. [00:29:15] Speaker A: It was not my case. So as a uc, you really don't have a case. Like, I'm not opening a case. Put it this way. If I started the case as the case agent and I saw the opportunity to be the undercover, then I'm switching roles. Somebody else is going to take over as a case agent because I can't, again, I can't be the case agent. Right. While I'm the undercover, too. Now, if behind the scenes, if I'm doing a lot of the paperwork and helping people because the skill sets are at different levels and it might be a brand new agent. Yeah, I'm doing that. But on, technically, on paper, I can't be all three of these positions, even if. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain is happening and you're doing a lot of the stuff. But the way that case. I can't remember somebody called me on that one, or I got. I saw a canvas on an email. But I called up and however it worked out, I flew into Boston, which is where the. That's the division where the case was being worked. And I was interviewed by a panel of FBI, DEA was there. I think ATF was there. There was a lot of state and locals there, and I don't know how many people they've brought in to interview. Um, there's a. That's a going joke at the UC school. And it's kind of. Don't ever think you're the first one called. You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, because you're like, you're like, hey, yeah, I got called for this gig. It's the ego thing. Or I got called for this gig. And then the guy next to you goes, oh, yeah, they called me on that one. But I told him I was. I wasn't available. And then the next guy's like, oh, yeah. Then they called me too, but I told him no. And I'm like, man. I'm like, number five. Yeah, I'm terrible. Yeah. How can I not be your first choice? [00:30:43] Speaker B: It's super interesting process, though. I just. It's just so atypical from. From what. From what I'm used to. But what I think most people would think is that you're going through a full interview process and everything. [00:30:53] Speaker A: Well, not all cases are like that, but you're at least going to get on a zoom call or Skype or whatever it is and. And talk about things. And then at some point, if I'm the undercover, I want to talk to the assistant United States Attorney that's going to be working this thing because I want to know what they're looking for. But I can read, you know, from being a law enforcement. You can read black and white, what it says in the statute. But every prosecutor is different. Some may want more, some may want. Don't care and think less is enough. [00:31:19] Speaker B: That's kind of your roadmap, essentially, is what evidence you're planning to collect. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you need? [00:31:24] Speaker B: The AUSA is going to tell you what they're willing to take as a jury. [00:31:28] Speaker A: So I go up there, and after the interview process for that case, I got picked and I started going up there and just kind of hanging in the area, learning the area, getting to know some people. And then it was all in preparation for that first night. I was gonna see the outlaws come to the Foxy lady, the strip club. [00:31:53] Speaker B: And that was just general intel from your. [00:31:56] Speaker A: From the case. Yeah. [00:31:57] Speaker B: So knew that there were a lot of. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of times in the Bureau, these cases may have been going on for a year or more easily. Like they're. They're building the case, and now they're to a point where they're like, man, I think we can. We got some good stuff here. Maybe we can get an undercover in. Because in the FBI, undercover, the undercover technique is a sophisticated investigative technique. It's. It's ranked right there with a Title 3 wiretap because it's very invasive. So you technically, you kind of have to show. Look, we've exhausted our means. We can't do surveillance on them over here because of this, this, and this. We've tried this. They keep changing phones, whatever. We've tried this. We've tried this. We'd like to try and undercover as. [00:32:35] Speaker B: Part of that also. For safety reasons. I think. [00:32:38] Speaker A: So. [00:32:38] Speaker B: Yeah, they Want to exhaust other options without putting somebody at that much risk. [00:32:41] Speaker A: Sure. And then so I go in and the first night, the Outlaws, I got a lot of intelligence from the case team. In other words, they've got the depth chart up, they got the picture and they go, okay, this is Spanky. Spanky loves to be the center of attention. He loves to be loud. He loves to have big guys surrounding him, that kind of thing. It's like, okay, that's good. And this guy's this, and this is what we know about him and that kind of thing. And then sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong, but at least you have some kind of foundation. And I go in there and now I'm in the bar and I'm just being me. Loud, cracking jokes and to. At some point Spanky sees it and yells across the bar and is like, hey man, where are you from? You know, And I start cracking jokes back, making it stupid self deprecating humor things. And before long I get called over and we're talking and shooting the shit. I'm telling him where I'm from because clearly I don't sound like I'm from Boston. [00:33:39] Speaker B: Oh, clearly. Yeah, but you didn't try either. [00:33:41] Speaker A: No, I mean, yeah, I mean a. [00:33:45] Speaker B: Lot of people, again, they just assume you're going to try to hit the accent, you're going to dress exactly right, whatever. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not Scotty Two Fingers, man. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not coming in, I'm not coming in there with a, with a northeastern accent. Mafia guy. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Appreciable though. [00:34:00] Speaker A: Yeah. But then he ends up inviting me to Northeast Regional and I'm starting to meet other outlaws and then the case starts growing. [00:34:09] Speaker B: So what's a Northeast Regional for layman? [00:34:11] Speaker A: Again, it would be a meet up for all the chapters in the northeast and they would have like, they called it Lobster Fest. It was at the Brockton, Brockton Massachusetts Outlaws clubhouse. So you might have people from Maine or people from Florida could come up too, but just that, just that, that. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Northeast region was the bikers that were all patched. Bikers or prospects. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, and support clubs. I mean like you could have. It could be Outlaws and the Freewheelers come in and then whoever else comes in and. Because they're all kind of supporting the Outlaws, because that's the outlaw territory. [00:34:50] Speaker B: Okay, so. And how did you end up getting that? Just ingratiating, endearing stuff like that. [00:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he just invited me. So he, he liked me and invited me and then I met Another guy that first night named Scott as well. And we hit it off really good. So by the time I came back and was going to the Lobster Fest, I rode with Scott town. [00:35:12] Speaker B: Okay, and then that was your giant opening, obviously. I mean, because at first you're just kind of trying to just play it nicely. You're not asking them to be invited or. [00:35:22] Speaker A: No, no, I mean, I, I go where the case takes me. You know, it's. And. And they didn't know I was doing any criminal activity at that point either. Right. I'm just, I'm the site survey specialist. That's why my country bumpkin bud is up in Massachusetts. I'm looking at property for investors. And so you were in your purported. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Yourself to be out of town from out of town, right? [00:35:44] Speaker A: Yeah, from Texas, so that you didn't. [00:35:46] Speaker B: Have to stay there. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Exactly. And you want the, you want the potential target because they may, again, it could be five months and we find out like they're not doing anything illegal or nothing on a federal level. But you want it to be so real, you know, you want them to go to bed at night going, that was a normal day. You don't want them laying in bed going, a guy that came in here today, that was. Something's not right. Right. But as time went on in the case, I let it be known that I also did criminal activity because they were already letting me in on their criminal activity and showing me some things and asking me about dope right away because I said I was down on the border of Mexico. And what they ended up believing that I was. Was a high ranking member of an international theft ring and that I moved a lot of stolen goods to Mexico, which was all factually based because I was. I would go and meet with Texas DPS and their investigators and like auto theft and stuff. And. And I also learned personally when my insurance from a Harley from New Jersey to McAllen, Texas, it. It tripled. It was like over triple. I got the first bill and I'm like, what in the. What is this? I said I was in like on the river at New York City in Jersey, and it was nothing like this. And they go, yeah, Harley's get stolen a lot. [00:37:07] Speaker B: Matter of time. [00:37:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. So it was, it was 4x4v8s and Harleys and they started reporting things stolen. First they'd report their own vehicle or somebody's vehicle stolen so they could get the insurance money. And then they would sell me the vehicle at a stolen price. And that's How I started. And then next thing you know, you fast forward, you've gained more and more trust. You're ingratiating more, you're learning about more criminal activity that's going on. The case team's learning about more because they're running Title 3 wiretap, and they're still doing. They're not just running an undercover, they're running an entire investigation. Yeah. And. And. And we start getting in, and next thing you know, they're like, hey, we just carjacked somebody. We just took this car at gunpoint. We almost killed this guy. We need to get rid of this thing. And they're calling me, and I'm like, I'll get rid of it. You know, I took the tracker off of it. Don't worry about it. [00:37:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And what do you do at that point with the vehicle? Well, they thought seize it, I assume. [00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah, they thought they were. I mean, we were working with, like. I forget what the title is, but it was like an insurance bureau something or another, because there was a lot of insurance fraud going on. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:14] Speaker A: But they thought we were loading everything on the semi truck, and that semi truck was headed back to Mexico. Essentially, it was all going to undisclosed location to be stored as evidence. [00:38:27] Speaker B: And then there. I mean. And you, again, when you describe it, make it sound easy, which it's not. [00:38:34] Speaker A: Speeding it up because it takes a long time. [00:38:36] Speaker B: I know that. Yeah. And I'm not trying to make you break it all down, but there was a period of time where as. As is most cases, I think if you're really getting yourself in, there's a point in which they have to just vet you to take you to the next level. You want to talk about that incident? [00:38:52] Speaker A: Sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:38:53] Speaker B: And how far into the case was that? [00:38:54] Speaker A: A year and a half. [00:38:55] Speaker B: A year and a half? Yeah. [00:38:57] Speaker A: The basement. I. And we'd already done all kinds of things like. Like insurance fraud, carjackings. Like, I said that I knew we had uncovered extortion. Like the typical mafia stuff. Like, they get through and rough up some shops and say, hey, if you pay us a security fee, we'll make sure this doesn't happen to your shop anymore. And when it's them doing it, you know, it's just the typical mafia thing from back in the day, except it's outlaws doing it. Dope. We'd seen that. And now we get to a point to where I can't remember if the murders had already happened by that year and a half point. But during that case, you've got Like a Hell's angel president being murdered in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on a ride with Hell's Angels. And we pretty much knew that it was a green truck with Florida plates. We knew that Florida outlaws were up in the region because they were staying with our targets and never pinpointed that murder. But there was a. There was a lot of smoke. [00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:02] Speaker A: For there. Not to be a fire kind of thing, but a lot of times the general public doesn't understand. They're like, well, why can't you arrest them? I'm like, well, right now it's hearsay. I mean, I got it. You got to have a little bit more than that. And you should be happy. We need more than that, otherwise we'd be making arrests for nothing. [00:40:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:18] Speaker A: You know, but there was murders. I remember going up to Sturgis, and the day I got there, a mandatory run. The day I got there, five outlaws were shot. Well, it was two patched, one prospect or probate, and two old ladies. And they were all shot point blank range by Hell's Angels. So there's just. There's. You never know, right? The. How things can turn quickly. Yeah, but you're in a. You're around a violent gang, right, that has violent gangs that don't like them. [00:40:48] Speaker B: And do you find yourself becoming comfortable. I hate to say complacent, but did you ever, in that case in particular, maybe, since we're on that topic, find yourself kind of relaxed a little bit more. