Michelle Shepard
Appearances
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The men weren't charged for being racist. That's not illegal. Neither were they charged for domestic terrorism, which isn't a federal offense. But they were indicted for offenses ranging from possessing and transporting firearms and conspiracy to murder.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The case against them was so strong, the evidence so damning, everyone pleaded out. And they were handed sentences ranging from six years to as long as 20. When we were researching these cases for the last season, we kept coming across evidence provided by the UCE. That stands for the FBI undercover employee. That UCE came up so often, we started to imagine that we knew him.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
He had recorded hours of conversations between Matthews and his co-defendants as they talked about shooting cops and massacring Black people. When TMB and another base member took a road trip to case the house where their targets lived, the UCE was behind the wheel. And then we heard his voice on the secretly recorded tape when it was presented in court. Low, gravelly, and Southern.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But he was an FBI undercover. There's a reason we couldn't put a name or a face to the voice.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The most of what we knew then about the undercover agent actually came from a man named Tom Lane.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Tom was the father of TMB, real name Luke Austin Lane. Luke had established the base's so-called small man cell in Georgia, and most of their training took place at his dad's 100-acre property, which is where I reached Tom for an interview a few months after his 22-year-old son had been arrested.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But why would you think he would be FBI? I mean, why would you think that there would be an FBI guy hanging around?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I knew from court documents that hint of racism was Nazi propaganda, and in particular, a flag hanging on Luke's bedroom wall.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
What was the actual flag? Was it something identifiable?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
So when you saw it, you didn't recognize it as that necessarily? Or you thought, okay, he's going through a Nazi phase?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's the crazy thing. All the time we were reporting and wondering about this Scott, he was listening, wanting to talk to us.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But you know, Tom Lane making excuses for his son didn't really surprise Scott.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
What Scott says he doesn't have time for are accusations of entrapment, which seemed to be Tom Lane's explanation at the time for why his son was sitting in jail awaiting trial.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
And the court documents make it clear that Luke Lane was an active recruiter.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
It is hot out. Suffocating hot August Georgian heat with a darkening sky that looks pretty ominous. Scott stands by his truck under a tangle of power lines and he spots two figures coming up the hill.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
In the end, that's exactly what he decided. Although he was only 50, undercover work takes a toll. So Scott turned in the badge in the summer of 2021. He could have ridden off into retirement on his Harley with his wife on the back, belting out some country tunes and sipping whiskey in obscurity. And I probably would have never known who the UCE was or thought of him again.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But then he decided to talk to Rolling Stone.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's Paul Solitaroff, a staff contributor at Rolling Stone magazine. He wrote a profile on Scott that cast him as the most storied FBI agent since Joe Pistone, a.k.a. Donnie Brasco.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But once you started talking, it turned into a profile of Scott. How did that happen?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Paul is an incredibly vivid writer. Go for it.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
In his piece, Scott comes off as a type of superhero who not only took down the base, but in his 28 years in law enforcement, also managed to infiltrate the KKK and biker gangs and put away aspiring killers, opioid dealers, dirty cops, and mass shooters.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
After reading that article and talking to Paul, I had one thought. Bonus episode. Paul put us in touch for an interview. But before I knew it, I was talking to Scott every week. Hello. What's happening? Oh, not much, not much. I'm sitting outside today.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Long story short, I agreed to write his memoir with him. And our podcast bonus episode turned into this series. I gotta confess, it's weird as a journalist being on the inside with an insider. I usually write about cops, not with them. I'm an agnostic feminist lefty Canadian who spent most of her career holding authority to account.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
He's a devout Christian Republican American from the South who bleeds blue. We definitely have our clashes and agree to disagree on many subjects. But where we come together is trying to understand what drives groups like The Base. There are very few people who have spent so many years seeing that lack of respect for human life up close, witnessing that hate.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Scott's perspective is one we rarely hear. Journalists report, academics analyze and opine, lawyers debate the law.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But what does it look like from the inside when far-right extremists believe they're among a fellow believer?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
