Infiltrating Hate: The Secret World of the FBI undercover | Scott Payne

[00:00:06] As you listen to this episode, ask yourself, would you do what my guest Scott Payne did for 28 years? He's a retired undercover FBI agent, spent 28 years undercover taking down American Nazi groups, white supremacy groups, biker gangs. His new book, code name Pale Horse, peels back the curtain on this wild ride that he took.

[00:00:32] 18 months embedded with the outlaws motorcycle gang and there was one section where he's literally, you know, he's wired up and they decided to do a strip search on him that could have just ended him. I mean, it's there's so then he infiltrated the KKK in Alabama to and and he took on the code name Pale Horse to penetrate something called the base, which is a neo Nazi crew plotting this race war.

[00:00:58] 18 months later, they had goat sacrifices, synagogue attacks, all sorts of weird plans that are much more incredibly violent than just simply protesting in the streets. Like there they were and are planning an actual race war in the US. 18 months later, Scott's operations racked up arrests, saved lives. 18 months later, he took incredible risks and all while balancing a wife, two daughters and his religious faith.

[00:01:28] So this is raw, unfiltered. This is what's going on in the darkest part of America and it's straight from the front line. So let's dive in. This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show.

[00:01:56] You infiltrated these American Nazi white supremacy groups. Uh, your, your, the story, uh, towards more towards the middle of the book was about your infiltration as an undercover agent of the OMC, the outlaws motorcycle club. And there was a story in there that was just so riveting.

[00:02:18] And I have, I, even though we're going to, we're going to talk about the American Nazi stuff in a second, but this was the, these, this rival gang to the hell's angels. And they're involved in all sorts of different criminal activities. But at one point they didn't, they, their national leader wanted them to really test you out and search you. And so you're, you're called into this like basement room in this bar and you got it. It's a strip search. You don't know what's happening.

[00:02:47] Was this like the scariest moment in your career? It's up there. Uh, I mean, I, I, I talk about it. I mean, I've been teaching that block since like 2008, I think. And I started with just notes. Cause you know, until the case is completely adjudicated, you can't show videos and pictures and all this stuff. But I, uh, yeah, if somebody asked me scary moments being undercover, it's up there.

[00:03:12] It's probably the most, but there's other ones where I've almost been caught and there's other ones where I'm like, dadgummit, I can't believe I let myself get in this situation. But, uh, yeah, that was, uh, that was, uh, that was not expected. I, uh, I maybe got a little too lax, but. Well, well, well talk about it. Like, like you basically were this friend of yours. I mean, he was your quote unquote friend. You had, you had built up a relationship with him as being, um, you know, undercover.

[00:03:42] And he was a, a high ranking person in this local OMC. I don't know if you call it club club chat feels like chapter. Okay. Club feels like two high school, but, uh, uh, you're, you're, he asked you to go into this room. You've never been to. And it's like, and you know, from the tone of his voice, it sounds serious. You see everyone in the, or the people in the room has got, have got guns. One guy's blocking the door. Uh, so you can't get out and you've had nothing but good relations with all of them to this point, but you knew something was up.

[00:04:12] So what's going through your head? Like just step by step. Well, I can give you a quick nutshell to kind of get you in, uh, what was going on. Uh, we had infiltrated, or I mean, I was the undercover, but it takes a village. Right. So the FBI had infiltrated the outlaws. I was the undercover for the case. I'd been with them for a year and a half undercover. We had done all kinds of criminal activity where nobody got arrested, whether it be stolen vehicles or a carjack vehicle or whatever, me buying drugs from them.

[00:04:42] And we upped the ante. We were going to be doing a drug protection. Um, it's a long drawn out story, but the gist of it is, uh, they believed, they believed I was a high ranking member of an international theft ring. I was based on the border of Mexico. Um, and then eventually I let it be known that I did used to be in the drug game and they were always, drug dealers are always looking for a lower price for the drugs and a higher quality. They're always looking for that.

[00:05:11] And the outlaws, this particular chapter and several members of it were, uh, wanting to meet my connections that with the cartel. So we are going to do this drug protection. And again, I'm not forcing anybody to do it. I mean, I say it multiple times. I'm like, look, nobody's making you do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. And we think everything is going to be pretty cool.

[00:05:34] Um, but in that year and a half, the three closest relationships I had, I mean, you make acquaintances and stuff, but the three closest relationships that I'd formed, uh, the second one is the guy who took me in the basement. And what happened was, is, uh, the president of the chapter told me, he said, Hey man, I want my, they called me Tex because I was based out of Texas. They're like, Tex, Hey, come over to the clubhouse this night, whatever. And for the people that don't know, uh, at least in this clubhouse, if you're not a patch

[00:06:03] member, which means you haven't gone through the patch process, you don't have the leather vest with, they call their cut or their colors with the, you know, the outlaw MC Massachusetts and all that stuff on it. If you're not a patch member, you're not allowed to touch the door. You're not allowed to touch the phone, but I've been in that thing. I don't know how many times. Um, and they let me, I mean, they let me in. I just knew the rules.

[00:06:29] So they called me to come over and it was, uh, uh, 1% or biker clubs and a lot of biker clubs. They have a mandatory meeting once a week, but they refer to it as church. So the assistant United States attorney, uh, we were preparing for this, this, uh, drug protection and the assistant United States attorney was like, Hey man, are they talking about this in the clubhouse? I'm like, yeah, these are several members that are going to be doing this. And he said, man, I really, it would really be good if we could get them talking about

[00:06:55] that, uh, like on recordings, uh, in that clubhouse. Cause it'll help with search warrants and, uh, uh, asset forfeiture and stuff like that. So of course I say, yeah, because as, as type a undercover first responder, that's our mentality. We're like, yeah, I'll do it. So I get over there and everything's kind of weird. I get there and I'm knocking on the door and they're like, Hey man, no, finally Joe dogs, the president cracks the door and looks at me and says, we're not ready. And I was kind of like a smart aleck.

[00:07:24] I'm like, well, why, why'd you tell me to come over here then? So they send me away with another member. Uh, we come back and now I'm in the clubhouse door shut. It's a heavily fortified door. It's got a metal bar across it. It's got dead bolts, all kinds of stuff on it. Um, and I'm doing my normal. I mean, again, I've been with these guys a year and a half and I'm cracking jokes. And, uh, what I didn't see is that they would laugh. But if I turned my head, my recording devices still picked it up.

[00:07:52] But when I turned my head, they immediately went stone faced and you could see one of the members in the back. It looks like he's kind of dancing, but he's, cause he's doing it to the beat of the song that's on the, and the clubhouse, but he wasn't dancing. He was warming up. And at that point, my supposed number two friend, uh, who went by the road name clothesline said, Hey Tex, you got a minute. And I'm like, yeah. So he proceeds to go through this door. The only door I'd never been in, um, in the clubhouse.

[00:08:19] And we go down, you can call it a basement because it was, but it's a Northeastern home split level. It's like you go in and it's very small. It's more like a cellar to me. I couldn't stand up straight. Um, I could probably touch the wall on both sides, but mentally and physically that thing feels small and I know something's up and I know it's not good. And he carries me down with another member and they, they brandish their guns. They let me see them once standing on the steps to keep me from leaving.

[00:08:47] And, and my buddy clothesline, I say my buddy is, um, telling me, he tells me, Hey, uh, his words were, look, there's a lot of shit going on and it's my job to protect my brothers. And then he proceeds to tell me to take off all my clothes, um, write my full name down, my address, my phone number, my wife's name, my kids' names. And, uh, as I tell people, when I explained what was going on, had I not been wired? Okay. It's embarrassing.