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Try not to. I'm sure it happened. Well, let's just talk about the basement, because I didn't. I didn't expect that to happen. I don't want to say I was lax. I just want to say, like, dang. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:12] Speaker A: Clearly, had I known they were going to do something like that or felt it, I wouldn't have worn a wire. But we're now at a year and a half, and it takes a long time to lay this out and put it in to motion. But from day one, we knew they were dealing dope. They were already predicated. They're already talking to me about dope. I'd bought some dope from them, and we now up the ante as a case team. And the division, they're like, okay. And the United States Attorney's office is like, let's do this drug shipment kind of protection thing. And it's been done on a lot of cases. What was really crazy is one of my mentors and good friend to this day is Jack Garcia. So big Jack, he had a New York Times bestseller book as well. Big Jack pretty much worked full time undercover, and he was doing a case, and I didn't know he was doing it. But as we are starting to prepare for this drug protection, it is all over the news. Dirty Boston cops popped by the FBI. It went from Boston to Florida, and it was all over the tv. Protecting a drug shipment. Protecting a drug shipment. And we're all going, oh, that was what we were going to try to do. You know, somebody still trying to do it. Well, yeah. Do they have to deconflict? No, but they were just using the technique, and now it's all over tv and you're like. So I. I said anything I could except drug and shipment and protection. I just. I mean, I might have said drugs, but it was like, security. We got to make sure this doesn't get ripped. I'm just doing anything I can to not hit those words that are all over the newspapers and. And tv. But. So I go to the clubhouse, and they're like, it's the night before the thing's supposed to happen. They have agreed because they've been hounding me. A lot of them were hounding me, especially the president, to meet my cartel connections. And because as a drug dealer, what do you want? You want the highest purity for the lowest price. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:13] Speaker A: So you can make more money. [00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Cut somebody out. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And cut somebody out and step on it and whatever you need to do. So I go, we laid this thing out. It took a long time to do it, but essentially it's coming down to there's a drug shipment coming from my contacts, and it's going to another cartel group or organization, and they were going to be taking that into. Into Canada. So of course, prosecution and everybody wants as much evidence you can get. So if. If multiple outlaws are talking about it and know about it, it's a conspiracy. And if they're talking about it at the clubhouse, try to get that right. And that's what you do as an undercover. You're going in to get the evidence. So the night before the op, the. We had all kinds of undercovers flying in to help with the thing. They weren't with me. They were all probably out having dinner, you know, hey, man, good to see you. All right, tomorrow we're going to ride around. I'm out there still doing it, which is fine because I was the primary. But I went into clubhouse, and it was a weird exchange at the start. Like, I got there, they told me to come. The president, Joe Dogs told me to come. I get there, nobody's Answering the door, I'm like, what the hell's going on? And then he finally comes and he does the whole crack the door with his face. Hey, man, we're not ready yet. And I'm like, well, why'd you call me? I didn't. I don't want to say that's being lax. I don't know, maybe it was. But I'm like, why'd you even call me? This is stupid, right? [00:44:41] Speaker B: Well, that's how you would act. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah, but my spidey senses weren't going off yet, you know? So I went to go get something to eat, came back, finally get inside. When I get inside. The second closest relationship I felt that I built in that case was Clothesline. And clothesline's real name is Brian de la Vega. And Brian was the enforcer, or at least one of the enforcers for the Taunton chapter. So I go, I'm in there, I'm having a couple of jack and cokes. I'm cracking jokes. What I don't see is that when I get done cracking the joke and I like look back at you, whoever was laughing at my joke completely goes quiet. Stone faced, you know, So I didn't see it. But my recording device picked it up. I got to watch it later, you know, but like it's like, yeah, but you crazy with it. Because they're ready. That's what their whole church meeting was for. And for the listeners that don't know, especially in your one percenter clubs, there's a mandatory meeting every week. You pay your dues. All that stuff that they refer to that as church. So we have our church meeting. So they just finished their church meeting. So all the Taunton chapter outlaws are there and clothesline comes up and he goes, they called me Tex. Not very original. I was out of Texas, you know, Text. Yeah. But they go, he said, comes up because, hey, text, you got a minute? I said, yeah, man. And I start walking behind him and we go in the one door I'd never been in. As many times as I've been in that clubhouse, I never went in that door. And it was a tight stairwell down to really more of a crawl space because to say it's a basement would be. That's stretching it. I could stand. I couldn't stand up straight. [00:46:23] Speaker B: We were nine feet tall. [00:46:24] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, six, four with boots on. But you know what, whatever the boots added, they weren't kiss boots or anything. So maybe six, five, six, six times. But I'm leaning over and I could probably touch the wall on both sides. I see rope. They've brandished their pistols. They showed me. And I was followed in by another outlaw who stood on the steps with his pistol. So I'm not free to leave. [00:46:46] Speaker B: There's one way in and one way out, and they're standing there, and you're. So you ain't getting out. [00:46:51] Speaker A: No. And even if I fought my way out of that and I get upstairs, well, what is that? 10 more outlaws, right then. The door is heavily fortified. It's got a metal bar across it with welded metal hooks. I believe it was a metal frame. Had deadbolts and all kinds of stuff on it. It's. It's. It's not a good situation. [00:47:07] Speaker B: Even a rescue team's not getting in there for a while. [00:47:09] Speaker A: You're coming to avenge my death, you know, or just get there in time for me to be still. Be hanging on maybe. But he carries me down there, and. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm getting the tunnel vision. I'm getting the old crap moment. And. Because I know something's not right. And he says, look, there's a lot of going on, and it's my job to take care of my brothers. He said, I need you to write down your full name, your date of birth, your Social Security number, your address, everything. And he said, and then I need to take all your clothes off because I need to check you for a wire. And I was not expecting that, because I was in a year and a. [00:47:42] Speaker B: Half, that's the one time you feel like you could even start wearing a. [00:47:46] Speaker A: Wire, because, Yeah, I mean, they don't. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Check you after that long. [00:47:50] Speaker A: So I take off all my. I start writing my name down. And because of the stress of this situation, you know, your hearing's off. You got auditory exclusion. You got time dilation in your eyes. Everything you look at is going slow motion and clicks. [00:48:01] Speaker B: The adrenaline. [00:48:02] Speaker A: Tunnel vision. Yeah, adrenaline dump. Hamstrings are rubbery. You can hear your heart beating, feel it beating through your whole body, and everything slows down in slow motion. [00:48:11] Speaker B: And this is per your training, though. You know how to handle that? [00:48:15] Speaker A: Well, at least I would say yes and no, because at our undercover school, our certification process, I don't know what they're doing now. I retired in 2021, but I would bet it's still pretty daggum. Similar is that we were big on sleep deprivation, but it's really about getting your reps in. So if you graduate, if you don't go out with buddies or undercovers and. And kind of just work your stick or, or just come back to the school and role play. Then you're not getting the reps in. You have to do what ifs in your head. So, I mean, some of the training that I've seen over the years that we helped put on is like, hey, don't vapor lock. Keep talking. Try to gather intel. [00:48:53] Speaker B: Right? [00:48:53] Speaker A: You know, don't sit there like a deer in the headlights. [00:48:56] Speaker B: But that SNS activation, even from your SWAT days, just recognizing it, I mean, you describing everything that happens is probably something that you were at least keenly aware of, why your body was doing that. [00:49:07] Speaker A: Yes, but at the time, I was not breaking it down like that at the time. At the time I'm going, oh, crap. [00:49:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it doesn't mean there's a solution. [00:49:15] Speaker A: I think I might be getting ready to get killed. And because as I say, a lot of people, I'm like, look, had I not been wired, Embarrassing. Yeah. Take me down to the basement, strip me. Standing there naked in front of two grown men, you know? Yeah, embarrassing. But I'm not wired. I'm fine. I was wired. Like, wired wired and wild. So I forget my middle name because of the stress. I finally remember it, I write it down, and then the whole time I'm kind of talking to him, you know, I'm like, I even. I don't even know I do it. It's a. We kind of call it a. A distraction technique is a term for it. But as I'm. As I'm trying to remember my middle name, I turn and I say, and what else do you need? And they're like, what? I got my name and what else? And then they scream up and they're like, hey, probate. What do you need for that website? So I'm hearing that. So I'm getting actionable intelligence. And I'm saying, okay, well, now they're going to run me. They're going to Google me and search me on the Internet. That's fine. [00:50:13] Speaker B: Did you have that in covered by then? [00:50:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:50:15] Speaker B: And the Internet wasn't the. Today's Internet. [00:50:18] Speaker A: This is. This is 2000, 2007. [00:50:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:50:21] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And then I, I write that down. But I'm even talking to him, and I take all my clothes off. I take my. Take my jacket, all my shirts and stuff off. I take my boots off, and I drop my pants and underwear down to my ankles. So from ankle up, butt naked, and he's checking me and he says, hey, man, trust me. You know, if somebody accused me of being A fed. I'd probably smash him in the f in mouth. And I said, I'm not happy. And he said, I wouldn't be either, man. You know, But I'm trying to talk even though I'm crapping gold bricks, you know? [00:50:53] Speaker B: Yeah, you're buying time to figure out what to do. [00:50:55] Speaker A: I'm trying. I'm trying, and I'm trying to just keep talking, you know, just to not vapor lock. And, you know, he's like, hey, wouldn't you be suspect if somebody came to your town and started doing all? I said, yeah, I would be if they came up to me. I said, I didn't go up to you guys. You guys called me over. Nobody has to do this. Yeah, if nobody wants to. My exact words were, if nobody wants to do shit, they ain't got to do shit. You know, I'm like, nobody's making you do this. And it's like, you know, I'm like, you guys are talking about. You're worried about going to jail if I'm being real, which I was being real. I said, if I screw this up, the cartel is way worse than going to jail. [00:51:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:33] Speaker A: They will torture my entire family to include my pets. It's not a good day, you know? And so I think I'm done. He checks me, I write my stuff down, and I pull my pants back up. And then he grabs a piece of my clothing, and that piece of clothing