- 7 hours ago
Billy Queen was an undercover agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He spent almost three years embedded in the Mongols Motorcycle club.
Queen speaks to Business Insider about the internal workings of the Mongols, how he rose to become an officer in the club, its hierarchy, its rules, and its war with the Hells Angels. In 2000, his infiltration led to the arrest and conviction of 53 members.
Queen also covers his upbringing as the son of an ATF agent and his military service in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division and Special Forces, which he completed before joining the ATF. He describes the training and skills required for undercover work, emphasizing that it is an innate talent more than a learned skill.
Queen is the author of "Under and Alone: Infiltrating the World’s Most Violent Motorcycle Gang" and "Armed and Dangerous: The Hunt for One of America’s Most Wanted Criminals."
Queen speaks to Business Insider about the internal workings of the Mongols, how he rose to become an officer in the club, its hierarchy, its rules, and its war with the Hells Angels. In 2000, his infiltration led to the arrest and conviction of 53 members.
Queen also covers his upbringing as the son of an ATF agent and his military service in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division and Special Forces, which he completed before joining the ATF. He describes the training and skills required for undercover work, emphasizing that it is an innate talent more than a learned skill.
Queen is the author of "Under and Alone: Infiltrating the World’s Most Violent Motorcycle Gang" and "Armed and Dangerous: The Hunt for One of America’s Most Wanted Criminals."
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FunTranscript
00:00My name's Billy Queen. I spent nearly 20 years undercover with ATF, including more
00:05than two years riding with an outlaw motorcycle gang called the Mongols. And
00:10this is how crime works. They were killing people, they were shooting people,
00:16they were stabbing people. I knew that my number was coming up. After two years I
00:21felt it. I was gonna be involved in a murder, they were gonna murder me. They
00:27see you as a brother. But when it's over with, you'll never be anything but a rat.
00:37The Sheriff's Department in Ventura teamed up with the IRS and ATF to go after the
00:45Hells Angels, Ventura chapter. And they asked me to go undercover with them. And
00:53so I did. I was only there a couple of months before John Saccone, the case agent with the
01:00Mongols, came to me and said, we need you to ride with the Mongols. Mongols are a lot more
01:07violent. They're creating a lot more havoc in Southern California, especially LA. I knew when
01:16I volunteered to do it. This could be the most dangerous thing that you've ever done undercover.
01:22And I'd been doing undercover work for years. The process of actually trying to get into one of
01:27those gangs, they're always making sure that they're not infiltrated by a cop. The first step
01:35is becoming a hang around. You've got to get their attention. You've got to be what they're looking for.
01:43When they approach you and they say, hey, why don't you do this with us? Why don't you go down
01:49to this
01:50other club with us? Then you become a hang around. When I first went in, I looked as rough as
01:59I had
01:59ever been. My mental status at that time was confrontation. And I didn't walk into a lot,
02:09even most undercover operations with a confrontation in my head. But I did that night.
02:19I'm going into a redneck bar that's got a bunch of violent people in it and Mongols in there.
02:28Entertainment in these places is watching the fights. I had a confidential informant with me,
02:34which was a problem. Confidential informants can piss back words on you and sometimes you can't
02:42control them. And in a situation like that, just made it even more dangerous. She did introduce me
02:48to the Mongols who looked at me and like, okay, who the hell is this? Get out of my face.
02:56And as far as I was concerned, that was all that I needed or wanted. The Mongols got to see
03:02you for
03:04a number of weeks or even months before they'll even talk to you. What did it for me? I get
03:12into
03:12it again now with a dude that wants to fight. I've made numerous friends inside the place,
03:19but this guy wants to fight. He doesn't want to fight with cue sticks and stuff. He wants to go
03:25fisticuffs and stuff. So I do. I don't hurt him, but I took him down. But that made an impression
03:34with the Mongols. The Mongols say, hey, Billy, won't you ride with us down to this other club?
03:41And when that happened, I became an official hang around.
03:51I told the Mongols I had a good legitimate job. I'm in the avionics business. I get a lot of
03:58credibility for that. I'm older than they are. I got a legitimate job. There were two assistant U.S.
04:03attorneys that were assigned to the case, and I looked to them for guidance. What am I supposed to
04:09do when they start beating people? They're going to expect me to jump in and beat people with them.
