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

26:05It 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 because everything in the house has 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 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 yeah because even later on when i was doing the neo-nazi stuff and one of those violent groups which I'm sure we'll talk about, but she even said, hey, I was covering you while you were gone or something like that.

26:44We were just chilling on the back porch one night, and I remember I kind of giggled because I was like, he's covering me. I'm like, we've been doing this for, I don't know, 20-plus years. I'm like, you know, I've got a skill set. I'm not saying I'm untouchable because I'm not 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 immediately corrected my direction and told her I appreciated everything.

27:22So. 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 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. 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.

28:04Correct. And you said many of them were in favor of the BLM movement and had voted for, for instance, Hillary Clinton. And that surprised me. Me too. Can you describe why? Yeah. So this group that was kind of like the last big undercover I did, 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. You don't want to jeopardize any things going on. But in this case in particular, that's where I started. I'd already infiltrated several neo-Nazi groups and the Klan and stuff like that.

28:45But 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 everybody's on the picket lines with signs and screaming nonsense. sense. That's not what this is. Accelerationist, it really comes, there's a book called Siege, and Siege was written by James Mason. James Mason is a longtime white supremacist. He created the group Atomwaffen, and Atomwaffen 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?

29:22You know, have you been red-pilled? They do the whole matrix thing. If you've been red-pilled, that's your red-pill moment. 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? 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 man-made events.

29:54And they want to speed that up. Hence, you know, accelerationism or accelerate. And as you said, one of the guys I was talking to who went by the name, his code name was Helter Skelter. Good name, right? But 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 because I'm an older guy with tattoos everywhere. and I'm like, you voted for Hillary? He said, think about it, dude. He goes, if she gets in, he goes, you're going to start, 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.

30:37And 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 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 over here a poison water system here maybe a lefty journalist or somebody who is anti-fash gets murdered, you know, and just to create chaos.

31:15And the idea is they were all training. I say they, we, I was in there, right? 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. That's anti-government. That is a different category, you know, malicious. and there's nothing illegal about being in a militia. I mean, I'm in Tennessee. I mean, hell, there's militias everywhere. And that's part of the Constitution.

31:46But are you doing anything nefarious? Are you out there trying to overthrow a government? Are you out there committing murders and violence and furtherance of your ideology? Then we got an issue.

32:13Yeah, 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 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 raise money so they could do drug deals or be pimps or steal things. So with the base and with the accelerationist crew that or crews that I was in, it wasn't 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.

32:53However, there have been groups like that that do that. But I mean, like you look, I think you're taking from the book where I talk about where I was a case agent over an Aryan Nation case in Tennessee. and yeah, I mean, they were claiming to be white supremacists. They were claiming to be, you know, it's a Tennessee state prison system gang, but it's white supremacy. And when they got out, I mean, they go to church, they have their bylaws. You know, the 14, well, you probably, I say, you know, like everybody knows the 14 words, but it's a common white supremacy. Well, I know from reading the book, but many of the listeners might not know.

33:30So 14 words is something like, if you see the number 14 or like 1488, Well, 14 are the 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. Good choice. Yeah, I know, right? As much as I enjoyed it. No, I'm kidding. I did not enjoy it. But it's something, basically, we must secure a future for white children and protect our race kind of thing. So if you see 14, that refers to that. 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.

34:10So 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 they're not even pimping them out. They're just white people. They're pimping them. 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 is that taken care of?

34:39Not, you know what I mean? So it just doesn't make any sense. But the acceleration is, it was all about, we're, they say it's survivalist training, but I mean, we're out there doing 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 live off 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 probably overlapping. Like, was the training good, or did you feel it was sort of comical? With the base, it was good.

35:17It was good, which was scary, right? I mean, I'm a firearms instructor. I'm a tactical instructor. I'm still an active shooter instructor and tactics, actually. I just do it on the side. I'm not doing it for the Bureau anymore. But you got all these SWAT. You got all these certifications and training that you receive. But 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? But I can tell you 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 yeah trust me trust me there are plenty of legal people in headquarters looking over and watching this you got to 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 But, you know, watching it as an instructor, as an investigator, as a law 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.

36:36And 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 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 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.

37:14But 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. 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 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 and I wanted to do bad things, why not go online?

37:54Why 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, you know, 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, and yet here he is, you know, 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?

38:35But 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. 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?

39:06How about the kid from Aurora? Orange and yellow hair, doesn't like, 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 bark? And I'm like, no.

39:38And they go, you got kids? I'm like, yeah, you need to get bark. 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, 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.

40:13Like, 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. FBI headquarters is signing off on it. And to do that, it would 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.

40:52And 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. 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.

41:29and 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 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?

42:07I 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 and i'm talking anti-semitic 24 7 to the extreme for five months i didn't i didn't miss a single post if i woke i'd wake up after six hours of sleep and be 1500 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 i didn't want to be the reason we missed something so i I went through everything for five months and met with them once or twice.