had a recording device in it. [00:51:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:51:53] Speaker A: And won't say when, where, how, because that's tradecraft, Right? [00:51:57] Speaker B: Okay, that's what. I won't ask that. Okay. [00:51:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, so that's tradecraft, because you got to remember there's undercover still out there trying to do this stuff. Now, is technology better today than 20 years ago? Absolutely. [00:52:09] Speaker B: Especially that. I mean. [00:52:11] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, but. But he grabbed a piece of clothes and clothing that had equipment in it, and he. He asked me. He says, hey, you know, I'm not going to find anything in here. I don't want to, like some naked pictures of my old lady. And he laughs, and I give some crappy laugh, and I say, well, I hope not, you know? And then he starts going through that piece of clothing, and you can hear me on the recording do a. Just an audible sigh. I don't know. I do it. I'm just watching in slow motion. Yeah, I'm watching. I just go like that. And then he looks right at it and misses it and didn't feel it. And. And I passed. I lived to fight another day. So a Lot of people always ask, what would you have done had he found it? And I remember it like it was yesterday. My first response would have been a joke, most likely because he already threw me that bone on naked pictures. I would have probably said. If he'd said, what is this? I said, I don't know, some naked pictures of the old lady, which I'm sure it wouldn't have come out that way. It wouldn't have sounded that smooth. It would have been like, you know, talking through my nose. [00:53:22] Speaker B: Watch you another 10 seconds. [00:53:25] Speaker A: Not enunciating anything. And then my only other answer was the gigs up. I'm an undercover FBI agent, and I can walk out of here and we can see each other in court, or all hell's gonna break loose. [00:53:37] Speaker B: Right? [00:53:37] Speaker A: And as I say in the book, that would have been a bluff on my part, because as far as I knew in that day and time, every time that I'd been in that clubhouse, the cover team couldn't really hear me. Whether it was the walls, the device, or whatever, they couldn't really hear me. What I found out that night when I passed off the equipment was they did hear me. Because the two task force officers, phenomenal investigators, Sergeant Higginbottom with the Massachusetts State troopers and Detective Cummings from Brockton pd, they started the shift, and that first interchange, that first exchange between me and Joe Dogs, they. Something. They were like, something's not right. And they pulled. They were able to listen to everything. And I didn't know that. So that goes to a whole nother thing. They're listening to me. They know I'm scared. They hear my voice is a lot higher than it normally is because they know my baseline. And they. They had already suited up. They put their vest on and everything. They radioed back to Boston and said, look, they got Scott in the basement. He's wired, and they're stripping him. [00:54:45] Speaker B: So they were going to come in and do an exfil. [00:54:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they're preparing. Yeah, they're preparing to. [00:54:51] Speaker B: That's a big move, right? I mean, they decided to essentially end your case for you. Yeah, that's also a big deal. [00:54:56] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, and that's. That's. That's the thing with a lot of us type A personalities. It's like, we got to make this case. We got to make. Listen, there's no case worth dying. I mean, now I'm not talking about protecting innocent people like an active shooter situation. I'm going, right? I'm going to the gunfire. I'm going to Stop the killing and then we've got to stop the dying. Right? That's different. I'm just talking about I need to stay undercover because I got to save this kid. Look, no, no, it's not worth your mental well being. It's not worth your safety. It's not worth your family. I mean, it's. Just let it go, man. It's just a case. [00:55:29] Speaker B: But it's a, it's an interesting game to play between them having to discern whether you want them to come or not and making the decision for you because. [00:55:39] Speaker A: Well, I didn't think they could hear me anyway. Did I have a code word? No. [00:55:43] Speaker B: No. [00:55:44] Speaker A: Well, that's, That's a funny side note to me because you do so many and you meet different case teams that you never met before and they're all like. And some of them are really excited and kind of green to undercover and they're like, so what is your. We've been thinking, man. What do you think? Like, you know, like, boy, it sure is cold in the summer here. I say again, that's a good one. I say again, it sure is cold in the summer here. Turkey. Turkey. I said, here's my, here's my. Here's my signal if I yell help multiple times in a row. Not just help. If I'm going help, help, help, help. That's. That's a good clue. Physical. If I'm running at you like Willem Dafoe in Platoon, I'm telling my age here, but running across the field waving, that's. That's my physical signal. [00:56:29] Speaker B: Slow motion with one off in the background. [00:56:31] Speaker A: No. So, yeah, so they, they had suited up. Their plan was because they'd been in the. Inside that clubhouse more than once on local law enforcement stuff. They knew how heavily fortified that door was. They were going to drive the van into the cinder block wall beside the door to breach around the door. [00:56:50] Speaker B: That'd be the only way to do it. [00:56:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:52] Speaker B: A metal door frame with a metal door. [00:56:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you're. [00:56:54] Speaker B: And it stop. [00:56:55] Speaker A: It's harder to breach than the cinder block, for sure. You know, but they listened to me even though they knew I was scared. They. Their wherewithal and their seniority and their great investigative prowess, they, they, they listened and didn't pull the trigger. And I lived to fight another day. We all did. And then as I say in the book, there's a, There's a whole family. I talk about my faith throughout the book and, and, and I'm transparent. That's the only way I Know how to be. And when I say transparent, I mean, if you look up the definition of transparent, it's what I mean. Because I've met people that go, I'm gonna be transparent with you. Country. Country. I'm being transparent. I'm being transparent. And then you find out stuff and you go, so what do you think transparent means? Because it's not what you did, you know, that is not transparent. That's lying. But. But I'll try to be transparent. So that night, for that whole case, at that stage of our marriage in life, I bought a burner phone for my wife. Back then, they weren't that popular, and pretty much everybody knows what a burner phone is now, but you just go pay by the minute. You put whatever address you want, it comes back to nothing, right? But I would call her no matter what time it was when I was finishing up in Boston to go back to my hotel. It could be three in the morning. It could be seven in the morning. Hey, babe, just want you to know I'm done for the night, heading back to the hotel. Love you. Everything's good. I'll call you after I wake up. Usually it was quick. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we wouldn't. But that night, when I called her, first thing she said was, are you okay? And I was like, yeah. Why? Because I'm still shell shocked. I'm still coming down off this adrenaline high, which Jack Daniels wasn't even touching because my adrenaline was. I was like, through the roof, you know? And I said, yeah, why? And she said, well, tonight at such and such time, I was in McAllen and I was driving with our daughters in the car. She goes, I just got this overwhelming feeling. And she said, I pulled over on the side of the road and started praying for you. And I matched it up. It's when I was in the basement. [00:58:54] Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. [00:58:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So then I usually. Sometimes when I teach, when I'm saying that, sometimes I tear up. If she's sitting there, she's definitely tearing up. Some people in the crowd tear up. And then me with my stupid stick. Sometimes I bring it back with humor, and I'll go, so what does that tell you? People will be like, faith and this, that, and the other. I go, that tells you that my. Oh, crap, signal went from Boston all the way down to McAllen, Texas. I said, I don't need Verizon at and T. I'll get. My signal is pretty strong. [00:59:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:23] Speaker A: But, yeah, it was a. It's a very surreal moment. And I didn't sleep. If I did, I probably close my eyes for 30 minutes. And then I got up and it was on. I didn't know if they were going to show up. And they did. And we did the deal. It's 40 kilos of cocaine. Real. Thousand pounds of weed. Real. Moved it, they protected it, helped unload it. Um, and then they got their money and we were off. [00:59:50] Speaker B: And you ended up wrapping up that case after how long? It was almost full. Two years. [00:59:55] Speaker A: It was two years, yeah. If in the book, again, I describe the crash is what we call it. [01:00:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:01] Speaker A: I'd been going for three years. For roughly a three year period, I'd been doing multiple undercovers as a case agent. The majority of the top 10 cases in the previous three years. The majority of the top 10 cases were mine. The majority of the top 10 sources were mine. And that doesn't mean I'm awesome. I'm not trying to say that it's not a chest beaten thing. It's just that there's a lot of turnover on the border, you know, and so all of a sudden one day you look around at the squad and you're like, holy crap, I'm the oldest one here. Where did everybody go? And now you're the one that knows how to do the extortion, kidnapping thing. And you're past. [01:00:33] Speaker B: And you didn't know how to say no either. [01:00:34] Speaker A: No. And no. No. I cannot say that word. Well, I'm a workaholic, but I love to do more than one thing. Death to me, or a form of death for me would have been telling me to sit at that desk nine to five every day. [01:00:49] Speaker B: Right. [01:00:49] Speaker A: I'd rather watch paint dry. You know, I'm like, I want to do stuff. I want to be on swat. I want to be a firearms instructor, I want to be a tactical instructor. I want to be defensive tactics. But I want to do undercover too. And what I didn't do well for that three year period was balance it with my family. I stopped taking care of myself. I wouldn't take days off, like when everybody's off on Saturday and Sunday. I was in another. I was in Texas doing it undercover. [01:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:15] Speaker A: And I'd fly back in late Sunday night and I'd go to work Monday and start putting all that together. Still trying to run my own cases. And it caught me. It caught up to me. And so at the end, towards the end of the Outlaw case, we have a. We have a section in the undercover unit called Safeguard. And Safeguard is set up to Psychologically assess active undercovers. It was created by Joe Pistone and another undercover. Another. He was a. Actually, I don't know if Steve Ban was actually an undercover or not, but he was an FBI agent whose background was a psychologist. So they got together and came up with this assessment process, and they came down and did an assessment in McAllen. Because I called him. I self reported. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I think I'm crashing. I don't know if I'm having a nervous break. I don't know. I've never felt like this in my entire life. They came down, they diagnosed me as ever assigned. I couldn't travel back up for the case, but I could stay on the phone and help close it out. So there was one guy before I got put on timeout that I met named Tim Sylvia, and he was introduced to me by Scott. He had just gotten out of prison. I mean, at this point in life, he had been in prison more than he'd been out. He's a coke dealer and everything else. And he immediately. He knew about the deal. He immediately wanted me to do stuff with him. So while I'm down in McAllen, still fielding phone calls and stuff, he calls me and he's like. He basically says he's in the cocaine business, and if I could get him kilos at 18 grand a piece, he had enough to buy 10 of them right then and there. So I. And he said he had some stolen vehicles he wanted to get rid of, too. So I called the case team, and I'm like, hey, what do you want to do? Do you guys want to bite on this? And they're like, yeah. So I call him back, and we lined it up to where I think we were going. I had the guys that were posing as my truck drivers, they went up to meet him to pick up, I think it was a Hummer and a high in BMW and maybe another car. And even if you play the recording of that meet, while they're meeting him, they're talking about me. And the truck driver, who went by the name Tony, actually calls me and says, hey, Tex, I'm here with, you know, Tim, blah, blah, blah, you know, hey, you know, I get on the phone with him and I'm like, hey, because, hey, I'm going to report this. We're going to report the BMW stolen Friday. I said, can you give me Saturday? Wait till Saturday, because that gives me one more day to get it in Mexico, right? Because it's got a tracker on it. [01:03:43] Speaker B: That kind of thing makes it a lot more legit. [01:03:46] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And I mean, driving the truck across the United States, what if you get a flat tire, right? What if it's a snowstorm? What if there's a fatality wreck? I mean, real stuff happens, right? So when they went to load those vehicles, he hit them for the same thing. Hey, if you got 10 kilos, I can. At 18 a piece, I can buy 10. And that's what they did. There was like one meat, one more meat between. It wasn't a secondary undercover. When you do undercovers, clearly I'm the primary on that case, Right. If you come in and you're just driving a truck and all we do is load up vehicles in your truck and you leave, that's. That's a cameo in my book and way I was trained. That's not a secondary undercover because you're not even going to meet the bad guys. [01:04:34] Speaker B: You're playing a quick role. In and out. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Now, the guy I talked about, Trucker Paul on another case in Tennessee. Now, he'd come stay at the house. We'd go out. He'd help me. We'd be. He'd be meeting everybody. We'd go to these bag. That's a secondary undercut. But these guys. So the guy that was riding in the passenger seat went and met Tim Sylvia one more time to maybe tighten up some loose ends for the U.S. attorney's office. And then the takedown was reversal. When Tim showed up to get the 10 kilos of dope, they. They took him down and arrested him. And that was the. That was the catalyst to kind of. All right, we got everything else we need. We're taking everybody else. [01:05:10] Speaker B: Then did the roundup after that. [01:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:05:13] Speaker B: So you did the roundup remotely? [01:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I wasn't allowed to go. And actually, the way it ended was I was in Nevada putting on training, and I still had my UC phone. And I got back in the wee hours of the night in Nevada, and I don't know. Is that three hours behind Boston? I don't know. [01:05:31] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:05:33] Speaker A: So. So my phone's chirping, and it was. It was an ex tail. They were big back then. It's chirping, and I go over and I listen. It's a message from Scott Town, the guy who I befriended the most, my friend. And he was telling me that. That Tony and the other truck guy and Big Timmy were arrested. He said, I don't know what's going on. He said, I just got a call they were arrested. He said, I wanted to let you know right away. I said, thanks, man. I said, I don't know what they're doing. I said, sometimes they do stuff on their own. I said, but I'll try to figure out what's going on. He said, well, I'm going to get cleaned up, and then I'll find out what's up and I'll call you back. And the last words he said to me were, I love you, brother. And the last words I said were, I love you, too. [01:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:17] Speaker A: And that was it. [01:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:18] Speaker A: He didn't know that a SWAT team was getting ready to hit him about 40 minutes later. [01:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's kind of the beauty of these cases, too. When, when you go that long, it's. It's. It's extraordinary to do what you do, maintain the focus of the case. And especially in your. In your instance, I was. I was impressed to find out that you self reported, too, knowing that you'd spent all this time. You had to really, really, really be crashing to basically call yourself off of that right after that long. [01:06:47] Speaker A: But it took them, like, two weeks to get down to McAllen to. To assess me. So by the time they showed up, I was already in my head thinking, oh, I'm good. I'm back. Now. I'm like, I'm ready to go back. I'm ready to go back. Even though I'm breathing through my chest, I'm not breathing through my belly. I'm really tense. I'm just. I'm just all stressed. I'm just beat down, and I'm. I'm a walking zombie, man. I'm on antihistamines, decongestants, inhalers, hydroxy cuts. Coffee. Yeah. That's a cocktail for anxiety. [01:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're still fitting in heavy workouts and all kind of stuff? [01:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I. Yeah. So when they showed up to do the assessment, I was ready to lie. I was ready to be like, I got this. I know what the answers are. And then a former buddy of mine, we were buddies then. Things change. But he was. He was the counselor, and he said. He said, country. We've known each other for what, like, 10 years? I said, yeah, man. He said, let's switch. Let's. Let's do something different. I'm you and you're me. What would you tell me to do? And that's one I didn't. I wasn't ready for that one. And I was like. As soon as he said it, I was like, ah, you son of A bitch. [01:07:51] Speaker B: He's making me lie to a friend. [01:07:52] Speaker A: I know. [01:07:53] Speaker B: That way. [01:07:54] Speaker A: I know. And I lied. I lowered my head, and I looked down and I said, I would tell you that you need to take a break and that you should have taken one a long time ago. And he said, good answer. You know, it's like you're going on timeout, so. [01:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, what age group were the folks that you were infiltrating then during the. [01:08:11] Speaker A: Outlaws were what, 30s, 20s, 30s, 40s. So, yeah, it wasn't a young, young. [01:08:17] Speaker B: Group, but so closer to the age you were at the time. [01:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I turned. So I. For most of my career, I made myself older. I was always like, I was born in 71 in real life. Okay. But I. I said I was born in 69. It was just easy for me. I could still reference the same music, Right? [01:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. There you go. [01:08:37] Speaker A: There you go. Right? There you go. So I could reference the same music, just be two years off and. And that was funny because you say 69 and dirty and a dirty group, you know? But, yeah, I always made myself older. So I actually turned 40 when I was with the Outlaws. So I had my 40th birthday part. My. My fake 40th birthday party. [01:08:59] Speaker B: Yes. [01:08:59] Speaker A: I was really 38, but I had my 40th birthday party with the Outlaws. So when I turned 40 for real and McAllen and everybody threw a party, I go, yes, it's all right. I mean, you know, the party at the Outlaws was way better than this one, you know? [01:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Then you get older, and then you want to become younger. [01:09:15] Speaker A: I had to. Well, I had to, because, I mean, I can't roll into. I can't roll into the neo Nazi. [01:09:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:22] Speaker A: Teen twenties and maybe a couple of thirties being 50 years old. [01:09:26] Speaker B: So it's interesting, and I'm trying to figure out what order is the smartest to go about this, because when you. You did the roundup and all those cats are gone, you had some really close relationships with those guys, especially Scott. What. What kind of sentences did they get? [01:09:42] Speaker A: They did pretty good. I mean, Tim Sylvia got the biggest because he had all these priors, so I think he was in the 20s. I think we list it factually in the book. But Joe Dogs and Clothesline, I think got 12 and a half years. [01:09:57] Speaker B: Okay. [01:09:58] Speaker A: And I can't remember what Scott Town got. I want to say he got like, 6 to 8, but mainly for drug charges and stuff like that. And some people, they're like, man, you know, you kill somebody, you get Way less time than you do for doing dope. I get those arguments and stuff, but you have to know what's going on behind the curtain. A lot of times we have all kinds of charges, and if you're the leader, well, we want you off the street. And if the biggest charge and the biggest time, you're going to sit down, they're going to be with their attorney, we're going to be with our prosecutor, and we're going to start working out a deal. And so you may see. Oh, they just. They got all this because they were just charged with this one drug deal. No, we had all kind. We had carjackings and everything, but they played. So when they played, we consolidated all that. Right. And you only get this. There's a lot more that goes on behind, you know, that a lot of people don't. There's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. [01:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's super important. And you telling the story is helpful in that regard, too. Yeah, you know, I did. My case was a gang case, but I used dope to get in because I didn't quite resemble the. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Well, I know we're going to get on the domestic terrorism, but there's no domestic terrorism statute. So if the only thing I can get you off the street for, even though you're a neo Nazi and you're planning on killing people, if the, if, if. If the plot to murder is way less than the dope charge, then we're going to. We're going to get the biggest hammer we can on you. That doesn't mean. For the smallest fish in the pond. [01:11:22] Speaker B: Right. [01:11:22] Speaker A: You know, but. [01:11:23] Speaker B: And you see a lot of these cases where. At least I see a lot of the cases where I'm reading about them or, you know, following up, studying them, you know, different cases, whether it's Pistone or any of those guys. And a lot of the boss man. [01:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I still call him boss man. [01:11:37] Speaker B: A lot of the. A lot of the sentences seem low to me. I mean, when you finally do understand the backstory, you're like, wow, that seems low. Does any of these seem low to you? And would you have changed any of them if you had? Obviously, kind of no control. Really, you can try to get them to. [01:11:55] Speaker A: Especially as the undercover, I don't have any say. So I really only thing. But I do know that the Department of Justice met multiple times with the Eastern District of Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office, begging them to go RICO, because if we went RICO, we could extend that net a lot further, farther and we would have wrapped up people, we would have wrapped up outlaws in Florida, Maine, Detroit, all over. But for whatever the reason was, whether that they don't have the, the, the, the person power at the U.S. attorney's office or they're inundated with cases, or sometimes they're like the AUSA is looking and going, why would I add all this work for this RICO when I've already got these three guys right now for this carjacking and his dope deal. And they're looking at this much time, right? So everybody played out. So if you see 12 and a half years, do I think they should have got more? Depends. It's a case by case basis, but they got 12 and a half because they pled out and they, and they, they cooperated. When you get arrested at the federal level, the first thing, the main thing the judge is looking at is this two things. Acceptance of responsibility and willingness to help cooperate. Cooperate, yeah, well, but that's a big. [01:13:13] Speaker B: Deal regardless of what kind of gang environment you're in. Because you go do 12 and a half years, then they're going to see your paper and know that you cooperated to whatever degree, and then you got 12 and a half miserable years. Or eat the 30 and be the guy that wasn't the snitch. [01:13:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, right? But how does that usually work in the game world, Tegan? How does that work? You know, hey, hey, you're part of the brotherhood. If you go in, you take a rap for the club, we're going to take care of your family, we're going to put money on your books, at. [01:13:42] Speaker B: Least for a year or so. [01:13:43] Speaker A: Never happens. Not anyone's. I know. They sit there and they get out and they are pissed. They still want to be a part of the gang, but they're like, you ain't my damn brother. You didn't send my. You didn't do anything for my wife and kids. You didn't put any money on my commissary. [01:13:57] Speaker B: Do you find that most of them cooperate just in terms of just majority of them? [01:14:02] Speaker A: I would say yes. And a lot of that has to do with the undercover technique. I mean, that is the only thing. The evidence is so overwhelming, right? [01:14:12] Speaker B: Kind of irrefutable. [01:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, it's so overwhelming. It's