[00:09:15] I got to take off all my clothes in front of two men in a cold basement, you know, but that was the harm, you know? Uh, but I was wired. I was wired to the hill. Um, and I, because of the adrenaline dump and because of the, oh crap moment, um, and the stress and that anxiety kicking, I forgot my middle name. So I'm sitting there trying to remember my middle name and I'm going through this Rolodex in my head of like, I'm Scott Callaway. I'm Scott Joseph Callaway.

[00:09:43] I'm like, nah, Joseph was a middle name of another alias I had years ago. And, um, it finally hit me what my name was, but, um, it was, it feels like just like any adrenaline dump moment. Um, it may have been a couple of minutes, but it felt like it was hours. Cause you get. Did they ask you your middle name? Oh, well he told me to write it down. Yeah. So I, I, and I did, I remembered it. I remembered it was Andrew and I was like, okay, yeah, I wrote this down and I even told

[00:10:10] them, um, I, well, let me take you back while they were doing that. I didn't realize I did it, but I did a distraction technique cause I couldn't think I'd had no idea I said this, but apparently while I was trying to remember my middle name, uh, I turned to them and saying, what else do you need? Um, and they're like, what? And I said my name and what else? And then they screamed upstairs. Hey, what else do you need for that website? So now I'm getting some intelligence. I'm like, okay, they're going to run me. They're going to Google me.

[00:10:37] And back then there was a website called who's a rat.com where anybody who could out a narcotics officer or an undercover, they try to, they try to, they put it up, they post it up there. So, um, but then I take, I take off my, I take off my jacket. I take off my shirts. How many I had on cause I know it was cold. So I probably had a couple of layers on, take all that off. I take my boots off and I pull my pants and underwear down around my ankles. So I'm standing there and he searches me.

[00:11:06] Um, and at some point while he's, he's searching me, I'm like, like, I know the guy and he knows me. Uh, so we know each other's baseline, like how we respond. But if you hear the recording, you can clearly hear that my voice is way higher. You can hear that my throat is super tight because I'm paying, I mean, it's, it's an old crap moment. So, uh, where's the wire? I, for trade craft reasons, uh, I won't talk about where I had it hidden and stuff like

[00:11:34] that because there's still people out there doing undercover and they may be hiding it the same way. Right. So, uh, but it was, I had one, I had one in my clothing. And then I had some other devices on me. Um, because I always carried backups just in case, uh, something didn't work, you know, or the video went bad. At least you got audio behind you kind of thing. So I, uh, um, I, they checked me thoroughly and I think I'm okay.

[00:12:02] And again, I'm panicking and I'm looking at, I'm looking at this guy clothesline and I'm not saying it, but if you can read my face, I'm basically saying, tell me everything's going to be okay. And I felt like he was kind of looking back at me, like everything's cool. This is just normal. But that didn't stop the panic. Right. So, um, he checks me and he tells me, he said, trust me, if somebody accused me of being a fed, I'd probably smash them in the effing mouth. And I looked at him and said, I'm not happy.

[00:12:31] And he said, well, I get it, man. You know, and we were talking and I think I'm done. And he says, uh, and I'm kind of speeding this up, right? I'm sorry, but no, no, that's okay. It's perfect. Yeah. It's a, it's a long, it's, it's like an eight minute, eight or nine minute video of the moment I go down the steps to the moment I come back up. Um, and I think I'm done and I'm pulling my pants back up and then he grabs a piece of

[00:13:01] clothing that I took off. And that piece of clothing had, had one of the wires in it and he starts grabbing it and rubbing his fingers over it and needing it. Why? Did he suspect? Cause he's, no, he's checking. I mean, he's just doing his job. He's like, and he even asked me, but when he grabbed it, he's like, uh, he goes, Hey, I'm not going to find anything in here. I don't want to write like some making pictures of my old lady. And he kind of giggles. Well, again, I giggle back, but it's not my giggle.

[00:13:28] You know, if you let, if you hear it, I'm like, cause I'm like, I'm scared. And, uh, he, he basically looks right at my device and you can hear me cause I'm watching. I mean, what am I going to do? There's like 13 outlaws in the clubhouse. The doors are locked. I'm downstairs with two, I'm in the basement with two guys with guns. I don't care how tough you are. That's kind of like a no win situation.

[00:13:55] So, um, as he's going across my, my clothing, you can hear me give an audible sigh. Again, I don't know. I do it, but I'm just watching and you hear me go. Cause I'm just like, what am I going to do, man? And he doesn't find it. And we immediately kind of start talking and I work my way back up and then the anxiety goes down. But I will tell you that through the rest of the night, I didn't sleep.

[00:14:23] I was on such an, uh, you know, the adrenaline kick and I got pissed off. I mean, legitimately I shouldn't have, I shouldn't take it personal. Right. I mean, I'm undercover. They don't know I'm Scott Payne, the FBI agent, but, uh, it pissed me off. And, and I got mad. So a couple of questions about this. Did you, while you were down there and anything could happen and you're being searched and you're, you're vulnerable in the sense that your clothes are off and being there, being searched.

[00:14:51] Did you think to yourself, man, I should have chosen a different line of work. Maybe after the fact, but not at the moment. No. Cause I mean, at the moment you're working it, right? Cause it's, it's a game of chess. I mean, when you're, you're not out here just, I mean, some people do, but I mean, when you're just out here spewing lies and talking trash, that's, that's not, that's not what the undercover technique is. I mean, you're playing a game of chess in here. You're always playing like a master of puppets.

[00:15:18] You're trying to think five moves ahead and you don't know what's going to be sent at you. So you're waiting to see what gets sent to you and you can come up with something and send it back kind of thing. But what, what a lot of people ask is, man, what would you have said? And what, first of all, what would have happened if they found it? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if it'd have been a butt whipping. I don't know if I'd have been shot. I don't know. I didn't see plastic on the floor. I was looking for that. Cause if I'd have seen that, I probably would have tried to fight. Oh, but I didn't understand what you meant by plastic.

[00:15:47] Uh, so in the underbelly of society, criminal world, if you see somebody spreading out plastic on a floor and they're walking you on it, they're probably going to kill you. That's the best to help clean up. So you don't get blood everywhere. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at altitra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

[00:16:27] In the book, you mentioned that you were, if they found something and said something, you had two choices. One is to just very quickly say, listen, I'm an FBI agent. You have two choices. Either, you know, you, you let me go or you're going to, this is going to be a whole lot of hell coming down upon you. I'll tell you exactly what I thought. Um, very close by the way. I, uh, I had two responses. Had they, had he found something, my first response would have been joking.

[00:16:56] Cause that's kind of like my defense. Right. I'm like, uh, I would have been like, I don't know if he just said, what is this? I just said, I don't know. Some naked pictures of your lady. Cause he already threw that bone to me. Right. The only other thing I had, and I remember just like it was yesterday and you were almost spot on. It's, I was going to say the gig is 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 going to break loose. But that would have been a bluff on my part.

[00:17:22] Uh, because most of the time I was in that clubhouse, my cover team couldn't hear me. Um, cause we're talking like 2006 ish, 2007. Uh, of course technology has gotten a lot better since then. But, um, I, uh, I, from the best I knew, they usually couldn't hear me too good. But what I found out at the end of the night, when I turned in my equipment to the cover team, it was the case team. It was, it was, it was me. I mean, for the, pretty much the whole two years, it was just four of us.