When you're spending your days and nights with violent bikers for a year and a half, and some of them become your friends, or pretending to sling hillbilly heroin with the pill mills of the Deep South, what does that do to you as a person to always be living a lie?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's coming up on Agent Pale Horse.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I'm like, just get out of my house.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
This series was written and produced by me, Michelle Shepard, senior producer Ashley Mack, and producer Eunice Kim. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Our intern was Rachel DeGasperis.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Special thanks to Andrew Friesen, Lara Antonelli, the CBC Reference Library, Ryan Thorpe, the Winnipeg Free Press, Rolling Stone and Paul Soloterov, Sean Powers, Oralation Studios, and Evolvement Music. Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez are our executive producers. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
This series was produced alongside a book I wrote with Scott, codename Pale Horse, how I went undercover to expose America's Nazis. You can catch up with season one of White Hot Hate wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying this series and want to help new listeners discover the show, please take some time to give us a rating and review on whichever is your chosen app.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I guess now is a good time to tell you that Scott is an undercover cop. FBI Special Agent Scott Payne. He's not wearing a wire, just in case he gets patted down. But there is a GPS tracker on his truck. So when he says, not good, he means, holy shit, this is not good.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Scott and his FBI cover team don't know a lot about these guys in this group. But they do know they're probably armed and definitely paranoid about their secrecy. So, that tracker.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Scott gets out of the truck and stands arms out so TMB can use his whatever wand thing to search him again. And it starts to rain. Like the heavens open up in a southern monsoon. Perfect pathetic fallacy for this Hollywood drama. Scott is trying to look nonchalant, but his heart is beating louder than the rain. If he needs backup, he knows the team doesn't have eyes on him.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Okay, so... Let me introduce you to Scott. He's 6'4", 260, likes cowboy boots and Jack Daniels. And in the summer of 2019, he wanted to join a group of white supremacists. They called themselves The Base. And Scott had already passed a crucial phone interview.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I'm Michelle Shepard. From CBC, this is White Hot Hate, Season 2. Agent Palehorse. Episode 1, The Insider. If you listened to the first season of White Hot Hate, maybe this is all sounding a little familiar. And you're right. We began that season with another infiltrator.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
So he tried to find out more. He filled out the online forms, passed a vetting call with the group's leader, and eventually met up with the base's local recruiter in a park. Fuck! We spoke for like an hour and a half.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Later, while running home, Ryan regurgitated everything they'd talked about, recording onto his phone. He...
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Hold on. That violent extremist was Patrick Matthews. He was a reservist with the Canadian Armed Forces, a combat engineer who was trained in the use of explosives. Two weeks after that meeting in the park, Ryan and his editors decided to out Matthews in front-page reports. The story blew up, and soon after, Matthews disappeared.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
He packed up his home in small-town Manitoba, gave away his four beloved cats and fled. All police could find was his red pickup truck dumped near the U.S. border. Matthews was a hot topic among both the Canadian and American feds.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But Matthews wasn't Scott's main concern at the time. After he'd successfully made it into the base, he'd been busy hanging out with the Georgia crew, building a case.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
He attends a training camp at TMB's. TMB is the online moniker for the guy who vetted Scott. He still lives at home with his dad on a sprawling rural property outside Rome, Georgia. And that's where Scott, whose alias was Pale Horse, and the other base members shoot guns, share tips on how to survive in the woods, and prepare for the race war they plan to spark.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
It was Patrick Matthews using the brand new call sign, Punished Snake, like it was an added disguise while on the lam.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