like, look, if you go to trial, the defense attorney can do one or two things. They can argue entrapment, which again, we talked about that. That's Undercover 101. People can argue it and claim it. [01:14:27] Speaker B: Show me attack Your character. [01:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Or they try to make you look like a piece of trash. [01:14:32] Speaker B: Right. [01:14:32] Speaker A: You know, my client never drank, and he hadn't drank in 10 years. And. And you got him drinking again. I go, did I get him drinking again? I didn't make him drink. I mean, a matter of fact, it was like everywhere we went, like, oh, you drinking again? Go to the next bar. You drinking again? And I turned to him and I'm like, is there something you need to tell me? I mean, I'm not forcing this. Are we going to be okay here the next hour? If you keep drinking, are you going to, you know, turn into the Tasmanian Devil? [01:14:57] Speaker B: So you had guys kind of your peers in terms of age and obviously had some stuff in common with them. And I think that's kind of part of what we like to illustrate in certain ways, because we've got, you know, we've got folks like, like you and guys that have gone in and were innocent and did, you know, 10, 20 years for murders they didn't commit. And it's just always interesting to find the commonality, the fact that you could actually get along with these guys. I always look at it as if you take the sociopath out. A lot of. We have even a lot more in common. Did you find that was the case, even though it seems like these guys are super immature? [01:15:32] Speaker A: Well, sadly enough, I may have some. Some common traits with the sociopaths. I remember, I remember. And it was Scott. I'm pretty sure it was Scott. Town. We were talking. It was during that case because there was something is like, serial killers have the following traits. It was just something like it was in a magazine or something, but like, it was like, it was like 12 trades. And I'm going, damn, damn. I mean, I don't do it anymore, but I did do that. I did do that. [01:15:55] Speaker B: I'm like, woof. [01:15:56] Speaker A: That's not good. [01:15:57] Speaker B: That's super interesting. [01:15:59] Speaker A: So I'm not a serial killer, by the way. [01:16:00] Speaker B: Oh, thank you. [01:16:01] Speaker A: So. So says every serial killer. [01:16:03] Speaker B: That's true. Until they get the Fed. They're tied up by the feds and then they tell them everything. [01:16:07] Speaker A: Then they got a book. [01:16:08] Speaker B: Yes. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I got a book. Yeah. [01:16:13] Speaker B: So I'm. I'm interested now to. To compare and contrast a lot of what you went through when you did infiltrate the neo Nazi group. At that point, there's a lot. It seems like there's a lot of immature behavior, which I think in general, if you're in a gang and you're an adult, that's Kind of part of the game a little bit. There's a kind of a lack of life context for you. So you just kind of are immature in the way you think your philosophy, etc. But. And that's just me, but I would be super curious about your impressions of the way you were in with your peers and the outlaws versus going in as an older man and dealing with these 20 somethings who have these crazy philosophies. And I'm curious if you felt any remote commonalities with, with them at all. Were there some things that you could kind of see? Did you feel sorry for them? Did you feel like any kind of sympathy for some of their perspectives based on an upbringing or anything like that? [01:17:17] Speaker A: Well, I, I definitely believe, because I've seen it, the whole you're a product of your environment kind of thing. But I mean, I found some things to bond on. But really I was just connecting to say I bond with somebody who believes that there's a hollow earth and Hitler still alive in it with 15 foot giant white guys waiting to come back. A little tough. Yeah, a little tough. Jack Daniels help with that? I'm like, I'm like wolf. Well, not to mention sometimes I crack jokes on them, you know, I'm like, really? You know, it's concave earth. Okay, well, how do you know there's concave? Well, it's very, it's a little known fact that Hitler did a study and he fired a rocket. And then I forget the story, but I think it ends like this. He fired a rocket and it eventually hit something, which means the earth is concave. And I'm like, well, what if there was a hill? You know, what if there was a mountain? I said. Or what if whatever's fueling the rocket it runs out and it just hits the ground? Well, we don't know all the nuances of the test clearly, but I mean, Hitler shows it's a pretty impressive rocket. [01:18:19] Speaker B: That can go around the world, across the world anyway, in the 40s anyway. [01:18:23] Speaker A: And I'm like, you know, what about all the pictures of Earth? Oh, that's fake. That's just one picture that's redone over and over and over. Okay. I don't, I mean, I haven't been to space. I can't, I can't argue with you too much. But yeah, it was just in the ideology if as a Christ follower and I'm sitting here and we're, we're doing satanic type stuff, right? Yeah, it's, it's different. Yeah, it's different work mode too, for that group in particular, the base, we just saw so much. We had so much predication and, and complaints and things coming in from across the pond, from other countries, world working partners and within the United States. So again, you're being a proactive investigator. And in this case, I'm an undercover and I'm going in. And in the beginning, I'm just trying to connect, gain trust and learn if you guys are planning to do anything bad or not. And if you are, what steps have you taken or are you planning to take to do it. [01:19:24] Speaker B: Right. [01:19:24] Speaker A: And that's eventually what we found out. [01:19:26] Speaker B: And it. And it turned out to be a fruitful investigation in this case. [01:19:29] Speaker A: Very. [01:19:30] Speaker B: But it's also interesting to see the scope of time between those two cases. Oh, there's kind of what you highlight in the book too, but understanding that, man, when you wore a wire in the early aughts, it was, you know, just like in the movies. And everybody knew to wear a look for taped your chest and all kinds of good stuff. They had a couple little fidgety ones. [01:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the narc days, boy. [01:19:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And those. And they're ridiculous and, and it was so easy to find. And half the time they didn't work. And all the new gadgets, you know, key rings and stuff like that, never seemed to work. Right. Your phone would run out of room or whatever, whatever. [01:20:05] Speaker A: You're trying keys rattling the entire time because that's where the microphones are. [01:20:09] Speaker B: Right. [01:20:10] Speaker A: And you're like, I can't hear. [01:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was really. And then the, the birth of the Internet was still new, so it wasn't possible for somebody to, you know, pay 15 bucks and get a dossier on somebody like it was by the time you started the base investigation. [01:20:26] Speaker A: Yes. [01:20:26] Speaker B: Which I found fascinating. So you're, you're still working pretty old school undercover in the early aughts, but by the time you get to whatever, 2019 or whatever it was, 2019, then it's a completely different set of circumstances because there is so much online and you're having. And that's where you. [01:20:46] Speaker A: That's where these, that's where these kids are being radicalized online, you know. And it's not just the far right extremists that I infiltrated. It's. It's your radical jihadist. They're doing the same thing. I've got peers, mentors, people I've been blessed to mentor, friends that, that are undercovers in that realm. And they're telling me, hey, country, same Thing, man, they're getting radicalized online. And, you know, some of the common traits I saw in the base with the, with the youth, and there were some other cases that infiltrated neo Nazi groups, not, not planning murder plots or anything like that. And nothing really came of the case, but it was the common themes I saw. And not saying this is the be all end all, because there's no bowler plate for a terrorist, there's no bowler plate for a murderer. Right. But comment rates I saw would be like the kids. I say kids, but they were kids. Some, some were. Some were 30 something years old with a job. But, you know, the, the common traits I saw might be outcast socially, a little awkward, not accepted, most likely been bullied at some point, can't get a partner. And here you look at a young guy with testosterone going through his body, and he goes into his bedroom at night and hops on that smartphone, he starts diving down, hate. I mean, you got all these, these apps that are out there that are reportedly encrypted, and a lot of them are. You got your telegrams, you had 4chan, 8chan, 12chan, 3 my riot wire gab, all these things. And there's more out there. Now. I just don't have my finger on the pulse, nor do I want to really. You know, I'm like, unless the bureau wants to start cutting me some checks, you know. But they go in there and some groups I've infiltrated, man, you wake up and you're a thousand post behind. Because all night long, people from all over the world that are in that group have been spewing some of the most vile, hateful, anti Semitic stuff that you, you're like, oh my gosh. And then if you get into the accelerationist groups, which is like the base and Adam Waffen, then you get in, you scratch the surface on a lot of those, and you find somebody that's tied to 09 a order of nine angles. This recent kid that, that just got arrested that I can't remember, did he kill his mom and stepdad or dad and stepmom? Either way, he killed his parents, right? And then he was going to try. They, they uncovered that he was going to be trying to assassinate Trump and they arrested him. But it's first thing that as they start reporting towards the end, they're like, oh, well, they had neo Nazi ideology. And I'm like, okay, accelerationists. And then they mentioned 09A and that's satanic. Order of nine angles is white supremacy to a whole nother level. Tied to Satanism. And they are, you want to talk about some graphic, vile stuff to look at online. I mean, they're huge on sexual abuse, rape, pedophilia. It's, it's not good, not good at all. [01:23:47] Speaker B: And so when you talk about the, I guess the upbringings and the, the common themes among that stuff, is there anything that we can see at this point based on, I mean, I know you've left now. Is there anything you can see, Are there groups that wouldn't qualify as an investigatable or a prosecutable group that often lead into some of these other ones? Because it seems like to me we've got so much extremism going on now that you could have a left or a right extremist group that very easily, it's like a baby step to the next level as opposed to someone like you or I having to go from the middle all the way out. [01:24:28] Speaker A: So great question. The I'll speak on the domestic terrorism side of this right, far right extremism in America, we've got the First Amendment. So you got protected, you got freedom of speech. So you can walk out in the street here right now in LA and say, I hate all insert racial slur. I hope all insert racial slur die. That's not illegal. So we can hop into these groups and let's just say it's hundreds or thousands of haters on there and they are blasting some crazy stuff. But that's not illegal. But how do you know which one is going to be that next tree of life shooter, right? Or that Christ Church shooter or the black church and Charleston shooter, You know, so you, you have to stay vigilant. And that's the thing like with the base, we got in there and once I started gaining more and more trust, I mean, they were saying crazy stuff, preparing for the boogaloo, the D Day, the race war and all these things, and we're going to rape the women and blah, blah, blah. And nobody ever said who was going to be Hitler, you know, because when you ask them that, they're like, oh, who is going to be Hitler? Well, they're going to be one buddy, you know, who's going to be finding out. And surely the goodness, if we have an ethno state of nothing but white people, that'll fix everything. Of course, there'll be no drama. [01:25:51] Speaker B: And I heard you, you talk a lot about. These guys would talk about some of the extraordinary things that they were willing to do, but still had some semblance of, of like, I can already Tell I'm going to regret this, but I'm willing to do it anyway. Kind of for the cause. [01:26:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Kill your parents. Yeah. I mean, I had the one guy, he said it more than once. And a lot of times when he said it, he'd be crying. He's like, that was the Canadian that absconded illegally into the United States after being doxed up there, being outed. He. He said, he goes, and this was a lot of their beliefs. If, if you, if the boogaloo happens