[00:17:52] It was me as the undercover, the FBI case agent, who was a buddy of mine, uh, and two task force officers. Well, those two task force officers started the shift and they were, I mean, one of them was a sergeant with, uh, uh, Massachusetts state troopers. The other one was the detective with Brockton police department in Massachusetts. Phenomenal investigators. They've been working the outlaws. They've been in that clubhouse, but they had gotten to know me over the last year and a half as well.

[00:18:19] What I didn't know is that initial, uh, that initial contact that I had with Joe dogs made them think something wasn't right. Um, and they had actually pulled close enough and they heard everything. What I didn't know is that they heard me in the base. They heard him carry me down to the basement. They radioed back to Boston and said, look, they got Scott in the basement. They're stripping him at gunpoint. And you know, of course he's wired. So the way it was told to me is everybody that was working the ship that night, everybody

[00:18:48] in the Boston office was hauling down the highway with blue lights and sirens on, uh, to get to me. The response that the task force officers, they knew that door was heavily fortified and their plan was to drive the vehicle they were in into the cinder blocks around the wall, around the door. So basically you're saying the door is, it's easier to breach the wall than the door. And that was their plan. Um, but they didn't pull the trigger because they were listening to me.

[00:19:15] And even though there's so many training principles in, in what happened there and they, they knew me well enough. They were listening to what I was saying. I kept talking, but you can clearly hear I'm scared. I mean, they didn't pull the trigger. And, uh, I found that out when I had it in the equipment later that night. Wow. And so in retrospect, you probably couldn't have changed any of the action since clothesline had been directed by essentially his boss's boss to do this.

[00:19:45] So he had to do this, but is there any way you could have reacted differently to reduce the number of actions he took in the room or, or, or basically reduce the risk that something bad would happen to you? Is there any kind of tone your voice could have had or words that you could have said? Like, could you have refused to go in the room? Like I'm not going there. I could have, but what would have happened? Maybe they, I don't know if I would have said no, then maybe the deal's off. Maybe they don't come the next day.

[00:20:09] Um, I could have not gone in wired, but yes, kind of my job as an undercover is to get the evidence. Um, if it's there and was that evidence ever used? Like, was that wire necessary? I guess it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they did the deal the next day. That was a, that was a huge lick. We had, um, we moved, I mean, real dope. We moved 40 kilos of cocaine, 40 kilograms of cocaine and a thousand pounds of marijuana from

[00:20:36] one vehicle to another, um, and they help protect it all. Um, but here, and was it, go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to say, I was going to say that another thing that I usually say that it gets a lot of people and it hits me too. But, um, when I, during that time of my life and my marriage, uh, we call them burner phones. It's pretty popular now. Everybody kind of knows what a burner phone is, but you can just go buy a cell phone, pay by the minute it doesn't come back to anything.

[00:21:04] Um, and I bought one of those for my wife so I could call that from my undercover phone. Cause you don't want an undercover phone calling, uh, you know, my wife's phone. Cause it could be connected or the FBI office or whatever. Um, so, uh, that night, um, I was driving home and I always called her, uh, no matter what time it was four in the morning, seven in the morning, I'd be like, Hey, uh, sometimes she would just wake up and say hello. And I'd say, Hey, I'm on my way back to the hotel. Love you just want, you know, I'm okay. I'll talk to you later today.

[00:21:32] Sometimes we'd talk that night when I called her. Um, the first thing she said to me was, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, why? And she said, I was driving in McAllen, Texas is where we're living. She's like, I was driving with the girls earlier tonight at such and such time. And I just got this overwhelming feeling. And I pulled over on the side of the road and started praying for you. And I matched it up. And it's, it was when I was being stripped in the basement. Cause once you felt that.

[00:22:03] That's, I mean, that's definitely intense. I don't know. It takes a special kind of person, which obviously you are to, to do this kind of work because you're putting your life deliberately at risk every day. Not only that, and as you mentioned throughout this book, you know, you're putting your personal life at risk. You're putting your marriage at risk. Like your wife doesn't know how safe you are. She might not even be safe if your cover is blown.

[00:22:31] And also there's like some level of trust. Like you're hanging out with a bunch of it, both with this and other groups and the American Nazis, you're hanging out with people who are like pimping out their girls or their, their girls are just doing anything with them. Um, she's got to know that you're trustworthy. She's got to really trust the, the, the, the base of the marriage. Yeah. Uh, it's not easy. And especially, um, like a lot of marriages, uh, with law enforcement marriages, my wife's not in law enforcement.

[00:23:00] So she's not desensitized to my world. I can tell her as much as I want, but she hasn't lived it. And whether I want to, wanted to believe it or not, I found this out way later in my career. Um, that basically when I go undercover, she kind of is too. So when I need to decompress at the end of a case, uh, so does she as my wife and the mother of our children, you know?

[00:23:27] So I, I, I didn't learn it quick enough, you know, I could have learned it faster, but, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's not easy. Um, it used to just eat her up. She'd be so nervous. And when she was nervous, she would like move furniture. So I'd come back on that outlaws case. I'd come back and open the door and trip over everything. Cause everything in the house had been moved. And then according to her, the way she tells it is she finally just gave it up to the Lord. And I'm not trying to preach to anybody, but she just, she's like, I can sit here and

[00:23:56] drive myself crazy, uh, worrying about him, but I really can't control any of it. So, um, but that didn't, that didn't make it easy, you know? Uh, cause even later on when I was doing the neo-Nazi stuff and the, one of those violent groups, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but, um, she even said, Hey, I was covering you while you were gone or something like that. We were just chilling on the back porch one night. And I remember I kind of giggled cause I was like, he's covering me. I'm like, we've been doing this for like, I don't know, 20 plus years.

[00:24:24] I'm like, you know, I've got a skillset. I'm not saying I'm untouchable cause I'm not or, or be all end all. But I just kind of thought I was like, I had no idea. And then she jerked a knot in my tail, man. She looked at me and she got a mean face and she said, let me tell you something. She said, I'm your wife and it's my job to cover you. And when you're not here, I am covering you. And I'm like, I, I immediately, uh, corrected my direction and told her I appreciated everything.

[00:24:52] So that's great. And, you know, you are dealing with these incredibly violent groups and you know, what surprised me when you started talking about the, these white supremacist groups, the, the let's call them American Nazis, both in the beginning of the book and towards the end of the book, how much more, it's like you said, this is not your grandfather's Ku Klux Klan. Like these are much more extreme. And you use the term accelerationist.

[00:25:19] Like they're not just doing marches on main street about, you know, white power. They're, they're accelerating racial strife in the country to, to create an opportunity for them to take over basically. Correct. And like you, you said many of them were in favor of the BLM movement and had voted for like, for instance, Hillary Clinton. And that surprised me. Maybe. Me too. Can you, can you describe why? Uh, yeah.

[00:25:48] So, so this, this group that, uh, was kind of like the last big undercover I did. I did some, I did a lot of other things, but I didn't talk about them in the book because it was so close to when I retired. I didn't know if the cases were still active kind of thing. I don't want, you know, you don't want to jeopardize any thing that's going on. Um, but in this case in particular, that's where I started. I already, I'd already infiltrated several like neo-Nazi groups and the Klan and stuff like that.

[00:26:15] But like you said, most of the time, even in law enforcement, when you say white supremacy, people think hoods and robes, or they think the ones like Charlottesville where you're on this, everybody's on the picket lines with signs and screaming nonsense. That's not what this is. Uh, acceleration is, um, it really comes, there's a book called Siege and Siege was written by James Mason. James Mason is a long time white supremacist.