There's this huge manhunt on for him. Everybody's talking about it in the FBI. And all of a sudden you roll up and you're like, holy shit, that's him. That's Matthews. Like, what did you feel at that moment?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Just Matthew's luck, he escaped the clutches of Canadian authorities, only to jump right into the arms of the FBI.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Scott spends months undercover as Pale Horse with Patrick Matthews and the Georgia Cell, training, hiking, and listening as they discuss their plans. And he's recording everything.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Eventually, those long hours, they pay off. Five months after Scott infiltrates the base, Matthews is arrested, along with six other members of the group, in a dramatic takedown that makes headlines around the world.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Ghost guns are unregistered weapons without serial numbers, which means they can't be traced. This would be Scott's next big case.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Scott had joined the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, in the summer of 2016. The JTTF had been around since 1980, but after the September 11th attacks, the task force reached new heights, both in numbers and power. The FBI's top priority became combating international terrorism, pretty much al-Qaeda and its proxies.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But Scott joined the JTTF's domestic team, which didn't get nearly enough attention.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
For this case to be considered domestic terrorism, they had to show that the UKA was using profits gained from their crimes to promote their extremism. They called the operation, wait for it, smoking robes. Scott's undercover assignment was to find a way in. So, where do you start?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Scott ends up talking to the one guy, Jack, for almost an hour. Jack tells him about their upcoming spring rally. There would be vendors and food. They even planned on having live music. Except they'd run into a bit of a problem.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
And that is how Scott found himself in the middle of that fenced-in field in Alabama and unwittingly ended up joining the Klan.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
After the spring rally, Scott continued working undercover, attending Klan classes and learning from Klan elders about their constitution.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But this arbitrary line between supremacist and separatist would soon be blurred. Because only four months after Scott's naturalization deep in the woods, this happened, out in the open, in front of the TV news cameras.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Far-right groups from across the country, including the KKK, banded together to unite the right in Charlottesville, Virginia. Demonstrations quickly turned violent, resulting in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer and injuries to dozens of others. Homegrown hatred was on full display for America to see, and there wasn't a single hood in sight.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
After Charlottesville, the FBI started devoting more resources to domestic terrorism.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
And soon, they were opening more cases involving white supremacy groups. But Operation Smoking Robes, the Klan case that Scott was still in the middle of, ended without any arrests. This isn't rare or unusual. Not every investigation works out. Cases can fall apart at any stage or morph into something else.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But smoking robes wasn't a total washout, because the intel they collected on local KKK chapters would be crucial for another case.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The KKK called the FBI about this guy named Benji McDowell. Take that in for a second. Imagine how radical you have to be for the KKK to report you to the cops. Benji had recently been released from a South Carolina prison where he'd been in and out for years on burglary and assault charges.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
I've listened to a lot of Scott's stories in the past couple years. Like, a lot. To try to capture his voice while writing the book, I would walk my dog playing hours of my interviews with him, a sort of literary version of method acting. But this case, in Alabama, in 2017, it gets me every time.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Once out, the 29-year-old was active on social media, and the Bureau was closely monitoring him after he posted several white supremacist rants on Facebook. Eventually, Benji would go searching online for a gun.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Scott's job was to figure out if Benji was actually planning to do something violent. So he picks him up from his home to take him to a hotel to talk in private.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
They get to the hotel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Scott parks the car. Benji exits the vehicle and promptly pukes.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
These heavily armed guys he's referring to in their black robes are members of the United Clans of America, a division of the KKK. And Scott has been invited to their spring rally by an enthusiastic Klansman named Jack.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Dylann Roof, who in 2015 shot and killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Before the shooting, Roof had also posted hateful rhetoric online. And in the years since the attack, he's become a cult hero, a quote-unquote saint to many white supremacists, which included Benji. When he says something like, I have the heart, but I need advice, what do you take that to mean?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