and it's D day and we are now in the racial holy war, if you are not fascist, that automatically makes you anti fascist. And the penalty is death. And. And it's like, I'm gonna have to. I may very well have to put a bullet in the back of my dad's head. And my mother said, and I'll do it, but it's gonna hurt. And then the other one would be like, I could do it, but I know I cried myself to sleep every day. I'd probably get somebody else to do it. It's still gonna suck because I love my dad. The other one was like, well, you're way. You're way ahead of me because I couldn't kill my parents. [01:27:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:01] Speaker A: You know, kind of thing. [01:27:02] Speaker B: But there's different, different stages of buying in. [01:27:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I like to say hate begets hate. So you hear this on this side and you say you're. You're left of center. But if you're extreme left and you're. You're far extreme left, and you do things that the left is very good at, like doxing people and showing up at your house and protesting and protesting at your work and your kids school just enough to get in your face but not get arrested kind of thing. But you do that. And then the far right's going, the extreme right is going. How many of our brothers have to fall and lose their identities and lose their jobs and their families before we retaliate against these lefties? [01:27:49] Speaker B: Right? [01:27:49] Speaker A: And then. And it just goes back and forth for me. Like, I sat down, I flew in here Monday night. I did a couple interviews this week, and I sat down with a friend and we were talking and I just said, look, for me, the way that I've seen things, it's just easier for me. Let's just put it. I don't care whether you're left, right, center, far, whatever. Let's take it. Let's put it all on the table and let's ask this one simple question. Is it good or Is it evil? Now, there's a psychological diagnosis out there for people who can't tell the difference between good and evil. [01:28:28] Speaker B: Of course, yes. [01:28:29] Speaker A: But for the most part, you know, you feel it, you know. Now you may choose the bad thing all the time, that's fine. But let's just sit here and look at this. Forget, forget Democrat, Republican, whatever, China, Russia, all that. Just put it right here. And let's say this. What we're looking at on the surface is this good or evil. And for me, that narrows it down. I mean, that breaks it down pretty easy for me. [01:28:55] Speaker B: What about. And of course, I think it's a great analogy. And then you're going to have the guys on that extreme, though, saying that in order to get it to where everything is good, you're going to have to make a sacrifice, which we see through history, that you're going to have to do something atrocious in order to accomplish the next level of goodness. However they see goodness, and, and when your view of goodness is canted to where goodness is only white, then you're still not going to see it. Right. [01:29:21] Speaker A: By the way, a lot of those groups I've infiltrated, there was no 23 and me being done. You know what I mean? Because I'm like, bro, you are not all white. I'm telling you, I'm not. You can look at me and tell I'm not just by some of my build. [01:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:33] Speaker A: And hairless legs and stuff. I've got Cherokee Indian in me. [01:29:36] Speaker B: That's from your bodybuilding days. [01:29:39] Speaker A: I shaved once and it never came back. Yeah, I know. No, but it's, it's, it's crazy, but it's still that human, that human thing of needing to belong. You look at your gangs, you look at your 80s gangs, 90s gangs. Ace is a brotherhood. You beat you in, you bleed out. You're a good earner. This is your family now. And they, a lot of them come from broken homes. They want that belonging. They need to belong. They've been bullied. They can't get a girlfriend or a partner, whatever your flavor is. Right. They're lonely and they want to be included in something that is kind of basic human nature. So cults, same way. So this is kind of that, that, that same thing that I see. You find somebody you can bond with and, and. But for your listeners, this acceleration stuff, we're talking about, like the base and stuff like that, that's not your Charlottesville. We're walking down the street with picket signs and yelling racial slurs. That's not. They hate that. They are. The accelerationist belief is they don't believe there's a political solution to save the white race. They believe that society is going to collapse on its own or from man made events and they want to speed it up. They're not going to stand out there with a sign because number one they say it does nothing. Number two, it makes you a mark. Everybody knows who you are. Now they want to do guerrilla warfare type stuff where they come over here and a power grid goes down over here, a train's derailed over here, a leftist journalist is murdered over here. It's a poison water system just to create chaos, derail the train. Chainsaw trees down on the train track. You know, I don't know how I saw a lot of. I saw a lack of forethought and afterthought. You know, it's like, okay, we're going to take over a section of the Appalachian Mountains. That was my sale. C L country accent I apologize. [01:31:30] Speaker B: How is your sale too? [01:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, right. What are we buying? I'm selling but my sale was looking at Appalachian. A section of the Appalachian mountains to start setting up their own ethno state. Another part of the base had the Upper peninsula of Michigan. They were already scoping in and out, had already flipped one of them's mother who was a nurse. It was going to help with the women and all that stuff. It's like a little compound. Another section of the base had property in a Pacific Northwest and was planning on doing it there. But the afterthought. Okay, so we get our compound. What about local law enforcement? What if they come to enforce the law? What about the National Guard? What about the army, the navy, the Air force, Marines, Coast Guard? I don't know. Throw anybody in there. [01:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:13] Speaker A: Do you think that they're just going. [01:32:16] Speaker B: To let you do it? [01:32:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. [01:32:18] Speaker B: Oregon did it for a minute. [01:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we saw that. Went, yeah, yeah, well. [01:32:23] Speaker B: And I get a lot of, you know, we have really diverse type folks on here and we paint whatever picture you want. But the whole idea is to. Is to take a presupposition about somebody and learn about them or their story and find out that it's not what you thought. And I have a lot of people that, that are. That I find. I find it amazing just from the people that I speak to. But you get a lot of feedback online about how racism is something from the 90s. There is no more racism. This is, you know, it's laughable that somebody's bringing up into discrimination and everything. It's pretty remarkable. And it's. And it's in a number of my world. Me either. That's what I'm saying. But I. [01:33:04] Speaker A: But I believe everybody's prejudiced. But. But there. Racism is out there. Yeah, yeah. [01:33:09] Speaker B: And there's, you know, and maybe generation by generation, hopefully by design and, you know, by pushing everybody forward, each generation is going to be a little better and more considerate and more appreciative. But did you hope. Yeah, but I mean, hearing what you're saying, too, is just an exemplification of why people don't see it so much, because a lot of this stuff is happening kind of behind the scenes as well as. [01:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah, but it could be black separatists, too, that hate whites. It could be. It's just. It's just hate. It's just evil. You know what I mean? But, yeah, that's. It's out there for sure. [01:33:44] Speaker B: It's easier to latch on to a common hated enemy, though, too, right? [01:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah, and a lot of. Yeah, the enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right. A lot of people just don't know, though. Depending on which news channel you watch, and I mean, depending on left or right, you know, and then most of the news is. I mean, as you were law enforcement, how many times were you on the scene, you're still in the middle of the investigation and you see the news report and you're like, that's not even close to what's going on here. But we can't put it out because it's an active investigation. But a lot of people, they're skewed. They don't know or they live in a bubble. Not trying to make them sound like they're scared, it's just that you don't know. I say this in a lot of people. I'm pretty sure I put in the. Yeah, I put it in the book. When I sit down with a lot of people that don't know the world the way I or my peers are, meant that we've seen it. I said, look, here's. I just want you to understand there are evil people on this planet that want to do evil things to good people. And it's been that way pretty much since the beginning of time. I'm not saying. I'm not wanting you to walk around scared to death, not come out of your house and all that, like it's some Covid shutdown or something. I'm not saying that I'm just saying just be a little more aware. Or if you can't understand that and your brain doesn't want to do it because it'll put you in a deep depression, just be happy that we've got people out here on the front line that are the, that are the livestock guardian dogs that are the shepherds. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:10] Speaker A: That will run. That'll go after the one. Yeah. Save the one and leave the 99. You know, it's a, it's. I'm not trying to chest beat or put law enforcement up and over. It's just first responders, man. I mean, and then we can get it. It's a whole side tangent of first responders. Us being number one in suicide and divorce and alcoholism and dying within five years after retiring. I mean, who signs up for that? [01:35:40] Speaker B: Not many people anymore. No, I mean, they're one. [01:35:43] Speaker A: Because you're not doing it for the money, that's for sure. [01:35:45] Speaker B: Well, no, and people will argue too. These guys are coming on and you know, starting at $130,000. I'm like, where. Yeah, if you're living, living in Manhattan, maybe. Yeah, I know cost of living is. [01:35:56] Speaker A: And it's not going to stretch. No, it's not going to stretch. [01:35:59] Speaker B: Well. And it's so, it's interesting too that, so that, that leads to another question. What about the new gen of folks that are coming forward? Because it is a completely different generation of people that are coming in to take law enforcement roles with a new law enforcement objective. I mean, things are completely different. They were starting to deal with, you know, community meetings and all that kind of stuff and we were coming through, but. But now it's kind of undone the whole old school way of doing law enforcement. And man, I see lots of guys too that I see law enforcement kind of falling off and it makes it difficult because a lot of people don't want to be law enforcement. So now you're picking from lesser of the crop that you had in the first place. Do you find that in the same trend? Do you find that trending at all? First of all, that's just my opinion. And second of all, do you think UC wise, is it going to come into that or are you still talking about, you know, the small percentage of people that are capable of doing that are still going to be. [01:36:57] Speaker A: I think federally you're going to, you will keep seeing undercovers. But to agree with your point, over the last several years, the defund, the police movements and stuff like that, you got a couple about it. Well, not a Couple. You had what, four or five people doing something horrendous and it gets blasted and. Yeah. And then everybody's taking a beating in law enforcement because of it. But yeah, I've seen that trend. I believe the pendulum swinging back a little bit, though. But to your point, it's hard, especially in some places. I mean, like if you. I'm not trying to make it a left or right thing, but let's just say you get a very liberal DA that comes into your town and it's a use of force report that you did, and you did it six years ago. At one point in Austin PD there was like 36 current officers indicted by that DA for something you were cleared of six years ago, five years ago, four years ago. Why would you go do your job? I'm not saying forget the oath you took, but could you start to see when that hot call comes in, everybody takes their time getting there. I'm not saying that's what they're doing, but I'm saying the foundation is there for it. Yeah. [01:38:14] Speaker B: I think that's the old school way of dealing with it. Where you found some of the old heads back in those days that would go park under the tree and you'd consider them