Apple News Today
Rebroadcast: An FBI agent went undercover in America’s extremist groups. Here’s what he learned.
27 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey there, it's Shamita here. Our team is taking a break over the holidays. So while we're away, we wanted to share an audience favorite from earlier this year. This was actually our most listened to episode of In Conversation for 2025. I know it stuck with me. I hope you enjoy it. This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shamita Basu.
Today, the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated America's new Nazi groups. If you've ever seen photos of modern day militia groups or white supremacist groups, you've probably noticed some common themes among the members. Mostly men, mostly white, in tactical gear with tattoos, bandanas and patches displaying their beliefs.
And if my guest today, Scott Payne, were in one of those photos, you probably wouldn't be able to tell him apart from the rest of them.
I usually say it jokingly, but I'm like, these are my people. When I say these are my people, I'm not saying a white supremacist group are my people. I'm just saying my skill set and my look and what I do leads me to those kind of cases.
Scott is a retired FBI agent who spent part of his career undercover in American hate groups. He's out with a new book called Codename Pale Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. It's a remarkable account, not only of his singular career, but also of the many criminal and hate groups that are operating in America today.
You've got, I'm not gonna say millions, like there's millions of white supremacists and Nazis are gonna be on your doorstep tomorrow, but let's just say that there are thousands and people are still being recruited.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as of 2023, there were 165 active white nationalist groups in the United States, the highest number ever recorded. During Scott's time in the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, he worked several cases inside these groups. In one case, his undercover persona actually went through the ceremony to become a Ku Klux Klan member.
For another, he befriended a young extremist who idolized Dylann Roof, the man who killed nine people in a Charleston church in 2015.
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Chapter 2: What does Scott Payne share about his undercover experiences?
In that case, Scott was able to deter his target from committing murder. Scott worked on this book with Canadian journalist Michelle Shepherd, who also produced a podcast series about his story.
I'm a southern, conservative, 6'4", 260, tattooed biker guy. And I'm a Christian. I'm a Christ follower. And she's agnostic. She's liberal. If you look on paper, it's almost polar opposites. And she laughed how she was going to capture my voice. But she did good. She did very good.
Scott's career spans 28 years, and he started by going undercover with organized criminal groups before transitioning into extremist hate groups. I sat down with Scott to hear about his time as an undercover agent, what he learned, and what drew him to this work.
I started as a cop in South Carolina, and I was a uniformed patrol cop for approximately three years.
Chapter 3: What common themes exist among modern extremist groups?
And then I went to Vice of Narcotics. I made investigator at Vice of Narcotics. So I'm working sources, and I'm going and getting certified in undercover techniques at the academy. I'm going and getting certified in technical surveillance and things like that. And I start doing some street level drug buys and other things. And I got the bug. I mean, I just I loved it.
But if you're in a county and that's the only county you were, I mean, you're inside the county limits. How many times can I shave my facial hair a different way, cut my hair a different way, wear different clothing, drive different cars before everybody knows, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
I always thought that. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a database where everybody who's certified is in there and then maybe far away, it's like, hey, we need somebody who looks like a biker to come here and go to this bar or whatever. That'd be cool. And when I got in the FBI, I knew I wanted to get in the undercover program. I was learning about it and what they did.
And that's kind of what you do. You go through the process. If you get through and you get certified and you start finding work, you can pretty much go anywhere.
And what kinds of crimes and investigations require undercover work? Anything. Really?
Yeah. It's not that necessarily the case requires it, but we consider it a sophisticated investigative technique. You're trying to gather evidence. of the person breaking the law. And there's plenty of times that you go in and you find out, okay, they're not. They're not breaking the law. They're within their constitutional rights, and then the undercover's over. I'll back out.
But, I mean, the FBI works everything. There's different squads. So you have a violent crime squad. You have a gang squad. You have a... white-collar crime squad. You have crimes against children. You have all kinds of things, international terrorism, domestic terrorism. So it could be whatever.
But again, if we get in there, I've been five months undercover in a group, and I read every post that was in there, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of posts for five months. And it is very sad what they were saying. It's very hateful, but it wasn't illegal.
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Chapter 4: How did Scott Payne transition from organized crime to extremist groups?