What do you make of that? Like, obviously that is a ridiculous jump. Like what was the connection he was making between having hard luck and taking it out on a synagogue?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But when you're sitting there looking at him, I know you're probably not supposed to have judgments, but what are you thinking? Are you thinking like, this guy's not capable of this, or this guy's like some lost guy, or are you thinking this is a dangerous?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Benji says he wants to do something in his home county soon, and he had been researching a local synagogue. In order to buy some time, Scott suggests he consider a different location.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Benji doesn't say much, and they wrap up their meeting. Scott then drives him home. Back at the hotel, Scott's sitting at the bar having a drink when his undercover phone goes off. It's a message from Benji. He calls him right back.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Jack's showing Scott around and introducing him to new people. There's vendor booths selling merch and snacks, a stage. Then his eyes land on a 30-foot metal cross.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
It was almost too easy. Now they had something to charge him with, because convicted felons are banned from owning a weapon under federal law.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
About a month after their first meeting, Scott picks Benji up from his mother's home and heads to the same hotel. Scott hands him a .40 caliber Glock and some bullets in exchange for $109.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
As soon as Scott gets released, he starts driving back home to Tennessee when he gets a call from the case team. They say Benji confessed to everything.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Court documents suggest that Benji McDowell had trouble fitting in as a child and he struggled with mental illness as an adult. But he ended up pleading guilty after waiving the right to a competency hearing. And in the summer of 2018, he was sentenced to 33 months for being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. He wanted to be the next Dylann Roof.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
And he could have very well been, had he not been stopped in time. How many more Benjis are out there, ready to take their grievances offline in the name of white supremacy? For most of his career, Scott had worked on cases that showed the extreme lengths people will go to for money, drugs, or revenge. But his investigations into the Klan and Benji would thrust him into a whole new world.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
That's coming up on the final episode of Agent Pale Horse. This series was written and produced by me, Michelle Shepard, senior producer Ashley Mack, and producer Eunice Kim. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Our intern was Rachel DeGasperis. Special thanks to Andrew Friesen, the CBC Reference Library, and Oralation Studios.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez are our executive producers. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. This series was produced alongside a book I wrote with Scott, codename Pale Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. You can catch up with season one of White Hot Hate wherever you get your podcasts.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
And if you're enjoying this series and want to help new listeners discover the show, please take some time to give us a rating and review on whichever is your chosen app. It really helps.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Scott is trying to stay in character as a potential new recruit while taking as many mental notes as he can. Then Jack pulls him aside.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The ceremony begins with a 10-minute speech by the imperial wizard.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence and substance use. Please take care when listening.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The new recruits are told to kneel. One by one, their blindfolds are removed.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
By now, the Alabama sky is pitch black. Scott fumbles his way back to his truck.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC, this is Agent Palehorse. Episode 5, Clan Cologne. All right, let me explain how Scott went from posing as a biker in the Northeast to becoming a Klansman in the South. It all started when he was transferred to the FBI's Knoxville division a few years after the outlaw's case, Operation Roadkill.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
During one of my visits to see him, he gave me a tour around rural Tennessee. We were in Union County, about 40 minutes outside of Knoxville, in the town of Maynardville.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The move to Knoxville was one that he and his wife, Kara, had been hoping to make for a while. Scott loved McAllen, Texas, but he'd grown sick of the heat, and it was time to return closer to his roots in the Southeast. He had done a lot of self-reflection and counseling after his experience with burnout.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
So by the time he arrived in Tennessee, with Operation Roadkill behind him, he said he felt ready to go back undercover.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
It was the height of the opioid epidemic, and the Knoxville FBI office had opened a case on dirty cops stealing drugs in this part of the Appalachian Mountains. They called it Operation Poetic Justice. Scott was sent in to try to root out the corruption. His cover was to pose as a shady furniture dealer who was able to get illegal cigarettes for cheap.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The case lasted almost two years and ended with 51 arrests on drug-related charges and other offenses, including illegal gaming and dealing in stolen property. It wasn't the corruption investigation they were hoping for, even though there was no shortage of dirty cops. In the end, just two law enforcement targets were arrested and convicted. The rest were low-level neighborhood dealers and users.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