04:13What am I supposed to do when they hand me a kilo of dope and I'm supposed to move that
04:18kilo of dope
04:19for them? At that time, both assistant United States attorneys sitting on the other side of the
04:24desk, they were doing this. I was going to do what I had to do to get in. I made
04:34my own line in the
04:35sand. Obviously, I wasn't going to kill anybody for that club and I wasn't going to participate in rape,
04:40but I was going to be just like them.
04:48All the clubs have got their colors, their cut, their rags, whatever they want to call it. The
04:55Mongols and the Hells Angels, you have a bottom rocker, which you're given when you become a prospect.
05:05Then you have that center patch. Not until you get that top rocker. With the Mongols do you become a
05:12full patched Mongol. And same thing with the Hells Angels. These are my colors. You can get that center
05:21patch. You got to earn it. And they vote on it. A month turned into two months turned into three
05:29months
05:29until one day they did ask me. They threw them colors at me with that lower rocker.
05:35We want you in. They also threw an enrollment application, which was three pages long that
05:43I couldn't cover. They're going to turn that over to a private investigator and they're going to find
05:47out who you are. I was Billy St. John for a long time. Had an undercover social security for a
05:56long
05:56time. I'd rent apartments under my undercover name. I had a hell of an undercover background,
06:02but the things that they wanted to know, I didn't have. Criminals had gotten smarter and smarter over
06:09the years when it came to that stuff. You graduated from this high school, bring your high school annual
06:16land. We want to see it. We actually had to put an ATF agent in the school system to cover
06:23it.
06:24When the investigator contacted the school system, they turned them over to him and he said, yeah,
06:32okay. I'm looking at his record here. He graduated such and such, blah, blah, blah. You were in the
06:37military? Bring us your DD Form 214 in. We want to see it. Bring your social security number,
06:43everything. We're going to run the credit. You got relatives here. You got relatives there. See,
06:47bring your telephone numbers in. We want to talk to them.
06:55I got a call from the chapter president and the sergeant at arms. We're going to roll over the hill.
07:01We're going to go to some bars and stuff that we don't go to ordinarily, so leave your patch home
07:05because they don't allow patches in. We rolled over into Los Angeles, areas that we don't ordinarily
07:13go, and we partied. Somebody confronted or said something to Domingo. That's the president of the
07:21San Fernando Valley chapter. Domingo squared off on the dude. To make a long story short, he hit him.
07:27I did what I was supposed to do, and bam, I hit the dude toe-to-toe. The guy's on
07:34the floor now on his
07:35hands and knees, and I'm trying to make a good show of it. So I got him by the collar
07:41and wailing on the
07:43back of his head, trying to make it look good, but I didn't see it coming. There were two Mongols
07:50in the
07:50bar, had their colors on. I could only see a foot coming. He hit the dude in the face with
07:58a boot. Bam!
08:00And I'm like, oh God, if I don't get him out of here, they kill him. Everybody in the bar
08:04saw me, hit him first,
08:06knock him to the ground. Hell, I'm going to go to jail for murder, too! So I drugged the dude
08:11out the back door.
08:14This mongol laid one more kick to his head. Well, the guy got up, and before they could hit him
08:20again,
08:20he took off running. When I came back in, I'm all out of breath. Domingo comes up to me,
08:28he puts his armor around me. Good job, prospect! Good job! There was a big old barroom brawler there.
08:35Now, I don't have a patch on. Domingo doesn't have a patch on. This guy doesn't know who we are.
08:41He knocked Domingo up against the wall. And I thought to myself, blank me, round two.
08:50So I grabbed the dude. I was able to hit him one time. Well, I saw his hand go behind
08:56him.
08:57And when he came back out, he had a bowie knife. But he got one swipe at me and cut
09:03the front of my
09:03jacket open. He ran out the door after me. And I'm going around in a circle out the door. And
09:09I'm
09:09screaming for Domingo. And I'm screaming for Rocky. He's a sergeant at arms. I know Rocky's got a gun.
09:15As far as I'm concerned, this case is over with. Shoot him, Rocky! Shoot him! Everybody's out of the
09:21bar now. Give him the knife! Give him the knife! And Domingo gets the knife. And I'm so mad because
09:28this guy just tried to kill me with this damn knife. I'm ready to just, for lack of better terms,
09:34f*** him up with all the damn other Mongols because he just tried to kill me. But Domingo stops me.