worthless. [01:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:21] Speaker B: They never got in trouble. [01:38:22] Speaker A: Right? Right. Yeah. You react to everything. You show up late. But when it's hard to fill the uniform slots, well, that means you're going to have less for your narcotics and your gang and whatever your covert squads. And then is, are they doing a lot of undercover? Maybe not. Maybe they're just hopping in the car with the source. But I hope it doesn't take this. Usually what I've seen is it takes a catastrophic event for that pendulum to swing back the other way. I don't want that to happen. Yeah. But I think it's. I think it's swinging back. It's a calling for sure. It's an oath. You take that oath. It's a calling. You are not doing it for money. And hopefully you're doing it because you want to make the world a better place. [01:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're not being lazy if you're doing that either. [01:39:17] Speaker A: Right. [01:39:17] Speaker B: You know, and there's a lot of people just don't understand too. I mean, you could. You could be misconstrued when you say, you know, these guys have had been cleared, but there were these use of force cases and. And people are in. Up in arms and. Because it's difficult to understand how a use of force could be put upon you. [01:39:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:39:34] Speaker B: Because you're in fisticuffs with somebody that's attacking you, whatever, you're trying to arrest. [01:39:37] Speaker A: Them, and you got to make a split second. [01:39:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And look, they got to look at it. And if you get acquitted, then that's fine. But they've also had people acquitted of things that were also atrocious, which just leaves that giant question mark in the middle of the room. [01:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:39:52] Speaker B: Which is why it's. It's. It's such a frustrating. [01:39:54] Speaker A: I'll say this. There's not a lot of things a good cop hates worse than a bad cop. [01:39:58] Speaker B: And I hope so. [01:39:59] Speaker A: That's. [01:39:59] Speaker B: That's the quickest way to actually, you know, that old blue line thing is the quicker that goes away, the better. Yeah, you're right. Is leave the good ones. [01:40:06] Speaker A: Yep. So clean it up. [01:40:10] Speaker B: So now that you've gotten to the point where you've stepped out and a lot of these cats have. Have gotten out, there's. It's one thing to find out that you're a cop or a federal agent, and then they find out who you are. It's another for you to now be retired and somewhat of a civilian. You have any concerns about guys that have gotten out? Anything you. You're concerned about with your family, Any precautions you take on general, or is that just. [01:40:36] Speaker A: I take precautions for sure. It goes with the job. I will say this. Generally, the people I've talked to, they're okay that you were undercover. They just don't like snitches. They're like, if you would have been. If you would have been a 1 percenter and you turned on us, I ain't got nothing right for you. But you were you the whole time you were a fed. You show up again telling, my age, but it's the Bugs Bunny cartoon. I mean, the. The wolf, the coyote shows up in the morning, and the sheepdog shows up. Morning, Sam. Morning, Ralph. They clock in all day long. Coyotes trying to get sheep. All day long. Sheep dogs trying to protect the sheep. They clock out. [01:41:20] Speaker B: And that's a great way to look at it. You do. Some. Some of the guys will get out and say, look, you were doing your job. Say, hey, you're a bad guy. I wish you well now. [01:41:28] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's not always that simple. But I generally did connect with a lot of those people, and some of them have reached out to me since. [01:41:38] Speaker B: That's great. [01:41:38] Speaker A: Since this book launch thing. And it warms my heart because I love a success story, and I'll help anybody. I mean, if you're doing the right thing, you know, I'm not going to help you go move 40 kilos of cocaine somewhere. I don't want to be a part of conspiracy or nothing, but if you're doing the right thing. And there's one guy in particular, I, He. He picked up a felony, and I helped him pick it up. Yeah, it was me doing the undercover, but he's on the up and up, and I've met him, and I did a character reference letter for his sentencing hearing. I let the United States Attorney's office know I was doing it so it wouldn't blindside them. But I said, look, if you're doing the right thing, who better to be your character reference on your application than the guy who helped give you the felony? [01:42:24] Speaker B: It's beautiful. [01:42:25] Speaker A: You know, I mean, it's just like I tell people, I go, man, I committed all kinds of crimes. I just didn't get caught. Had I been caught and convicted, I would have never been. I might have been able to be a cop somewhere, depending on where you're at. [01:42:39] Speaker B: Five years. [01:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely would. I definitely wouldn't have been a fed, you know, so, yeah, I'm not hating, but danger. Yeah, it's out there. But I like to just say I'm not walking around on eggshells. I don't. I try not to live my life in fear, but I'm not walking around my eyes closed either. [01:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, when you have other people to worry about. [01:43:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:43:00] Speaker B: When I did what you did. And then you now have a family, too. That's, you know, you have to be equally protective of. They didn't sign up for it. [01:43:06] Speaker A: You did. No. Yeah, you're right. They. They did not sign up for. For it. But, yeah, there's a few that if they got out, I'd like to know they were getting out, you know, just to see. But I'd be more than happy to sit down on the table and talk with them. [01:43:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be fascinating. [01:43:22] Speaker A: Pour one. Or if they don't drink, that's fine. We'll do whatever. [01:43:26] Speaker B: So, also, now that you're out, how has it changed your marriage and. Or. Or has it changed your marriage, your. Your faith in particular? Have those two things changed for the better, worse, or for the better? [01:43:42] Speaker A: My. My faith was strong at the end anyway. I was. I was back, you know, and it's kept me grounded. I mean, and staying involved and surrounding yourself with your Christ following friends who will pray over you and be that support. But also not just support. They Will keep you grounded. They will keep you real. They will be the one behind you going, you're just another person. Yeah, it's nothing special, Colin. [01:44:07] Speaker B: Bullsh. [01:44:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right. But I make it kind of joking. But somebody will be like, hey, so what are you doing in retirement? So I'm trying to pay my wife back for all those 28 years of BS I put her through. You know, it's. It's going good. It's going good. I will say that I thought I had a real good game plan for retiring, but about a year, year and a half out, I was like, I got to change my way of thinking. I got to change some things because I'm not on the front line anymore. You're not getting in altercations. You're not getting any kind of physical confrontation kind of thing. So for me and my mentality, maybe that means I need to go to do some Brazilian jiu jitsu and some Krav Maga and get my butt handed to me, and then I drive home super calm, you know, There you go. Yeah. [01:44:52] Speaker B: And eventually you did too old for a lot of that anyway, so you may as well get as much of it. [01:44:56] Speaker A: Yeah, you get. You get one good workout in and you pop something. You got to have another surgery like that Gummy. [01:45:01] Speaker B: Yes. [01:45:01] Speaker A: I'll be back in six months. But no, I said it's. It's been. It's been good. We've been blessed. But I did have to. I had to change some. Some minor changes, but, you know, now it's just these days, since the book launch, I don't even know what day it is, man. I'm. I'm just going. I'm trying. [01:45:22] Speaker B: Was the book process a long one? [01:45:24] Speaker A: I think me and Michelle, I think we knocked that. I need to ask her. I'm thinking like six to eight months. We knocked that thing out because a lot of it, it was already here. I mean, I teach it, so I'm just doing it. And it's just a matter of putting it into the book in a way that's attractive to readers and letting them be in there, not write it like a police report. [01:45:43] Speaker B: Right. [01:45:43] Speaker A: You know? [01:45:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:44] Speaker A: Just the facts. [01:45:45] Speaker B: That could be bad. [01:45:46] Speaker A: I know, right? Well, that's how it started. The first. The first three. The first three chapters. I think we're right at three. I handed it to my wife, and she's like, this is terrible. So I called Michelle, the co writer, and she's like, I'm like, I'm writing it like I'm a dad. Gum. FBI agent. She goes, I'm writing it like I'm a journalist doing a report. So we're like, we got to change this. [01:46:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:06] Speaker A: And then we kind of got our flow going. I will say that you had, to me personally, I had to dive deep into some areas, like growing up and when did I. I mean, what am I trying to say with the book, you know, and things like that. [01:46:18] Speaker B: Right. A story trajectory, different things and. Yeah, exactly. You've got to have the beginning and the end without just telling. [01:46:25] Speaker A: Right. [01:46:26] Speaker B: 20 stories and then. [01:46:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:46:27] Speaker B: And that's a compilation. [01:46:28] Speaker A: Let me tell you another crazy one. [01:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:30] Speaker A: You know, but it's. It was a great. I didn't want to do it. I didn't even want to do the Rolling Stones article. But my friends at the time were like, dude, you need to get some ip, Which I didn't know what the hell that meant. Intellectual property. And I go. And that would be. I still don't know what it means. Yeah. And the Rolling Stones article came out and then it kind of pushed things. And there were literary agents that kept calling Paul Solitaroff, the journalist that did the Rolling Stones interview. And I kept saying no. And he, he's very persuasive. He kept, he kept on me and I ended up taking a couple of calls and it ended up being awesome. I'm so happy I did it. My family's happy, they're ecstatic. It's a legacy for my kids and, and whatnot. [01:47:15] Speaker B: And it's something totally different. [01:47:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:17] Speaker B: You know, I mean, it's cool that you. I mean, because so many cops and agents identify themselves in whole. By their career. [01:47:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:26] Speaker B: And especially when you do extraordinary things like you did, you know, so it's cool to have something else that you can go out and. And not be just still dived into something where you're trying to. [01:47:35] Speaker A: Right. [01:47:36] Speaker B: Simulate the things that you've done earlier. [01:47:38] Speaker A: And at the end of the day, I'm still an instructor. I'm a speaker, I'm a teacher. And that's the way I was taught and that's the way it was. The jope of Stones and the. And the Steve Sal Mary's and the Lenny Carrolls that called me and the Juan Jackson's when I crashed and like, hey, country, how you doing? I'm like, man, I'm doing okay. And they're like, you take care of yourself, you take care of your family. But as soon as you can put pen to paper about everything, you've learned how things went wrong, what you can do to make them not happen. But. And then that's how we get our best blocks of instruction, and that's how we pay it forward, and that's how we keep people from making mistakes that have already been made. And. And they were spot on. [01:48:17] Speaker B: That's beautiful. [01:48:17] Speaker A: I've been blessed to be able to tell the story pretty decently. [01:48:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because the. The other. The other guys can't talk about it. [01:48:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:48:25] Speaker B: It didn't make it through. [01:48:26] Speaker A: Right. But, yeah, it's just a true blessing. I mean, you're going to have haters, and I won't give them any time. [01:48:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's fine. [01:48:34] Speaker A: I mean, you know, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. You know, you hear it, you're like, come on, man. And then I let it bother me, but that's a fault of mine. And at some point, who. Who knew Taylor Swift was so prophetic when she said, haters are going to hate and I'm just going to shake it off. Shake it off. [01:48:50] Speaker B: That's