I know how the case started with public corruption and then kind of turned into a bit of a window into the pill mill. But these characters kind of sound just sad in a way. I mean, I know they're doing illegal stuff, but it's like, you wonder, like, that's a lot of resources to a case.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
We're back in Knoxville now, sitting in Scott's barn, the Barn Dominium. It's hot, so the air conditioner in the house has kicked on. The barn has a tin roof, and it's starting to rain. The more Scott talked about his career, I started to imagine him as a kind of Forrest Gump of the undercover world.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Moving from investigation to investigation, finding himself at the crossroads of the most urgent issues of our times. Crack cocaine, the biker wars, the opioid epidemic. In between, he would take shorter undercover roles, cameos as they're known. He had at least three murder-for-hire cases where the targets believed he was a hitman, and after they hired him, they were sent to prison for years.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Scott has never killed anyone, but he looks like he could have. Scott was never an outlaw biker, but he rides a motorcycle. And Scott's not a drug dealer, but, well, who hasn't indulged in a pot gummy or two? The point being, to be a good undercover, as he says, you have to walk that line. But you also have to draw on what you know, your skill set. You're a tatted biker from the South, right?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
This is let me ask this in a sensitive way. You also have infiltrated all the white supremacy cases.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But you know what I mean? Like you this is this is a place you can go to.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
But I couldn't. I mean, I grew up in Canada.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
Maybe. But it's foreign to me. It's so foreign to me in a way that it's, if I may, it's not foreign to you. You've said this to me before because you grew up in an area where... What I'm trying to get at is, like, why is that a skill set for you?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
No, I'm asking it super awkward. I'm trying not to be offensive.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The South carries a legacy of racism and injustice that Americans still grapple with today. Like many Southern states, South Carolina, where Scott grew up, took a long time to fully desegregate its public school system. And it was in Tennessee, where he lives now, that a group of ex-Confederate soldiers gathered to form a secret society.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
One that would become one of the oldest and most notorious hate groups in American history. The Ku Klux Klan.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The KKK, of course, has a long and violent history in the U.S. Membership may have dwindled over the years, but they're still out there.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 5: Klan Kologne
The United Clans of America, or the UKA, were once the largest KKK faction in the country. They were responsible for a Baptist church bombing that killed four black girls during the civil rights movement. And, as Scott would discover, they were still active.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
That morning, Scott meets the outlaws outside a diner.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Once they stop complaining, Scott gets them back on track. So this was the plan. The semi-trailers would be parked rear to rear. They raise the doors and start moving the drug shipment as quickly as possible. And remember, while the drivers were undercover FBI agents posing as the Mexican cartel and the Canadian buyers, the drugs are real.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The outlaws would be responsible for surveillance and security.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Exactly. I know. So you must have had a moment where you're like, oh, Chocolate Scott might be undercover as well.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Two teams of undercover agents pull into the parking lot. After some quick hellos, they get down to business.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
With Joe Dawgs' help, the drivers move the packages from one truck to another. And in just a matter of minutes, it's done. The doors close, the trucks pull apart, and take off in opposite directions.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
It went exactly as planned. The drugs never left FBI custody, no one got hurt, and after months of patiently building the case, prosecutors could start drawing up arrest warrants. As far as the outlaws were concerned, 40 kilos of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of weed were headed to the Canadian border, all thanks to their top-notch surveillance.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
This was a huge win for Agent Payne, the undercover, and Tex, the semi-legitimate businessman. But Scott, the family man, was needed at home.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
He loads everyone into the truck and off they go to the big annual Rio Grande Valley Christmas party for FBI agents and their families.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Then came a day that Kara refers to as a wake-up call.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Clothesline runs his hands all over Scott's clothes. The seconds go by slowly.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Safeguard is a unit in the FBI that monitors the well-being of its employees. It was created in the 80s to help undercover agents cope with the pressures of the job or the aftermath of a traumatic event. Must have been hard, though, when you realized how scared she was of you in that moment. Like, I appreciate what you're saying that you don't know what your face is doing.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Don't always take in impact, you know, your size. But there is such a gender and physical divide there. And to know, like, she took your daughter into the bathroom. That must be, must have been.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Safeguard brings Scott in for a detailed assessment. There's a long written test, then two conversations, one with a psychologist and the other with a counselor, who's usually a fellow undercover.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Scott still passes the test, and the safeguard team clears him to go back to work.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Hickey was watching and listening to Scott more than anyone. And he worried about Scott's psyche after spending so many days and nights with violent criminals.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