09:41Oh, hold on, brother. Hold on, brother. Hold on. He gives me the knife. When he gives me the knife,
09:46he
09:46said, Billy, this guy's going to come up to the place, to our place Thursday night. When he comes up
09:51there, you're going to stab him. They're going to want me to kill this dude Thursday, which is day after
09:56tomorrow. This case is over. I ain't killing anybody for this club. He left town, never saw him again.
10:04So I got myself a new Bowie knife, and I don't have to kill the dude. I got my center
10:09patch.
10:10Here you go, dude. Good job, prospect. Good job. So now I'm prospecting with a lower rocker in my
10:18center. And everybody in the club knows Billy Queen took that knife for the president of the San Fernando
10:25Valley chapter. But it doesn't get me my top rocker. It's months and months later. The top patch,
10:31you get that when you become a full-fledged member of the gang.
10:42One night I get a call from Domingo. Hey, Billy, come on up to the place, man. There's some national
10:50guys that are going to be there. So I went up there just thinking it's another prospect night. When I
10:55got
10:55there, they run a little scenario by me. They snatch my colors. And now they're going to beat me down
11:02because I allowed another Mongol to snatch my colors. And they got me out back. I'm in a big
11:10circle with all these Mongols. And Domingo is reading me the riot act. He says,
11:19bud, if you don't want to leave that center patch and stuff, then you put this on. And he pulls
11:25out
11:26a top rocker, says Mongols on it, throws it to me. At that point, I knew I had made full
11:34patch Mongol.
11:36Cheers go up. I'm cheering. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't know whether I'm happy because I'm a real
11:45Mongol or because I'm an undercover agent that beat them. I'm just happy as I can be. I just made
11:52full
11:53patched Mongol. The people that I'm talking about are the one percenters. And they identify themselves
12:05as one percenter. They are the hell's angels. They are the Mongols. They are the pagans. They
12:12are the outlaws. These people are very violent people that live outside the law. And that's why
12:20they call themselves outlaws. They want everybody to know that if you cross them,
12:26they're going to hurt you or they're going to kill you. You might put one, two, three, four,
12:30or you might put a dozen in jail. But that's only going to leave several hundred that are going to
12:35make sure that you're not there to testify. In the state of California, the hell's angels,
12:40they control the state. At that time, they had nothing to do with anybody other than white people.
12:46Well, back in the 70s, you had a bunch of Vietnam veterans coming home who didn't fit in necessarily
12:55with the hell's angels. The Mongols started their own organization. And basically it was a Latino
13:05organization back in the 70s. Well, the Mongols put on their patch, which included a lower rocker that
13:14said California on it. Mongols put that California rocker on. Hell's angels went to them, said,
13:20you're going to take it off or we'll kill you. We'll annihilate you. So the Mongols said,
13:26bring it on. Basically for 17 years, they killed each other. But the Mongols got to be bigger,
13:34a lot bigger, especially in Southern California. One day, the Mongols took it to the hell's angels and
13:41said, we'll let you exist. You can exist in Northern California. We have Southern California.
13:47The hell's angels had to do what the Mongols let them do. Extortion was a big deal. In California,
13:54it would take you months and months and months to get a deadbeat person out of your rental property,
14:01slumlords. Well, they wouldn't do that. They go to the Mongols and say they would pay Mongols,
14:07like our chapter, pay us $50 a piece to go over to a house. We would roll in. Domingo would
14:16go up to
14:16the door, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Domingo would point the finger in the face and say,
14:20you got till this afternoon to get your ass out of this house. What do you think they did?
14:26They were gone. And we get paid $50 a piece.
14:31And I went with them to threaten witnesses. I went with them to make sure that witnesses weren't
14:39going to show up and testify against them. Rocky and Domingo, they beat the s*** out of a guy up
14:50at
14:50the place one night. They thought they killed him. The ambulance shows up. The cops show up.
14:56This one guy, he steps up. And he says, Domingo and Rocky, they're the ones that beat this dude to
15:03death. Rocky leaves town. Domingo decides he's going to hide until one day. He decides
15:11he's going to end it all. He's going to go down to the police department, walk in with guns. He's
15:17going to kill as many cops as he can kill. He'll go out a hero. That's what he said. But
15:23then they
15:23find out the guy didn't die. He's still alive. So we caught the witness down at the sundowner,
15:30a club. And I'm there with three or four Mongols. They're going to kill him. And I'm doing everything
15:38that I can do to keep from participating in this murder. He got a girlfriend in the bathroom.