[00:26:42] He created the group, Adam Woffin and Adam Woffin is an accelerationist group as well. But they kind of, when you're in that kind of community, they say siege culture. Have you read siege? You know, have you been red pilled? They do the whole matrix thing. If you've been red pilled, that's your red pill moment. Uh, no matter what your faith is, it would be like, whatever your faith is in Christianity would be the day you got saved. In other religions, it might be something else, but they're asking you, what was your red pill moment?

[00:27:10] So I get into these groups. And then when I find out this is what accelerationism is, they do not believe that there is a political solution that can save the white race. They believe that society is going to collapse either on its own or for manmade events. And they want to speed that up. Hence, you know, accelerationism or accelerate. And as you said, one of the guys I was talking to, uh, who went by the name, his code name was Helter Skelter. Um, I couldn't get a name, right?

[00:27:38] Um, but, uh, I was talking to Helter and he's like, man, I voted for Hillary Clinton. And I was like, here I am portraying a neo-Nazi and I'm like neo-Nazi 1.0. Cause I'm an older guy with tattoos everywhere. Um, and I'm like, you voted for Hillary. He said, think about it, dude. He goes, if she gets in, he goes, you, you're going to start it's to when, when they're usually running things, you're going to see defund the police. You're going to see a weaker military riots in the street, this, that, and the other and open borders.

[00:28:08] And the more he described it, I was like, he goes, man, if you vote for her, it's going to speed up the collapse. And then we can come in. And I was like, wow, that's a different, that's different. Um, but yeah, they, and they, they look at kind of like guerrilla warfare tactics. In other words, small hits here and there. So let's just say it's just create chaos and create a collapse of society. So you might see a power grid go down over here, a train derailed over here, an explosion

[00:28:35] over here, a poison water system here. Maybe a lefty journalist or somebody who is anti-fash gets murdered, you know, and, and just to create chaos. And the idea is they were all training. I say they, we, I was in there. Right. Um, so they kind of, a lot of people get confused with malicious stuff. So everybody thinks that January 6th, you hear them talking about it and they're like, oh, white supremacy. I'm like, no, that wasn't white supremacy. I mean, were there some there? Yeah, but that wasn't white supremacy.

[00:29:05] That's anti-government. That's, that's, that is a different category, you know, militias. Uh, and there's nothing illegal about being in a militia. I mean, I'm in Tennessee. I mean, hell, there's militias everywhere. Um, and that's part of the constitution, but are you doing anything nefarious? Are you out there trying to overthrow a government? Are you out there committing murders and, and violence and, and furtherance of your ideology? Then we got an issue.

[00:29:44] Yeah. Like it seems like there's two categories of crime that these people are involved in either crimes to, like you say, accelerate the, you know, military chaos that, that, that could, that could happen. Like you say, murder someone or poison a water system, whatever. And then there's the crimes just to stay in business. Like they've got to, they've got to raise money so they, they could do drug deals or be pimps or, or steal things.

[00:30:08] So with the base and with the accelerationist crew that, that are crews that I was in, it wasn't drug, it wasn't, I mean, yeah, I mean, they used acid and stuff like that, but they weren't slinging dope on the street. They weren't out robbing things to get money. Um, however, there have been groups like that, that do that. But, uh, I mean, like you look, um, I think you're taking from the book where I talk about where I was a case agent over an area nation case in Tennessee.

[00:30:36] And yeah, I mean, they were claiming to be white supremacists. They were claiming to be, you know, it's a, it's a Tennessee state prison system, um, gang, but it's white supremacy. And when they got out, I mean, they, they go to church, they have their bylaws. Um, you know, the 14, well, you probably, I say, you know, like everybody knows the 14 words, but it's, it's a common white supremacy. Well, I know from reading the book, but many of the listeners might not know. So 14 words is something like, if you see the number 14 or like 1488, well, 14 are the

[00:31:06] 14 words coined by David Lane. I don't have it memorized because I'm not hanging with white supremacists anymore. A conscious decision I made after retiring. Um, but, uh. Good choice. Yeah, I know, right? As much as I enjoyed it. No, I'm kidding. I did not enjoy it. Um, but it's something basically we must secure the, uh, a future for white children and protect our race kind of thing. Um, so if you see 14, that refers to that.

[00:31:33] If you see 88, well, the eighth letter of the alphabet is H. So if you see 88, that's HH, which is Heil Hitler. Um, so you see stuff like that all the time, but now that group, like the Aryan nation, that was what was comical about them. They were getting out of prison, but they go right to slinging dope and doing home invasions. And they had women that they brought in that they called Aryan angels, but they're pimping them out. And I, and they're not even pimping them out. They're just white people. They're pimping them.

[00:32:00] And I'm like, well, how does, I mean, you sit down and interview some of these people and you're like, so explain to me how that's further in your white race. How's that, how's that taken care of? Not, you know what I mean? So it just doesn't make any sense, but the acceleration is, it was all about where they say it's survivalist training, but I mean, we're out there doing, uh, firearms and tactics training. We're doing hand to hand combat. We're doing how to survive in the woods, how to build a shelter, how to, how to live off

[00:32:30] the land kind of thing. Was the training good in the sense that like, you've been obviously trained to be an FBI agent, which is a serious amount of physical training on, on probably overlapping. Like, was the training good or did you feel it was sort of comical? Uh, with the base, it was good. It was good. And it was just scary. Right. Um, I mean, I'm a firearms instructor. I'm a tactical instructor. I'm still an active shooter instructor, uh, and tactics. Actually, I just do it on the side.

[00:32:59] I don't, I don't, you know, I'm not doing it for the Bureau anymore, but, uh, you got all these SWAT, you got all these certifications, um, and training that, that you receive that you go out there undercover. I can't lead the training, nor do I want to, we don't want to make them better if they're really bad people. Right. So, but I can tell you, uh, that. But I guess you have to build trust though. And maybe that's one way to build trust is to give ideas that do make them better. Yeah. Um, in some ways. Yes. Uh, trust me, trust me.

[00:33:28] There are plenty of legal people in headquarters looking over and watching this. I mean, you gotta, you gotta get an approval to do something like that. But, um, I, uh, my first firearms and tactics training with the base was led by a 19 year old kid. And it was good. He could shoot fast. He could shoot accurate. And I mean, they all did Adderall. So that had something to do with it. But, um, but they're, you know, watching it as an instructor, as an investigator, as a law

[00:33:57] enforcement officer, I was thinking, man, if they really went bad, they're probably going to get the drop on a decent amount of people before somebody gets to them kind of thing. And I don't want to bolster them in any way, but you know, there's so much on the internet and there's so much in the gaming systems now. I mean, you, you get on if people who game, I'm 54 now, but I'll get on and game. I'll be on Xbox one or whatever you got. And there's some kid on there telling you how to clear a room because they've been doing

[00:34:25] it on the game because we've gone to so much virtual training and stuff. So, you know, that's interesting. I never thought of that. No, parents need to watch what their kids are doing. I mean, you have, let me say it this way. There's a lot of people, I don't want to say they live in a bubble because I'm not trying to belittle them, but there's a lot of people, my close friends, I got close friends, I got family that cannot deal with the actual evil that's in the world.