42:56And I was, we just determined that they weren't going to do anything. And it was first amendment protected as bad as it is. I see as bad as it is, but you're like, okay, they're not going to do anything. But when do you, 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 a Christ church in New Zealand. I mean, it's 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. Matter of fact, he posted on, I think it was 4chan or 8chan right before he went and did it.

43:31He's like, hey, you know, hey, blokes, lads, whatever it is, this is what I, it's been great knowing you guys. I'm going live. I'm doing something for the cause. Bam, bam, bam. And now, 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. But then at some point you determine if, hey, this is sort of, you know, 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 a guy was having guns.

44:13there was other things involved and and you're trying to get closer to kind of get enough evidence to really do something correct um what we ended up finding out uh after the if you remember the story of the halloween sacrifice stuff yeah i was gonna ask you about that the goat sacrifice yeah that was uh that was an odd evening uh in my in my undercover career but um we ended up gaining or I say we, it's we as a village, right? But I'm the undercover. 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.

45:03And 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. A lot of these people in the base or that I've seen in other groups like Adam Woff 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 refer to that as the Boogaloo, the beginning of the race war, the start of the race war.

45:41So, man, I'm preparing for the Boogaloo. So it's all about, hey, if you're building your kid up, well, yeah, I just got some money. 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 i'll just give one example i noticed after jd vance was nominated as vice president i noticed on twitter this this weird thread popped up for me where at first somebody was saying oh good that jd vance is gonna be vice president but then another person stayed 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 oh yeah i see what you're saying so the white supremacists were upset because he's not pure yeah yeah because because his wife because his kids then would not be well they said same thing about trump because trump yeah right trump's son-in-law is 100 jewish you know?

46:56Yeah. I mean, Trump's grandchildren are Orthodox Jews. There you go. And so, so, 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. So I just, I was surprised how out in the open and how big it was. I guess that's just one thread I was looking at. Yeah. And I guess if you're, if you're in that online world, which who isn't these days, I mean, There's teams getting radicalized online from all sides. Of course, I infiltrated the far right based on my skill sets and me, but I've got counterparts that infiltrated the radical jihad.

47:37Those kids are being radicalized online with videos and recruitment. That was the thing with the base. There were 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 postering. 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. And it'll be a picture of a German helmet and 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.

48:16A 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, 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.

49:01And it makes it look like all black people are bad and all white people are victims. And then 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. 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.

49:40So the left is very good at doxing people. And once you get doxxed 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. 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.

50:22And 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. Just to sow chaos in America.

50:46yeah i was just reading on uh about this guy who got swatted which i guess is the next step after doxing where i guess somebody calls the 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 and 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.

51:22And 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. or 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. 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.

52:07But 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. 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 realize 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.

52:42And I've been blessed to be a part of that. What an unbelievable, it's getting big. 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. He has grown men coming over all the time to train machine guns and fighting.

53:20And you've heard the conversations they have, all wearing fleck-tarn 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. 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.

54:01But on one side of the skull is Mayankov, 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. 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. 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, you know? yeah you know i guess look in all aspects of life we wear masks depending on context and you're very aware of this because you had to wear masks for years at a time infiltrating these groups you had to be one of them i still wear there's a famous right well there's this famous kurt monica book mother night where the guy the main character infiltrates the german radio during world war ii and has to constantly say anti-semitic stuff on 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 and on the radio and it did it ever i'm i'm confident with you it never got blurred but it just must be difficult uh yes and no um i will say it this way for me it's the way i was trained it's the way I train when I've been blessed to put that kind of training on.

55:38I'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. Um, I, uh, with me on my undercovers, I was always Scott. I mean, Scott's a pretty common name, so I'm always Scott. Uh, is that typical for undercovers? Keep your first name so you don't slip. I, 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. Yeah. My name was like, I don't know, Thor, maybe I'd change it, you know?

56:15Yeah. But, uh, I was always Scott and pretty much I'm still me. Um, the jokes are pretty much the same. Um, but I may or may not be married. I may or may not have kids. I may or may not have played college ball. I may or may not be a musician and a singer, but you can probably rest this year i left weights and ride motorcycles and and uh and that's pretty much it the only time i would like change the jovial stuff is if i was uh 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 but it in our world what i was taught um 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.

57:08You'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. There's an undercover coordinator in the division. You got headquarters looking at stuff. You have to be psychologically assessed. Um, so we try to put those trip wires up to pick up anything. Um, if somebody's kind of going South. And did you ever get worried? Like you're, 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.

57:49So would you ever get worried? Like someone would say, Hey, I'm coming down to Texas for something next week. We'd love to stop by and meet the wife and family. Sure. Did anyone ever say that? And like, you have to deal with that? Let's just say, uh, I was prepared for it if they did. Okay. And, 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. 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.