15:45The girls, Mongols that got their old ladies there, they're holding the girl in the bathroom,
15:51kidnapping. So Domingo reads him the riot act. You're going to walk out that door with your old
15:57lady. You're going to leave town. If you show back up, we're going to kill you. He goes out the
16:04door
16:04with his old lady, gets on his motorcycle, never see him again. Nobody's going to testify against
16:11them. Twice I was involved in an armed robbery and I was praying to God that they were just going
16:20to
16:20give them the money. And so they weren't going to shoot this guy because I wasn't going to let
16:26them shoot victims in front of me. If they were going to green light somebody, somebody would be
16:32assigned to do it. And they didn't write anything down, which is a smart way. I got the assignment
16:38to stab somebody to death. But it was all face to face. Rocky had pwned his motorcycle over there,
16:46couldn't get the money to get his bike back. So his plan to get his bike back was we would
16:54just kill
16:55the guy and then he could just go over and freely get his bike back. And he called me up
17:02one night.
17:03He's telling me how we're going to go over and kill Reuben was the guy's name. I was going to
17:09drive
17:10the getaway car on it. And so I'm like, all right, are you nuts or I'm going to go to
17:15jail for murder?
17:16Cause you want to get your bike back? Rocky's old lady had stolen a grand piano.
17:22And I told Rocky, I know somebody that'll buy that grand piano for $2,000. We won't have to kill
17:29Reuben. I can hear the phone go quiet. Then I heard Rocky come back and say, see if you can
17:34get $2,500
17:35for it. I can't get in touch with ATF to get the $2,000. So I'm pulling all the money
17:42I can pull out of
17:43my account. Other ATF agents are pulling out of money out of the ATM accounts till we get $2,000.
17:49Undercover, we rent a truck, go over and buy this baby grand piano to keep Rocky from killing Reuben.
18:00Mongols were in all kinds of businesses, criminal businesses, everything from, you know, the standard
18:07selling dope and guns to some of them would have a legitimate job, like working at Sears.
18:14And if they worked at Sears, I could go into Sears, buy $25 worth of tools and stuff and walk
18:21out with
18:21$250 worth of tools. Or I could take my receipt and walk out with $2,000 worth of tools. So
18:29everybody had
18:30a scheme. I'm hauling dope. I'm helping steal motorcycles. This is now. Here, Billy, this guy's
18:40wanting this dope, you know, and stuff. You know, you go over there and deliver this dope and collect
18:43the money. You go give it to my wife. Like that. Mongols have chapters all over the United States,
18:50and they all have presidents and vice presidents and secretary treasurers and their enforcers.
18:55They have a structure quite like other organized crime groups. The San Fernando Valley chapter had a
19:01bunch of, sorry to say, stupid people in it. And the national officers were getting pissed.
19:12They were about to come down on San Fernando Valley when Domingo had made the decision,
19:17let's make Billy secretary treasurer of the club because he's pretty smart.
19:25I could read and write. And I did what I had to do. Domingo says,
19:31hey, Billy, it's approved. You're an officer. You're the secretary treasurer. He's got the books.
19:39I mean the books. Everything to get the Mongols recode. And he hands them to me. I'm an ATF agent.
19:51And he's handing me the books to kill them. If we get into gun business, start selling guns,
19:59that's got to go in the ledger. Steal motorcycles, sell motorcycles and stuff, got to go in the books.
20:06It would seem just absolutely incredibly stupid for them to have books like that,
20:11just lays them out. Everything's in code. So it's not like we stole guns, or we sold guns,
20:20or we took these guns in. Guns aren't guns in the book. Guns are beepers.
20:26If law enforcement gets the books, which they got, they got to be able to have somebody that can
20:32decipher the books for them. Secretary treasurer does that. I had to go to headquarters,
20:41the mother chapter, once a month, and sit down with mother down there, provide them with
20:47the books. This is what we did. This is the money. Here's your money. You're part of it.
20:53And so I got to see what everybody else was doing around the United States. Hey,
20:57if there was something in there that I didn't understand, then I went back to Rocky or Domingo.