[00:34:54] And they have to put themselves in a bubble or else they'll have a nervous breakdown. I get that. I'm not trying to scare anybody, but you just need to understand. I understand that there are evil people on the planet that want to do evil things to good people. And it's been that way pretty much since the beginning of time. I think like that. My peers think like that. My mentors, people I've been blessed to mentor think like that because if I was a bad person

[00:35:20] and I wanted to do bad things, why not go online? Why not go into a gaming system? Why not go into a chat group? There's horror stories every day and parents don't know. So I would suggest paying attention. Like when you were, let's say with the base, did you meet anybody where you would think, oh, this is like, this guy could have been my dentist. He seems like a normal guy.

[00:35:46] And yet here he is, ready to kill black people or Jews and do all this stuff. Sure. I had this talk the other day. We were putting on some training and of course I was the bad guy. Shocker, you know, all tatted up. I'm like, what is it? Why am I the guy that always gets shot? But as soon as they saw me, they're like, oh, we knew you were the bad guy. And I'm like, well, what does a bad guy look like? You know, what does a terrorist look like? There is no bowler play.

[00:36:13] Like there's no, you don't walk in with a three quarter length trench coat and a hoodie. I mean, it's that I tell people this. If I would have shown you pictures of the kids from Columbine before Columbine happened, what would you have said? If I would have shown you a picture of the kid from Charleston, South Carolina, before he committed all those murders at that black church, what would you have said looking at that kid in that picture? How about the kid from Aurora? Orange and yellow hair, doesn't like girls.

[00:36:41] I mean, he's pretty much an involuntary celibate, which we call incels. What would you have said? But they still killed a bunch of people and did a lot of harm. So as far as what to look for and what a terrorist looks like, I don't think there is. But you have to, there's great things out there. And I learned this by being a parent myself. And I actually learned it really because some other law enforcement officer had done all the research and development. And they said, hey, man, have you heard this thing called BARC? And I'm like, no. And they go, you got kids?

[00:37:10] I'm like, yeah, you need to get BARC. So you pay the money. You install that on your kid's phone. And I mean, they, I don't know how many people they got working for them, but they look at everything. You can flag it for firearms talk, suicidal talk, drug talk, sex talk, and they'll go through it all. And they'll send you copies of it. I'm not saying you should be spying on your kids. You know, I'm not a big helicopter parent person in my own life.

[00:37:35] But it's good to know if somebody's out there trying to do something bad. Well, that's interesting that it's a private company doing this. Like you would think the FBI would, like, did you ever install software on, let's say, somebody at the base's phones just to kind of see, you know, scan for all this kind of talk? Well, if we did that, it would be because we had predication. It would be because it would be part of a crime. It would be that the U.S. Attorney's Office is signing off on it.

[00:38:04] FBI headquarters is signing off on it. And to do that, it'd basically be a Title III wiretap. And it's not like TV. I've done plenty of them. TV is like, hey, I need to be on this phone in 30 minutes. We're talking 50, 80-page affidavits that you got to send through and go through and do everything. And then you finally get on the phone. And then 15 days later, you got to do another report. And then 15 days after that, you got to re-up or go down. So it's a lot of work.

[00:38:31] And so on one hand, you see that as like, okay, we got to protect people's privacy or else maybe law enforcement agencies just go too crazy with this. But on the other hand, it seems like everybody you were meeting was definitely a bad guy. Like if they're just showing up for something like the base's like weekly meetings, probably want to like watch that guy. True. And I can understand the feeling of that. But in the United States, we have a constitution. Yeah.

[00:38:59] And we have a First Amendment freedom of speech. So you can walk out in the street in America. I can walk out in my street right now and say, I hate all and insert any racial slur you want. I hope all insert a racial slur. I hope all die. That's not against the law. That's First Amendment protected. Now, if you start doing violent acts and furtherance of or stuff like that, and that's why that game, I'll say game, but that's why it's so hard, especially on the domestic terrorism side,

[00:39:29] because there's no domestic terrorism statute. Some states have it, but there's no federal statute. And if there was, what would it be? I don't know. But you're looking at a sea of, I'll give you an example. One group I infiltrated for five months. I was in one of their Telegram groups, an application called Telegram. They had their own little group, chat, channel, whatever.

[00:39:57] And I'm talking anti-Semitic, 24-7 to the extreme for five months. I didn't miss a single post. If I woke up, I'd wake up after six hours of sleep and be 1,500 posts behind or more. And I would go back and go through everything because I didn't know this group. They had picked me to be the undercover. And I didn't want to be the reason we missed something. So I went through everything for five months and met with them once or twice.

[00:40:26] And we just determined that they weren't going to do anything. And it was First Amendment protected. As bad as it is, but you're like, okay, they're not going to do anything. But when do you know you're going to get that one that goes on in post-live and then goes to the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh and commits a bunch of murders or Christ Church in New Zealand? I mean, they're throwing that stuff live. And if you go back after the fact, you can see, oh, this guy was in some of these chat groups.

[00:40:55] Matter of fact, he posted on, I think it was 4chan or 8chan, right before he went and did it. He's like, hey, blokes, lads, whatever it is, this is what I've – it's been great knowing you guys. I'm going live. I'm doing something for the cause. Bam, bam, bam. And then here it goes. I'm airing live. And this guy's going and murdering a bunch of people. So it's interesting. So you identify these hate groups. An undercover agent, let's say, is assigned to them.

[00:41:23] But then at some point you determine if, hey, this is sort of no big deal. Like they're not going to commit a violent crime. Or in other cases, you say they're going to commit a violent crime. Like with the base, if I'm not mistaken, there was some potential illegal activity that was – like the guy was having guns. There was other things involved. And you were trying to get closer to kind of get enough evidence to really do something. Correct.

[00:41:50] What we ended up finding out after the – if you remember the story of the Halloween sacrifice stuff. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. The goat sacrifice. Yeah. That was an odd evening in my undercover career. But we ended up gaining – or I say we. It's we as a village, right? But I'm the undercover.

[00:42:16] We found out – we uncovered several murder plots that the crew in Georgia were planning on doing. And then there was a crew in the Baltimore area that was planning on hopefully starting a race war at a huge gun rights rally. And they were already talking some crazy stuff up there, too. They were talking about like shooting cops because they had already – again, let me paint it like this to your viewers.

[00:42:43] A lot of these people in the base or that I've seen in other groups like Atomwap and stuff like that don't have a car, don't have a job, definitely don't have a partner. And they have an arsenal in their closet, and they're building it. Because in their mind, in their ideology, they are preparing for what D-Day, but they refer to that – at least when I was in, they referred to that as the boogaloo, the beginning of the race war, the start of the race war. So, man, I'm preparing for the boogaloo.

[00:43:13] So, it's all about, hey, if you're building your kid up, well, yeah, I just got some money. I'm trying – so when I say building your kid up, that is your whole – they call it the battle rattle. But it's plate carriers, gun belts, machine guns, weapons, all kinds of stuff you need, tactical survival stuff. And they're building that up. Do you think it's getting worse in the United States? Because I would say, for myself, I've probably been living in a bubble and not aware of how big these things are. And I'll just give one example.

[00:43:43] I noticed after J.D. Vance was nominated as vice president, I noticed on Twitter this weird thread popped up for me where at first somebody was saying, oh, good, that J.D. Vance is going to be vice president. But then another person stated and had thousands of comments. He's like, no, Usha Vance is, you know, from India. It's not white. This is a really bad thing. And then there's thousands of comments about basically white supremacy after that.

[00:44:13] Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying. So the white supremacists were upset because he's not pure. Yeah. Yeah. Because his wife. Because his kids then would not be – Well, they said the same thing about Trump. Because Trump's son-in-law is 100% Jewish, you know? Yeah. I mean, Trump's grandchildren are Orthodox Jews. There you go. So, yeah. But it surprised me that this was just so out in the open and there were so many – like literally thousands and thousands of comments. And probably even many more millions of viewers.