But the case continued. And next up, Daytona Bike Week. That's a motorcycle rally held every year in Daytona Beach, Florida. Even though the event is meant for all bike enthusiasts, members of the major motorcycle gangs never fail to show up. And they don't leave their rivalries at home.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Scott makes his way to Florida with another undercover agent who we'll call Tony. The whole week, he's rubbing shoulders with outlaw members from around the world, including one very senior outlaw who investigators have been watching closely. Everyone called him Hillbilly. Hillbilly, he took a liking to Scott and started talking pretty freely around him.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
This got the FBI team in Florida excited, so much so that an agent asked if Scott would work undercover there as well.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Getting patched as a full-fledged outlaw is a big deal for an undercover. A notch in your belt, like you were that good convincing them you're legit, that they let you into the inner circle. The Taunton chapter, which he infiltrated, had wanted Scott to patch over. But Higgy and the rest of the team in Massachusetts were opposed to it from the beginning.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
But it's kind of like the bragging rights, right? That you get patched shows that you were in deep and they really believed you. And so as an undercover, that's... Yes.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The case team was close to wrapping up Operation Roadkill. But Scott now had the chance to help take down even bigger targets within the outlaws. Sure, he was tired, and patching over would stretch the case longer than expected. It would mean more late nights, drive-through meals, and long flights across the country. But the prospect still excited Scott.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
When I mention this undercover video to Higgy, he reveals something that shocks me.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
It's Tony, the other undercover who rode with him to Daytona.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
They walk outside to Scott's balcony overlooking the hotel pool and the Atlantic Ocean.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
But Scott didn't have time to think about these things. They were still in Daytona, in the thick of bike week.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
He finally flies back home to Texas after partying with the outlaws all weekend.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Scott calls Safeguard's after hours hotline. Two weeks later, a psychologist and a counselor fly to see him for an in-person assessment.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Safeguard ends up issuing Scott a DNR, which stands for Do Not Recommend. It's like the FBI's version of a timeout. It means he can't work as a case agent or go undercover for at least six months. With the DNR, Scott was technically only allowed to teach and role play at the undercover school.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
After what feels like forever, Scott emerges from the cellar, his heart's racing and ringing in his ears, and he heads straight to the bar to calm his nerves.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
One day, he's in the middle of a lesson about how to manage stress as an undercover agent when a supervisor drops by with a special guest.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The Joe Pistone, the FBI agent whose story was turned into a Hollywood blockbuster. He listens as Scott talks to the class about his experience of being strip searched in the basement.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Once the lesson's over, people start forming a line to shake Scott's hand.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
You must have been like, did that just happen?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
That cheek slap from Donnie Brasco is a nice distraction, because the day he was teaching that lesson was the day Operation Roadkill would come to an end. When Scott got the DNR, he couldn't just drop everything and walk away without jeopardizing the case. The outlaws would become suspicious. So he was allowed to keep in touch with the targets by phone.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
And if any of the outlaws asked why he wasn't coming around anymore, he had an explanation.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
He had been embedded with the outlaws for almost two years. He had been in their homes, met their families, shared meals together, bounced their kids on his lap. Parts of his identity as Tex or Scott Calloway may have been fake, but some of the connections he'd made were far from it. The night of the takedown, as SWAT teams carry out the arrests, Scott's undercover phone suddenly rings.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Less than an hour later, Scott Town was in handcuffs.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Just a reminder about the many Scotts. Big Scotty, also known as Scotty T, is Scott Town. He's an associate of the outlaws, and someone who undercovers Scott genuinely considers a close friend.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Hundreds of officers seized weapons, cash, and drugs and arrested all the targets in one coordinated sweep.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