21:02Hey, what is this? And they just would explain it to me. They would be explaining it to me all
21:07on tape.
21:13I'd be going somewhere. I'd look in my mirror, and I'd see John Ciccone right on my ass. Now,
21:19that made me nervous as hell, and I'd have to have a word with him. What the hell are you
21:23trying to do,
21:24get me killed? And so, unfortunately, there'd be places where I was all alone. That was my life
21:34for the next two years. I never wore a wire, but I did wear recording equipment. A wire is different
21:42than a recorder. A recorder is just on you, but a wire is transmitted somewhere. My car was hardwired.
21:53My apartment was hardwired with audio and visual. There were numerous times where I was in situations,
22:00if I knew if I were going to come out alive, it wasn't because the cops were going to come
22:05in and
22:05save me. It's because the Mongols were going to save me, and I loved them. About a year and a
22:13half in,
22:13my mother died. I left Los Angeles, went back to North Carolina, and I buried my mama, and it was
22:20very,
22:21very emotional for me. ATF wanted me back on that motorcycle. They wanted me back in. They didn't
22:29say a word to me about my mama dying. I didn't get a card, nothing. Just get back on that
22:36bike,
22:37buddy, and get in. I rode that bike over to a guy's house named Evil. When I went up to
22:43the door
22:44and knocked on the door, I fully expected to do a Mongol handshake with him, but that didn't happen.
22:52Evil reached out, and he grabbed me, and he hugged me, and he said, Billy, I love you, brother,
23:00and I'm sorry about your mama. Something inside of me, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was
23:07kind of
23:08stunned. I sat down on the couch. When I heard that next bike roll up, I got up. It was
23:14a young guy by
23:15the name of JR. I got up to do the Mongol handshake with him. He grabbed me. He hugged me,
23:23and he held
23:24me, and he said, Billy, I love you, brother. I'm sorry about your mama, brother, and he held me,
23:33and I felt something rush through me that I can't explain. The next guy that rolled in, it played out
23:41again and again and again. I thought, Jesus Christ, what are you doing, Billy? You can't testify against
23:50these people. They love you. I didn't know what I was going to do. We got on our motorcycles. We
23:56rode into
23:57this huge run. There were hundreds of Mongols there. We had a whole motel, and they hugged me,
24:06and we love you, Billy. We love you. I wanted to get on that bike. I wanted to be Billy
24:12St. John.
24:13I didn't want to be Billy Queen. I wanted to ride off with those Mongols, and the only way that
24:20I could
24:21handle it that night was to drink, and I drank and drank until I got to the point where I
24:25was going to
24:26pass out right there. It must have been two, three o'clock in the morning. Something Mongols came in,
24:31and they were shaking me. Billy, get up. Get up, Billy, get up. Yeah, what the hell's going on? What
24:38the hell? There were SWAT teams. They had the motels surrounded. Now they were calling every Mongol out
24:45at gunpoint to include me. I'm down there on my knees with all these other Mongols with my hands on
24:54my
24:55head, and at that point, it was like getting hit in the face with a red, wet squirrel. I knew
25:03I couldn't
25:03ride off with these guys. I wasn't going to rape. I wasn't going to kill for this club, and I
25:11realized
25:12who I was again. One day, I loved them. Next day, I hated them.
25:23The beginning of the investigation, I was still seeing my kids, but after a year and a half,
25:29I had none of that. Girlfriend was gone. Children were gone. Friends were gone. Had nobody. I saw
25:38John Sconey, the case agent, and on occasion, I would see a technical guy because of the camera
25:47systems because of the recording systems, but beside that, I had Mongols, Mongol friends.