[00:44:40] So I just – I was surprised how out in the open and how big it was. I guess – And that's just one thread I was looking at. Yeah. And I guess if you're in that online world, which who isn't these days? I mean, there's teams getting radicalized online from all sides. I mean, of course, I infiltrated the far right based on my skill sets and, I mean, me. But I've got counterparts that infiltrated the – like radical jihad.

[00:45:07] And those kids are being radicalized online with videos and recruitment. And that was the thing with the base. It was – there was so many recruitment videos. And our rule was every new video had to be better than the last one. I mean, they would go out – they call it flyering or stickering or posturing. Huge on that. Just going around and just slapping up stickers. And it may say – I've got one up there behind me. But it'll say, save your race, join the base.

[00:45:35] And it'll be a picture of a, you know, German helmet and then maybe a swastika or a skull. And then there's a QR code. Well, when you scan that QR code, it takes you straight to bit shoot to a recruitment video, which I was in. A lot of them, you know, just to recruit. And it kind of goes back to that gang, cult kind of recruit kind of thing. It's like, look, again, a lot of the ones I saw were outcasts, had been bullied, couldn't get a girlfriend, partner,

[00:46:03] however you – whatever their persuasion was. And then they sit in their room all night long, up all night on a smartphone, diving down the rabbit hole of hate. And depending on which rabbit hole you want to go on, you can go and go and go. And there's so much stuff out there now that looks so real and it's not real. Or they'll take real things like horrific stories and put those together in like a collage for like a video.

[00:46:32] And it makes it look like all black people are bad and all white people are victims. And then on the – if you're a black separatist, they'll have a bunch of stuff showing videos of hate from the groups I infiltrated. It may show like Klu Klux Klan. It may show Charlottesville. It may show recruitment videos of the base. And the way I like to say it, at least in my opinion, is hate begets hate. Because I've seen it from the inside.

[00:46:58] If you're far – I'll tell you what was happening on the far right side when I'm with the base and groups like that. They call it doxing. But doxing, for those that don't know, is essentially just you being outed. So the left is very good at doxing people. And once you get doxed as say, hey, Scott Payne is a white supremacist. Now they've got groups outside my neighborhood. They've got groups outside my kids' school, my business, my wife's business.

[00:47:28] And then what happens on the far right, at least from what I was seeing, is they're going, how many of our brothers have to fall without any retaliation before we stand up and do something? Well, then they're planning on doing something. So if they do something back to the left, within the left, it's just evil. It's just – it's chaos. And our enemies, our overseas enemy countries that hate us, they do pump money into the United States. And it doesn't matter where they pump it. It can be to a black separatist. It could be to Antifa. It could be to white supremacy.

[00:47:58] Just to sow chaos in America. Yeah, I was just reading on – about this guy who got swatted, which I guess is the next step after doxing,

[00:48:23] where I guess somebody calls the police in that guy's area and says, listen, there's a murder slash hostage situation happening at this address. You better get over there now. And, like, the police could surround the place and hurt somebody. Could. Yeah. And it's gotten worse because it used to just be a phone call. And now, again, with AI and everything else, I mean, they can have them on a video game. You can hear the guns – the gunfire being shot and all that stuff. And it sounds real and it looks real, but it's not.

[00:48:53] And, I mean, imagine being a first responder. And, you know, you're being held to a higher standard no matter what. You're going to be under a microscope no matter what. And you go in there and it looks legit. And somebody – in our world, we call it, hey, that's a good shoot. It doesn't mean it looks good. It doesn't mean it feels good. It doesn't mean that, man, this is a bad situation.

[00:49:16] But as far as policy goes and our deadly force continuum and did we meet that before we did what we had to do, it's just – it's really sad. I mean, what's a solution other than, obviously, you're a solution, so kind of on the ground, stopping these guys before crimes are committed and so on? But it seems like the problem is so big, there has to be a more fundamental solution in the long run. But it doesn't seem like there is any.

[00:49:46] It's a tough one for me because there are great groups out there. Life After Hate. These are people who might have been a radical jihadist, might have been a radical white supremacist, whatever. And now they've flipped or they've realized the error of their ways and now they're trying to do the right thing. So there's Life After Hate. There's the Eradicate Hate Global Summit. That's out of Pittsburgh. It started mainly because of the Tree of Life massacre up there that happened. And I've been blessed to be a part of that. What an unbelievable – it's getting big.

[00:50:17] And they're doing all kinds of stuff, academia-wise and trying to get the word out there in education. But in my world, for me, it's just we got to talk. We got to sit down and talk. And as cliche as it sounds, if you see something, say something. You know, for me to hear from a father that, oh, I thought my son was just going through a phase. You thought your son was going through a phase. He has no vehicle. He's 21 years old. He has no job. He has an arsenal in his closet.

[00:50:46] He has grown men coming over all the time to train machine guns and fighting. And you've heard the conversations they have, all wearing fleck-torn camo pattern, which is the German pattern. And that's what these – you know, the Atomwaffens and the bases, that's what they wear because it's German, right? Because they want Hitler. They want – they're neo-Nazis. They want it to be just like, you know, Germany under Hitler.

[00:51:11] And then in that – and then your son's bedroom, there's a shrine, if you will, of a head of a ram that was sacrificed by all of us. Now, maybe the father doesn't know that, but on the head that's now clean are swastikas, white supremacy – other white supremacy symbols, runes, because they're trying to tie that paganism thing into it. But on one side of the skull is Mayankampf, Hitler's book, and on the other side of the skull is siege. It's not a phase. I mean, come on. I get it.

[00:51:40] And I mean, I'm pretty sure any law enforcement officer who's worked a beat can tell you that you can go up and show a parent, here's your son, Johnny, selling me drugs. This is him on the video. This is him. It's me walking up. That's your son handing me dope. I'm handing him – that's not my son. My son would never do that because that's their angel. And I get that. That's human nature. That's trying to be a good parent. But don't put your blinders on.

[00:52:35] You know? He's got a bad parent on the radio during World War II, even though he's an American spy. And he ultimately – the question at his trial is, who is he? Like, is he – was he the guy – was he the American spy or was he the guy spouting all this anti-Semitic stuff on the radio? And did it ever – I'm confident with you it never got blurred, but it just must be difficult. Yes and no. I will say it this way for me. It's the way I was trained.

[00:53:03] It's the way I train when I've been blessed to put that kind of training on. I'm never far of who I really am. Now, does that mean I'm a white supremacist? Hell no. I can't stand that stuff, right? But did I grow up in the Southeast? And was I exposed to it? And have I been around it? Yeah, I have. I – with me on my undercovers, I was always Scott. I mean, Scott's a pretty common name, so I'm always Scott. Is that typical for undercovers? Keep your first name so you don't slip?

[00:53:33] That's what I did. You know, some people want to change their stuff, but if my name's Scott, I don't – you know, Scott's common. If my name was like, I don't know, Thor, maybe I'd change it, you know? Yeah. But I was always Scott, and pretty much I'm still me. The jokes are pretty much the same, but I may or may not be married. I may or may not have kids. I may or may not have played college ball.

[00:53:58] I may or may not be a musician and a singer, but you can probably rest assured I left weights and ride motorcycles, and that's pretty much it. The only time I would like change the jovial stuff is if I was – somebody hired me to murder somebody, or somebody was coming to me to get a bomb to blow somebody up or something. Those, I didn't really feel the need to try to build rapport or joke because I'm supposed to be a killer, you know?