Maybe we just interviewed you and you almost got wrapped up in the conspiracy, but you didn't. And that was enough to turn you around. And the next thing I know, you find out that they have been saved and they are giving their testimony at Celebrate Recovery for recovered addicts. And I'm like, man, that is awesome.
Yeah. It's interesting you say you believe in second and third and fourth chances, and it sort of sounds like these people need to be giving you a second chance too, right? I mean, it's a huge mental turnaround for them to realize who you are. Yes, some have. And some have, you're saying.
And it warms my heart.
Wow.
Here recently. I won't get into it because I don't know if that person wants me to say anything, but it warms my heart because... We're just talking. I mean, look, they're like, man, you're just doing your job. And I'm like, hey, man, but that friendship, that was real. You know, when we were out there and we were about to get jumped and you had my back and I had yours, that was legit.
Wow. You say in your book that at this point in the outlaws case, you were feeling really burned out. What does burnout look like in the FBI for undercover agents?
What happened is I had been doing too much for a three-year period of my life, and I'm at my threshold. I was going way too hard on myself. I stopped taking care of myself. I'm a workaholic. I get it honestly from my parents. I applied the warrior mentality to every aspect of my life. Just, you know, that whole rub some dirt on it, get back out in the field, put a Band-Aid on it, suck it up.
And it's great to have that mentality on a lot of things you do as a first responder. But if you apply it to everything in your life, it could be detrimental. And it was for me. I crashed. And when I say I crashed, I got home from the outlaws case. And I think... Probably like five days. I slept over 16 hours a day. First two days probably was close to 20. And I wasn't depressed. I wasn't sick.
I know what those both feel like. I was that tired. And I'll say this since we're on the topic. Listen, a lot of people don't know this. First responders, that's police, medical, fire. We throw military in there. Technically not first responders, but military is doing pretty much the same type of stuff. We're number one for suicide. It is crazy how many cops are committing suicide.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Payne face while undercover in the Outlaws motorcycle gang?
He puts a brown right in the head of the goat and it kicks for several minutes and then it stopped moving. And you think it's over. No, it's not over. Then they commence to slicing the throat of the goat. They fill up a cup full of its blood. And in the circle, a lot of members took hits of acid. Several of us didn't. But I'm holding the flashlight for Eisen.
He's tearing off tabs of acid, going around and putting it in the mouth. And then you're chasing it with the blood as part of the sacrifice. So it gets to me. And by this time... Shamita, I'm looking and I'm going, oh man, it's all clotting up. It's coagulating. And I'm like, oh man, I don't want to turn this up. I do not want to turn this up.
But I took my finger and I stuck it all the way down in the blood, pulled it out, sucked all the blood off my finger and chased it with a beer. Luckily I had a beer down there. But yeah, it was, it was not cool. And then they commenced to cutting the entire head off, which we carried around for three more days on photo ops and It was bad.
And but those are things like you got to decide right there. Like, I mean, do I need to stop this? I mean, this is a horrific incident, but is it a federal crime?
Well, I should ask, I mean, what were you assigned to build a case around with the base? Like you explain in the book that there's no federal statute for domestic terrorism. And that's why we see you bringing in people on criminal charges, things like possessions of weapons or drugs. But just the fact that they were speaking hatefully about groups of people.
or even that they were doing these kinds of rituals like you're describing, that wasn't enough.
No, no, not enough. We can't investigate you for your hate, but if there's evidence there or reporting that we get that you could be doing some illegal stuff, planning some nefarious things, you know, we're always trying to find them and stop them. You don't want another Tree of Life massacre. You don't want Christchurch. We don't want any of that, right? Yeah.
And how do you know out of all that hate being spewed online, how do you know if there is one that's going to take the next step? It's going to be that shooter or that person that does a massacre. And what ended up happening is after I gained good trust, I started getting brought in on several murder plots. And we were casing a house of what they believed was an Antifa couple.
And essentially the finalized plan was going to be The members of the Georgia cell were going to meet, leave all our electronics at a campsite, go to a pay by the hour motel, scrub ourselves down. And this is their planning. I mean, this is pretty thorough, the research that was done.
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