right. [01:48:52] Speaker A: Whoa. So that's what I'm trying. [01:48:54] Speaker B: Somebody with a daughter speaking. [01:48:55] Speaker A: I know, right? I'm like, who knew when I took my daughters to the concert, she was going to give me something that would help me out years later? [01:49:03] Speaker B: My buddy says, some people want to canonize you, and other people want to put you in front of the cannon. [01:49:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's. It is what it is, man. I'll say a prayer for them. Here's the thing. They can hate. And if they call me tomorrow and be like, hey, Country, I was thinking of doing a book, man. You can tell me how the process went. Yeah. I'll tell you. [01:49:23] Speaker B: Oh, even a favor you'd be all right with. Okay, well, that's. That's. [01:49:26] Speaker A: Try to pay it forward. [01:49:27] Speaker B: There you go. [01:49:28] Speaker A: Now, I. I try to start with a clean slate. I don't have that. I don't have that DNA trait that lets me hold a grudge. However, after about three minutes, you may remind me why I didn't like you and I took a break from you in the first place. But I'll try to start. [01:49:41] Speaker B: There's that transparency. [01:49:42] Speaker A: I try to start clean. I'm like. After about three minutes, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is not good. We're not going to. We're not going to make it past three minutes. But I tried. [01:49:52] Speaker B: So how was that Rogan experience? That had to be really interesting. [01:49:55] Speaker A: It was awesome. I was nervous. I mean, I. As an entertainer. Right. I've been blessed to be. I mean, this whole thing. This whole thing, me sitting right here, started because of my connections and love for professional wrestling. That's how it all started, really. Yeah. And then I just met somebody who met somebody, and they introduced me, and here we are years later, and this is where it's at. Rogan. I was nervous because it's Rogan, and I'm not just. It's not like you're just asking me questions and I'm speaking to a group. This is my life story. Yeah. Part of it, anyway. [01:50:30] Speaker B: And I was long enough to tell almost all of it, too. [01:50:33] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah, I know. There was still so much we didn't cover. Oh, I know. But he was excellent. It was a great thing. But the people asked me, what was the coolest thing about that experience. I said, watching my wife and kids, I said, they're like fricking rock stars, man. They're glowing. I mean, you could see the glows. And, I mean, of course they went shopping, you know, And I'm like, hey, nothing's come in yet. We haven't. [01:51:00] Speaker B: That's a big deal, though. That's really cool. That's. I love that for you, too, man. Good things happen to good people, man. [01:51:05] Speaker A: Well, I. I'm just. Again, I'm blessed. I'm trying to. Trying to be in that humble spot. And for me and my. My faith, it's just. I hope I'm doing the Lord's will, you know? But, yeah, I mean, the Rogan thing, I can't keep track of Spotify, but I think the YouTube is 1.7 million views. But the Business Insider one, It came out five days ago, and it's like 2.2 million already. [01:51:31] Speaker B: Unbelievable. [01:51:32] Speaker A: So, I don't know. But I will say a lot of people don't know that. If you like audiobooks, I did it. It's my voice. [01:51:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, that is. And that also is quite the task. [01:51:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:45] Speaker B: You just think, yeah, I'll go in and record this in a better part of a day. [01:51:48] Speaker A: But, no, I was. I will say this. You're a musician as well. Right. So I'm pretty solid in the studio, but sitting there in, like, a sound booth where I actually heard myself whistling when I was talking, I'm like, what the. [01:52:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:00] Speaker A: Where did that whistle come from? I'm like, am I turning into a groundhog? But it took us four days, and the last two days were really just half days. So once we got that groove going, yeah, it's good. But I wanted it. I wanted it to come across more as a conversation just like this. But I had to be verbatim because that's. That version of the book that we were reading from had gone through FBI pre publication review process, which means, by the way, if you work all those cases. So some of them might be domestic terrorists, some of them might be gang, some of them might be bikers, some of them might be transnational crime, might be public corruption. It has to go through the entire undercover unit because it's an undercover book to include backstopping, safeguard, everything else. Then it has to go through every subdesk, public corruption, gang, domestic terrorism operation, then to the divisions, down to the squads to look. So that. That thing has been going through with. [01:53:01] Speaker B: A lot of those guys don't read. That's even a bigger problem. [01:53:05] Speaker A: I don't either. You know, I'm like, can we get a bigger font and more pictures? But yeah, that. That was. That was a. That was a big deal going through all that. [01:53:17] Speaker B: That's crazy. [01:53:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't know what led me into talking about that, but. [01:53:22] Speaker B: Well, it's all part of the surreal experience after. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's fantastic. Like, it couldn't happen to a cooler dude. I really. [01:53:29] Speaker A: Well, thank you. [01:53:30] Speaker B: Great. [01:53:30] Speaker A: Thank you. It means a lot. I hopefully. Hopefully people are liking it. Oh, I know. I was gonna say I had to read it verbatim, right? So I had to read it verbatim. So now I'm having to read, which I don't read super fast anyway, but I'm having to read at this speed and talk right behind it, and it has to be verbatim because that's not only what the FBI approved, that's also Simon and Schuster and Adrian's legal people have approved, of course. So I was like, oh, man, I was hoping. I kind of just get the riff, you know, throw a couple of laughs in there. [01:53:57] Speaker B: You gotta do that and call it a podcast. It's not the book exactly. Right. You just kind of. I'm gonna sort of recite the book, but sort of not. I've been difficult. [01:54:04] Speaker A: I've been asked for a lot of people, man, you think about doing a podcast because the storytelling and interviewing and I'm like, I don't know. Because, I mean, doing this book launch, I'm realizing how many podcasts are out there. But I'll tell you one thing I did do that I could do every single day. I did coast to coast radio here out of. Out of California. I had to. In Tennessee. I Had to get. I didn't go to bed. From 1am to 3am I did the interview. But the first hour was an interview. After that, the second hour was live calls. You don't know what you're getting. Like, we're going to so and so in Anchorage, we're going to so and so in Guam, we're going to so. And they're asking. Some of them are crazy questions. Some of them are. But that filled a void of me getting those call outs and going. I was like, I like this. [01:54:48] Speaker B: Yes. [01:54:48] Speaker A: I was like, this is exciting because I don't know what's coming. You just ask and I just talk. [01:54:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:54:52] Speaker A: That'd be pretty cool. [01:54:54] Speaker B: But yeah. So you tried to. You tried to essentially read your audio book and sound like you're not reading is what you're trying to explain. [01:55:00] Speaker A: Yes, I think it came out okay. Especially if you compare it to like the robotic ones when it's not the actual person, you know. [01:55:07] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. [01:55:08] Speaker A: Like, I was in the basement, it was scary. I was naked. You're like, no, that's not. [01:55:13] Speaker B: So the hard parts are, are when you're quoting one of the bad guys. [01:55:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:55:18] Speaker B: You sort of want to change your voice a little bit, but you don't want to pretend you're an actor. [01:55:21] Speaker A: No, I can't help it because I. I'm mirror. I just can't help it. So if I start talking to this Massachusetts dudes, I start talking just like I'm from. When I imitate them, I'm like, you know, and I've had. Again, some of them reached out to me and I've had them. They're saying, man, their family members and stuff. When they hear me, they go. If they close their eyes, they go, that is you. And I'm like, yeah, I spent a lot of time around you, you know. [01:55:43] Speaker B: That's funny. [01:55:44] Speaker A: Yes. [01:55:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And any links or whatever, obviously we'll include all those too, but. [01:55:49] Speaker A: Sure. [01:55:49] Speaker B: Where can we. Where can people find that? [01:55:51] Speaker A: Anywhere you can buy a book. Amazon is probably the easiest. You can go to Simon and Schuster's website and get it. And again, the audio books there or go. I've heard a lot of people say they don't like to order. They'd rather go to their local bookstore because that way sometimes the book gets damaged in shipping. You know, they want a fresh one. Yeah. So yeah, anywhere you can go, it's out there. But be aware on Amazon, there's a lot of scam stuff too. It's not hard to figure out, it'll be like, Scott Payne, codename Pale Horse. And there's my book. And then right under it is, Scott Payne, Agent Pale Horse workbook. [01:56:26] Speaker B: Are you. [01:56:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm taking pictures of that and send it to Simon and Schuster, like, oh, that's a scam. And then one of them, they took my cover and they just removed certain things from codename Pale Horse, but it's still my face. And they used AI to make me older. And I got to tell you, if I look that way in about 20 years, it's pretty, Pretty tough looking dude. I like that. [01:56:46] Speaker B: Still badass. [01:56:47] Speaker A: Like, that dude looks. He looks like he's angry. [01:56:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:56:50] Speaker A: Probably because he can't walk, you know, but yeah, just. It's just my book. There's no workbook, nothing like that. But yeah, you can get the audio and all that there. And then my. I'm on Instagram, everything's pretty much at Scott Payne Big Country. Pale Horse was already taken. So. [01:57:08] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. Pale Horse was your moniker for the Nazi infiltration the base. [01:57:13] Speaker A: I went in as White Warrior, and then shortly after that, I changed it to Pale Horse. [01:57:18] Speaker B: Any reason for that? [01:57:20] Speaker A: One of the guys names was Pestilence. And I asked him, I said, where'd you come up with Pestilence? And he's like, well, it's one of the Four Horsemen. It's, you know, it's Plague. And then I went, oh, that is way cooler than mine. And then I was sitting there and after a couple of drinks or whatever, I was like, you know, I've always been fascinated with the Four Horsemen. And I said, and Pale Horse. And on Pale Horse was Death. That's the Grim Reaper. I said, would you be offended if I changed mine to Pale Horses? Absolutely not. So I became Pale Horse at Eater of Souls. Gotta have something. [01:57:54] Speaker B: I'll hit you there. [01:57:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm not. I'm not active anymore. I'm not active anymore. I don't have a phone to go active, nor do I want to. [01:58:01] Speaker B: It's freaking great. [01:58:02] Speaker A: As I say to most people, sometimes. Sometimes when I'm teaching, in between a break, they'll be like, hey, you heard about this group? You heard about this group? And I'm like. I said, listen, let me. Let me answer that. When I get back on stage and I go up and I go, hey, I appreciate all the questions, but since I retired in 2021, I made a conscious decision to stop hanging out with neo Nazi white supremacists. I said, so there's a group of people over here. Still working it. I'll point you out to them and you can talk to them and they'll help you out. [01:58:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Well, brother, I really appreciate it, man. [01:58:30] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:58:30] Speaker B: Thank you for the time. [01:58:31] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:58:33] Speaker B: We still burned plenty of time. No Rogan, but we did it. [01:58:36] Speaker A: No, that's all right, man. Thanks for having me. [01:58:39] Speaker B: What's it take? What you going to do? Success around the sand the second grade rules A confident fake to make you do make you do what they want when they won't be the fool A diplomatic Eric Bayes Is the one to see it through don't let those bigots take you off your game or just a lot of news Just sit here in the front seat Baby, ain't that sweet Take a little honey from the money bee but don't pay the pool an apolitical magical potion A missing piece at the end of the game A slow see the truth and soul motion.