[00:54:24] But in our world, what I was taught is if you're pretending to be something completely different than what you are for a very long period of time, especially deep cover, usually one or two things is going to happen. You're either going to become it or you're going to slip up and get caught, and both of those are bad. So you have to figure out a way you're going to do this. And trust me, in the Bureau, we have oversight and oversight and oversight. You've got a contact agent.

[00:54:53] There's an undercover coordinator in the division. You've got headquarters looking at stuff. You have to be psychologically assessed. So we try to put those trip wires up to pick up anything if somebody's kind of going south. And did you ever get worried? You know, you would tell people, like in this one group, the OMC, you would tell people you were based in Texas. And they're all the way up in, I guess, Boston.

[00:55:19] So would you ever get worried like someone would say, hey, I'm coming down to Texas for something next week. Would love to stop by, meet the wife and family. Sure. Did anyone ever say that and like you have to deal with that? Let's just say I was prepared for it if they did. Okay. And also, you're infiltrating so many groups that are somewhat related to each other. Let's say you infiltrate more than one white supremacy group.

[00:55:45] Were you ever worried that somebody would recognize you from another group where all those guys but you had been arrested and put in jail at some point? Absolutely. I was blessed. Again, in my belief system, it's divine intervention. But had I stayed, well, I was getting older. I mean, at some point, I mean, how can I infiltrate a group of 20-year-olds where the majority is, you know, 19 to 25?

[00:56:12] There might be a few 40s and one or two 30s in there. But it's time for me to kind of get out anyway. But like, for instance, the outlaws. If you do two years with the outlaws and you travel as much as I did with them, am I going to do any biker club? I never do the outlaws again. Am I going to do it? I can't even do a biker club that's friends with the outlaws because if I'm deep undercover and they have a regional run or a meet, there's a good chance somebody could see me that knows me. So you're pretty much done there.

[00:56:41] Or let's say I moved to Tennessee and when I first got there, after about six months, I went deep undercover. Once that case was over, I'm out. You know, they know. They may not know my last name's Payne, but they know that Scott was the undercover. They know that Scott is an FBI agent. Like, let's say, though, you go back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, just on a visit or family vacation or whatever.

[00:57:06] Do you ever get worried you're going to be recognized in the street by one of your old comrades? Sure. But first of all, I would try not to do that. I would try not to go anywhere undercover. But that's no different than a law enforcement officer. I mean, maybe I was undercover, but as a cop, you lock people up and put them in jail all the time. In your county you live in. But this time, though, that's true. But there's a definite divide.

[00:57:34] The cops doing their job and the criminals are doing their thing. And the cops are supposed to catch the criminals. So the criminals, I mean, I don't know if this is true. Like, but I'm guessing there's some sort of understanding. Everyone's playing the role. You, though, were their friend. You were their best friend. And then, like, in some of these situations, everybody's arrested and put in jail except for you. Right. Do they remember that? Do they notice that?

[00:58:02] Do they know who was put in jail and that you weren't caught? So all of my, most of my cases, the majority, were criminal cases. So if it's a foreign counterintelligence like a national security case, maybe nobody gets arrested. Maybe I got to stay away forever. But in almost all of my cases, once you arrest somebody. Now, there's different ways we can do takedowns. I can be arrested with you, like the kid that was going to shoot up the synagogue in Myrtle Beach.

[00:58:31] I got taken down in the parking lot with him. But eventually, even if they don't find out right away, eventually they're going to be sitting down at a table with their defense attorney. And they're going to get what we call discovery. And what that means is we're supposed to, as law enforcement, on the prosecuting side, we're supposed to hand over everything. I'm talking about if I kept notes, if I was texting somebody about it, the defense has a right to all of that.

[00:59:02] So they may not, at that point, they're going to know it's me because they're going to hear the recording. The recording is going to start something like, hey, this is UCE, undercover employee. This is UCE 1234. It's approximately 2-11 p.m. Eastern time, March 14th, 2025. I'm going to be getting on a call with, boom. And then at the end of the recording, there'll be the post-ambulant. They'll be like, hey, again, this is UCE 1234. That was a meeting with such and such. What we discussed was a couple of murders and this, that, and the other. That completes the recording. So they're going to know.

[00:59:34] But, yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, did you get closer to them? Absolutely. And there's been some I've worried about, so I made sure I was there for the takedown because I wanted to confront them after the takedown. And I wanted to tell them, hey, right there, just so there's no confusion, here's my creds. I'm Special Agent Scott Payne with the FBI. And let's talk about the last year and a half, you know? And did anyone ever say, like, I'm going to get you when I'm out of jail?

[01:00:01] No, not to my face in the Bureau. I've had threats at the local level because I was a cop and vice of narcotics investigator in South Carolina before I went to the FBI. But, yeah, I mean, you get threatened. And they're legit threats. But if you work for a county or a police department, they're not going to have money in their budget, nor would they spend money in their budget to move you to another city or another county. Right. You just got to load up with a bunch of cops and go knock on the door and try to thwart it.

[01:00:31] You know, your best defense is a good offense. So, like, for instance, for these guys in the OMC, they're in jail, like they're getting out of jail now, probably. So do you ever think one of them is going to show up at your house somehow? They could. They could happen. But you're ready for that. I don't walk around in fear, but I don't walk around blindly either. And I've got a few things set up in case that happens. Me, personally, I don't care.

[01:01:00] But, you know, you've got family. You don't want them to be scared and worried. But, I mean, it's what you choose to do. I mean, you've got a shepherd mentality. You're a servant heart. You go out and you put yourself on the front line. You know, and you mentioned, you know, even on this call, you mentioned your skill set a few times. And I noticed in several situations in the book where you're trying to build trust,

[01:01:29] even going as far back as the principal in your school, you do something self, you say something usually self-deprecating. And you've done that like three, there was at least three or four instances in the book that I could think of. And I wonder if this is like part of the arsenal or just, and obviously it's probably a natural thing for you too, maybe because. It's my arsenal because this is just me. Again, I'll say it, if I hadn't portrayed it enough in this interview,

[01:01:59] there are men and women out there that have done way more than me. They have done more harrowing things. They've been in more harrowing situations than me. And there's going to, as long as we keep using the undercover technique, it'll probably happen again. I hope nobody gets hurt or gets put in a scary situation, but it's probably going to happen. So I come, I want to come from kind of a humble spot on that. But for me personally, the self-deprecating humor worked.

[01:02:26] I was always kind of a bigger guy for my age, which I've, I mean, it doesn't mean I'm huge. I've been in a room with 15 people where I was the smallest one in there. And I was six, four and two 90, 290 pounds. And I was looking at everybody's nipples. I was like, where do you guys get grown at? What do y'all eat? People, what are y'all eating, man? But yeah, I use the self-deprecating humor because it helps me.

[01:02:54] It's the Chris Farley thing. It's the whole Tommy boy, Chris Farley. Just make an idiot of yourself. Because for me, it seems like with my personality being loud and boisterous and sucking the oxygen out of a room or whatever, it can rub people the wrong way sometimes or a lot of times. And I don't, I don't want, it would make it seem like I'm coming off as a cocky a-hole, you know?

[01:03:22] Plus, I got this caveman crow magnum thing and my eyebrows are always like that. So I don't, I don't realize, I don't realize like I look mad, but I think, I guess I look kind of like angry a lot. So you have to naturally kind of develop the skill for your life to calm the situation down. Like you don't want people to be threatened by you. And this fit in naturally with the undercover training as well. I'll dive a little deeper. You need to know your true traits and be honest with yourself. I'm a talker.