25:55Life wasn't normal in any way. When I reached two years, the Mongols had assigned me to kill people,
26:04signed our chapter to kill people. I knew that my number was coming up. I went to John Sconey,
26:13and the case agent said, I can't do it anymore. I had lost my life. My personal life was gone,
26:19and I wanted it back. I wanted to be a father again. I wanted to be a regular agent again,
26:26but this was also what I was hearing. Hey, there's somebody in the club. Hey, there's a cop in the
26:35club,
26:36but they were having discussions in front of me. We've got to kill them. I just hear them talking
26:41about having to kill a cop that's in the club. That, along with losing my life and knowing
26:51that it's about to catch up with me, I made the decision, time to get out or something bad's gonna
26:59happen. They loved Billy St. John, but they would have put a bullet through Billy Queen. But we needed
27:06enough information for the search warrants, for the indictments. It took an additional two months
27:15to get the information they needed. Every day I rolled in, I looked at them to see the way that
27:23they were looking at me, to make sure they were gonna kill me that day. It was miserable for the
27:30next two months until we were ready to take them all down. The day that it went down, it was
27:40like
27:41standing in a fishbowl. It was like being in the twilight zone. I was with them one day, running,
27:48gang banging. The next day, I'm Billy Queen again. And then I started getting phone calls. But now,
27:56I got a, I got a cell phone. And Mongols are calling me. Billy, get rid of you. The cops
28:05are
28:05coming. They're hitting everybody. Billy, are you okay? Yeah, I'm okay, dude. I'm okay. They're
28:11hitting everybody, Billy. Get rid of all you. Same phone calls over and over. We arrested 54.
28:18We had convicted 53 of the 54 that we arrested. They had a witness. They had it all on tape.
28:27There wasn't much that they could do. I had answered enough calls. It went from,
28:33Billy, we're, Billy, you hear what was going on? Hide you, Billy, to the calls that went like this.
28:39Hey, Billy, where are you, brother? Wasn't long after that. You mother, we will kill you.
28:47I didn't want to hear that anymore. Click.
28:55Guys from Washington, D.C. Walked in at C-Mert. And they laid a wallet down in front of me
29:02and said,
29:03here's your new life, Billy. You're going to Plano, Texas. But your family's going to Miami,
29:10Florida. What? They separated me. What about my children? What about my life?
29:20Billy, we just want to keep you alive. We want to keep your family alive.
29:24Well, don't worry about it. We're going to send you to Florida to see your children.
29:28We're going to take your children. We're going to fly them to Plano, Texas, where they can see you.
29:34For the next two years, I got to see my children one time. I was never going to be a
29:40father again.
29:41I moved into a witness protection program. I had a great big box of tapes that I had made undercover.
29:50When this case comes up, pull them tapes out, transcribe tapes and stuff, get on an airplane,
29:56fly back to L.A., testify against these people. Lay it out by the pool, transcribing tapes.
30:02Get on an airplane, fly back to Los Angeles, or fly somewhere else. Testify in state court,
30:08testify in federal court. SWAT teams pick me up, escort me to a courthouse, slip me in the back doors,
30:17or come up, sit down, testify against Mongols, put me on an airplane, fly me back to Plano, Texas.
30:27That was my life for the next two years. The greatest majority of them pled out Operation Black Rain.
30:35It was extremely successful.
30:43I grew up in North Carolina, but I was born in the hills of North Carolina in Rutherford County.
30:49At five years old, I moved to Greensboro. That's when my dad joined ATF. My goal was to be an
30:59ATF agent,
31:00like my dad. I was a soldier right out of high school. I had a twin brother. Me and my
31:07twin brother
31:07decided Vietnam was hot and heavy at that time. We weren't going to wait for the country to call us
31:14up. We were going to go join. We joined and we both volunteered to go to Vietnam. They sent my
31:18brother
31:19first. I was with the 82nd Airborne Division when they sent my brother. He was there about four months,
31:26and he was severely wounded when they brought my brother home. He was on a gurney, and he couldn't
31:33get up, couldn't sit up. I said, brother, I'll get some payback for you, bud. Got back in the jeep,
31:40went right back to the 82nd Airborne Division. I said, send me to Vietnam, and they did.
31:47Overall, I ended up serving with the 82nd Airborne Division, 18th Airborne Corps, 504th MP Battalion,
31:54and the 11th Special Forces Group. To get a job as an 1811, that's a criminal investigator
32:02with the federal government, AFBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Customs, you had to have a four-year degree.
32:10So that's why I went to college. I started out as a police officer in High Point, North Carolina.
32:15When I was with the High Point Police Department, when I got off, I was working on race cars,
32:22my own race car, and I was driving race cars on the NASCAR circuit for two, three years when I
32:31was
32:32also building the engines for NASCAR racers like Richard Childress. But that was part of my background.
32:40That's a very expensive way to try to make a living. It was way too expensive.