In the end, Operation Roadkill took down 15 outlaw members and associates. They all pleaded out. Joe Dogs and Clothesline got 12 and a half years. Scotty T. got seven. Scott never saw any of them again. But it wouldn't be long before he was back on another case. Next time on Agent Pale Horse.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
This series was written and produced by me, Michelle Shepard, senior producer Ashley Mack, and producer Eunice Kim. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Our intern was Rachel DeGasperis. Special thanks to Andrew Friesen, the CBC Reference Library, and Oralation Studios. Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez are our executive producers.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. This series was produced alongside a book I wrote with Scott, codename Pale Horse, how I went undercover to expose America's Nazis. You can catch up with season one of White Hot Hate wherever you get your podcasts.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
And if you're enjoying this series and want to help new listeners discover the show, please take some time to give us a rating and review on whichever is your chosen app. It really helps.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
And you mean pissed as in not drunk, like pissed off?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Scott finishes blowing off steam and they all agree on a meeting spot for the next morning. As soon as he gets back to his hotel room, he makes a phone call.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening. This is about as bad as it can get in an undercover operation. Scott, as in FBI Special Agent Scott Payne, is being strip-searched for a wire. He's in the clubhouse basement of one of the most dangerous motorcycle gangs in America, the Outlaws.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
For safety reasons, we've decided not to use her real name. Instead, we'll call her Kara. Kara and Scott have been together for more than two decades. And Operation Roadkill began just a few years after they started their family.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
But that terrifying moment was only the beginning. This case would soon push everything to the limit. His marriage, his body, and his mind. I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC, this is Agent Pale Horse. Episode 4, Do Not Recommend.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
As they say, opposites attract. And that's true for Scott and his wife. Scott doesn't mind the limelight. Kara, she's more of a behind the scenes person.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
They met through mutual friends back in the 90s, before Scott joined the FBI. He was working in the Vice and Narcotics Unit in South Carolina at the time. And after years of dating long distance, they tied the knot in 2001.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Their faith bonded them from the beginning. And Kara says it was her faith that helped her with the stress of his undercover work. That and a film starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
If you've seen this film, this isn't exactly comforting. Donnie Brasco is based on the real-life story of Joe Pistone, an FBI agent who went undercover for six years to infiltrate one of the biggest mafia families in New York City. It was a tough gig, and very hard on his marriage. Brasco's wife is played in the movie by Anne Hesch.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Even though Scott and Kara would talk every day when he was undercover, she couldn't help but worry about him.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
His cover team is parked outside in a surveillance vehicle, listening.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Despite what you see in the movies, being an undercover agent is rarely a full-time gig. They usually have to juggle multiple roles and cases at the same time. And on top of that, Scott was also an instructor.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The nights Scott was home, he'd also try to spend as much time as possible with his daughters.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Could you still hear clothesline?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Scott continued to balance life at home and with the outlaws, and his friendship with the Targets continued to deepen, especially with Big Scotty.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
That's Sergeant Thomas Higginbotham, or Higgy. He knows what the outlaws are capable of, especially clothesline, the group's enforcer, the one who's doing the search.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
Big Scotty was respected by the outlaws. He'd often bring Scott to gatherings and vouch for him.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The two became inseparable. And as the investigation went on, Scott couldn't help but think about what loomed around the corner.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 4: Do Not Recommend
The big deal. That's the protection detail that Scott and his team had set up, where the outlaws would guard a supposed transport of drugs moving from Mexico to Canada. It was going to be the biggest sting to date, which explains why the outlaws were so nervous and why Scott ended up strip searched in the cellar.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 3: Who’s A Rat Dot Com
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