58:23I was blessed, again, in my belief system, this 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? 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. 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.

59:09So you're pretty much done there. 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 pain but they know that Scott was the undercover they know that Scott is an FBI agent like let's say let's say though you go back to the the scene of the crime so to speak uh just on a visit or family vacation or whatever do you ever do you ever get worried you're going to be recognized in the street by by one of your old comrades sure but uh first of all I would try not to do that I would try not to go anywhere.

59:46I've been 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. 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 and then like in some in some of these situations everybody's arrested and put in jail except for you right do they remember that do they notice that do they know who was put in jail that you weren't caught so all of my most of my cases the majority uh were criminal cases.

1:00:41So 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. 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, is we're supposed to, as law enforcement on the prosecuting side, we're supposed to hand over everything.

1:01:23I'm talking about if I kept notes, if I was texting somebody about it, you got, the defense has a right to all of that. So they may not, at that point, they're going to know it's me because they're going to hear, 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-ambulance. It'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.

1:02:01So they're going to know. 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 pain with the fbi and let's talk about the last year and a half you know and and did anyone ever say like i'm gonna get you when i'm out of jail no not to my 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.

1:02:43But, 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. You just got to load up with a bunch of cops and go knock on the door and try to thwart it. 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.

1:03:15They 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 about. I mean, but, you know, you 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 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, trust even going as far back as the principal in your school you do something self you say something usually self-deprecating and and you've done that like three or there was at least three or four instances in the book um 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 uh again i'll say it if i hadn't portrayed it enough in this in this interview, there are men and women out there that have done way more than me.

1:04:33They have done more harrowing things. They've been in more harrowing situations than me. Um, and there's going to, as long as we keep using the undercover technique, it's probably happened again. I hope nobody gets hurt or gets put in a scary situation, but it's probably going to happen. Um, so I come, I want to come from kind of a humble spot on that. But for me personally, the self-deprecating humor worked. I was always kind of a bigger guy for my age, which 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 6 '4 and 290, 290 pounds.

1:05:08And 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. 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? Plus I got this caveman crow magnum thing in my eyebrows are always like that.

1:05:55So I don't, I don't realize, I don't realize like I look mad, but I think, I guess I look kind of angry a lot. So, 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, and this fit in naturally with the, the undercover training as well. I'll dive a little deeper. You need to know your true traits and be honest with yourself uh i'm a talker i i 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 pain he goes scott pain can carry on a conversation for 30 minutes with a 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, I look pissed off all the time.

1:06:52So let me counter that right away with, let me defuse, 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 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.

1:07:34Well, 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, 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, it was a motley crew, but it was awesome.

1:08:10What was one of the undercover skills that that was different than what you used to that you had to learn in order to to do the job as effectively as possible it's a good question 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 but what but you get you get wiser i mean you know screwing up getting put in a bad situation you know uh like i i underestimated a a guy who had no teeth in his head and it was a mountain guy and and uh and i got lax i broke my own rule and uh 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 crouts and he was holding the shotgun and telling me to do the cocaine if i wasn't a cop and i'd and i remember thinking damn i can't believe that that was the first thing in my head i'm like i can't believe i let this guy because again it's that chess game right but i I think you just try to get better.

1:09:11What'd you do? I faked it. I did a sleight of hand thing because I couldn't get out of it. 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, 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. What do you think of the changes that could be occurring?

1:09:48Do 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. 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. I mean, there's always going to be something you can complain about, but do you want to be part of the solution?

1:10:31part 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 i work those cases just like a lot of my uh counterparts did but do the right thing don't tarnish the badge and and i'm trying to spread positive things about law enforcement and you know and this is this is actually unrelated but 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's a hell of a question.

1:11:12Yes or no? I know, right? I see my face turn. I can feel the heat in my face.

1:11:20Well, 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 are 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. But I know that we put a lot of effort into sharing information and to work in more national intelligence.

1:11:58I 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. Can you watch them all? Hopefully, 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 to see which one is going to be or just how many targets how do you know which one's going to be that long wolf or get pushed far enough to do something bad and it's it's it's tough you know we got to stay vigilant we got to stay vigilant 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.

1:13:10Most of it's 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 just got to stay vigilant. We 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, 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.

1:13:48And 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? So I guess number one is the book and all that. Hopefully it does well. I was the feature story in Rolling Stone magazine in 2022, February of 2022. That kicked off a lot of interest. but you know 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 the writers strike and this is like like i just pulled back uh i've got a great team uh surrounding me and hopefully the book does well and we'll get to get those opportunities again but i would love to be involved with uh tv movie whatever shows being a consultant i've already been on movie sets i was an armor for a set, for a movie.

1:14:49I 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 actually married, 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 and 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, 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.

1:15:39So 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.