[01:03:52] I can be the loudest in the room. I don't have to be the loudest in the room. I don't have to have the last joke. But that is my personality. I can, I can, it's actually said to me from the, one of the case agents on the base. He told me after the case, he said, he would tell people that Scott Payne, he goes, Scott Payne can carry on a conversation for 30 minutes with the brick wall. And when he leaves, the brick wall is his friend. And I went, okay, that's not, I mean, I don't really have a rebuttal, but if you're honest with yourself and you know that, in other words,

[01:04:21] I look pissed off all the time. So let me counter that right away with, let me diffuse, deescalate, and do some self-deprecating humor. Or I can talk nonstop. I think the Lord put me on earth to fill silence with noise. But I know that about myself. So when I'm undercover, I need to shut up. I need to know that because if I'm talking to a bad guy and they're trying to unload stuff to me, I need to shut up and let them talk instead of talking about myself

[01:04:51] or telling another story. So you just need to know, it depends on what you want, right? If your targets, the FBI works everything. So if your targets are, I mean, maybe they make wine. Well, then you need to learn how to, what's going to get you closer to them? I may not be the right person for it. You might be way better at it than me. But that's kind of the realm we come from. I'll tell you this, the undercover program, for the bulk of the time I was in it in the FBI,

[01:05:20] that was the most diverse group of people I've ever been around in my entire life. I mean, we had black, big, black guy, gang-banging, thug-looking dudes. We had biker-looking dudes. We had clean-cut. We had all foreign languages. We had accountants. You name it. It was just a, it was a motley crew, but it was awesome. What was one of the undercover skills that was different than what you used to that you had to learn in order to do the job as effectively as possible? That's a good question.

[01:05:51] I think you're always evolving. Because, I mean, like when I started undercover work at the state and local level, man, I was making all kinds of mistakes. FBI, I made tons of mistakes. Like what? But you get wiser. I mean, you know, screwing up, getting put in a bad situation. You know, like I underestimated a guy who had no teeth in his head. And it was a mountain guy. And I got lax. I broke my own rule.

[01:06:17] And I ended up, I ended up with a bag of open cocaine about two inches from my nose and a red bone hound growling in my crouch. And he was holding the shotgun and telling me to do the cocaine if I wasn't a cop. And I remember thinking, damn, I can't believe that. That was the first thing that went in my head. I'm like, I can't believe I let this guy. Because, again, it's that chess game, right? But I think you just try to get better. What'd you do? I don't know. I faked it. I did a sleight of hand thing. Because I couldn't get out of it.

[01:06:46] I mean, other than me smacking the cocaine out of my face and then powder going everywhere, which I probably wouldn't have inhaled anyway. It'd been like some comedy movie or something. How did you do a sleight of hand thing? Is that something you learned in training? No. No, it's just me. They didn't teach you that. I didn't get taught that at the undercover school. And right now, you know, there's changes happening at the FBI. There's a new administration. There's a new director of the FBI.

[01:07:15] What do you think of the changes that could be occurring? Do you think ultimately will be good for the FBI, bad for the FBI, bad for law enforcement, good for law enforcement? Like, what's your thinking? Well, I try to stay apolitical, especially on these interviews and in my book, right? But I will say this. The FBI, in my opinion, and many of my peers' opinions, needed to change. It had been going the wrong way.

[01:07:44] Now, could somebody come in and change it too hard the other way and it'd be bad? Yeah. But the cream always rises to the top. If it doesn't, we're screwed. You know? I mean, there's always going to be something you can complain about. But do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? Could I be a whistleblower and complain about law enforcement and things in the FBI? Yeah, I could, but I'm not. I don't want to tarnish the badge. Are there bad cops? Absolutely. Are there a lot of them? I don't believe so.

[01:08:13] I work those cases, just like a lot of my counterparts did. But do the right thing. Don't tarnish the badge. And I'm trying to spread positive things about law enforcement. And this is actually unrelated, but since 9-11, how come there haven't been more 9-11s? Has the FBI caught every potential 9-11 that was going to happen? Well, that is a hell of a question. Yes or no?

[01:08:43] I know, right? I see my face turn. I can feel the heat in my face. Well, I'll put it like this. Maybe one of the faults of the FBI is a huge knee-jerk reaction in the wrong way. Sometimes we're going too far. Let's just say after 9-11, it might not have been that good to have a Middle Eastern name. You know? I imagine it was similar after Pearl Harbor, if you were Japanese, you know?

[01:09:12] But I know that we put a lot of effort into sharing information and to work in more national intelligence. I don't know. I can apply what you're saying to, like, working the domestic terrorism side. Like I said, you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of people online spewing hate.

[01:09:43] Can you watch them all? Hopefully, somebody somewhere, like that kid in Myrtle Beach, somebody says, hey, this dude is really planning on doing some bad stuff. By the way, I'm a white supremacist. I'm a member of a white supremacy group. But that guy that just joined us is crazy. And y'all need to look at him. Hopefully something like that happens. If not, we're just looking at, I mean, how many fish are you looking at to see which one is going to be, or just how many targets?

[01:10:11] How do you know which one is going to be that lone wolf? Or get pushed far enough to do something bad. And it's tough. You know, we've got to stay vigilant. We've got to stay vigilant and keep going after it. Whether it's through sources, whether it's through monitoring online stuff, whether it's getting out there and pushing more knowledge to law enforcement. Because, again, the FBI is not going to investigate you for your ideology.

[01:10:40] Most of it is going to fall under First Amendment protection. But can we go out there, if there's reporting of you planning on saying you're going to do something and hurt some people? Like kill people? Well, maybe now we're getting some predication. And we've just got to stay vigilant. We've got to keep going after that. Well, Scott Payne, author of Codename Pale Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. Such a great book. Really, it's like a page turner.

[01:11:09] But it's about real stuff that happened to you and scary things that are happening to America that you and your peers are trying to stop. And so I'm so happy I got a chance to talk to you. I really love the book. And I had so many questions. And you answered them. And thank you so much for coming on the show. What's next for you? You wrote a book. I'm assuming the TV rights are going to get sold. So what's next in your career?

[01:11:36] Well, I guess number one is the book and all that. Hopefully it does well. I was the feature story in Rolling Stone magazine in February of 2022. That kicked off a lot of interest. But you try to pick things and something falls through. And you work with a couple of writers and something falls through. And then the actors strike and the writers strike. And I pulled back. I've got a great team surrounding me. And hopefully the book does well.

[01:12:06] And we'll get those opportunities again. But I would love to be involved with TV, movie, whatever shows, being a consultant. I've already been on movie sets. I was an armorer for a set, for a movie. I was on set security. I helped coordinate all the after hours security. I even had a cameo in the movie. So there's that. And I'm also an active shooter instructor with an organization called Alert. They're based out of Texas. But they are actually married.

[01:12:34] FBI and them got married pretty much after the Sandy Hook school massacre. And once I retired, I applied to be an adjunct instructor with them. So I still travel the country as an instructor for that organization. It's the national standard for training law enforcement on active shooter response. Well, that's all great. And look, I could definitely see this being like almost a TV series where the person's dropped in.

[01:13:02] Every season, the person's dropped in another undercover situation and goes to town at it. Because it's riveting and it's a page turner, like I said earlier. So thanks once again, Scott, for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And good luck and success with all this that you're working on. Thank you very much. And thank you for the time, man. Thank you.