32:51And I ended up just being a cop. But when I was with Special Forces, we were training in explosives,
32:59and I was hanging out with those guys that would, they were engineers, and they were blowing up stuff.
33:11That, along with driving race cars on a NASCAR circuit, and being a police officer, and watching
33:23my dad was all kind of pointing me in the same direction. This is what you're going to do.
33:29I went from there to North Carolina A&T State University. I worked on a master's degree over
33:35there in psychology. But I went from there to the United States Border Patrol.
33:45When I joined ATF, the training, of course, you had to go through the basic investigation training.
33:52A whole lot of it was firearms training. And I'm not talking about going out to the firing range and
33:59just shooting pistols and stuff. But they introduced you to machine guns. What people think are illegal
34:06weapons out there? Short-barrel shotguns and short-barreled rifles, silencers. They did have
34:13M79 grenade launchers. But you also went through explosives, post-explosives training. And that was
34:21everything from homemade devices, pipe bombs, to military-style explosives. When it comes to undercover
34:29work, ATF does have an undercover school. They'll have a basic undercover school. They'll have
34:35advanced undercover school. I went to both. And the basic undercover school pretty much was,
34:42these are the warning signs when it's time to get up and get out. It was also how to testify
34:48in court
34:49as an undercover agent. But it was really basic. Did not really teach you any psychological sides of it.
34:59They didn't teach you how to talk your way out of getting killed. They had an advanced school also.
35:09It was pretty much how to buy dope or how to buy guns. They would set up scenarios and had
35:15professional
35:15actors. You would work your way in to a realistic type situation. And they would be evaluating you
35:27your performance. And then they would tell you after it was over with, oh, well, you did this,
35:34or you did this, or you said this. And the difference in advanced undercover school,
35:41in reality, in advanced school, you're not challenged when it comes to your nerves,
35:48because you know they're not going to kill you. But in reality, when you're behind enemy lines and
35:53you're dealing with the real bad guys, you always got in your mind if this goes bad, they could kill
35:59you. So that's a different side of real undercover work versus trying to go to school and learning how
36:07to be an undercover agent. When it comes to undercover work, it's like a talent. You got to have the
36:13guts to
36:13be able to go behind enemy lines, stand toe to toe with the guys that'll kill you and not be
36:21nervous
36:22about it. Be able to play the game in their backyard and be able to fool them into thinking
36:28you're just as bad as they are. And if you don't have that skill, then forget it. The first time
36:35that
36:35you walk in, you lock eyes with the bad guy, it all of a sudden becomes real. Because if it
36:42goes bad,
36:43they could kill you. When it came to working undercover operations and standing toe to toe
36:49with the bad guys, I mean, in their backyard, for the most part, that didn't scare me either.
37:01If I wanted to be an ATF agent, I was going to be an ATF agent in Los Angeles. And
37:07that brought
37:07about a different way of life. But I did it. It all had to do with firearms, explosives and arson.
37:15Being with the 11th Special Forces Group, I think that's another reason they started calling on me
37:20to do unusual stuff, identifying weapons, military style weapons, which led to my first undercover
37:29operation. An ATF agent came to me, told me one day, hey, look, this is a guy, he's selling parts
37:37for
37:37guns. And somebody told us he was selling the complete parts for guns to put an M60 machine gun
37:45together. And I humped an M60 in Vietnam a lot. I love that gun. And they asked me, would you
37:52go to
37:53this place and see if you can buy all the parts to put together a complete M60 machine gun? They
37:58had
37:5855 gallon drums full of gun parts. And I go through these 55 gallon drums. And sure enough, I get
38:06a
38:06receiver here, I get barrels here, I get trigger groups here. And I got everything that you needed to
38:13put together a M60 machine gun. So I left, put the M60 together, said, here you are, complete M60.
38:22That's a devastating weapon. And he asked me to go back in and do it again. So I did. And
38:29we made a
38:30successful case against this guy selling all kinds of military weaponry out to everybody in the Los
38:36Angeles area. I wasn't putting a machine gun together in front of him. I just selected all
38:43the parts I needed to put a machine gun together and paid him money and walked out the door. It
38:48didn't bother me at all. I didn't really think the guy was going to come up with a gun and
38:52shoot me.
38:53So it was really kind of a lighthearted situation for an undercover operation.
39:00But later on, when I started buying dope undercover,
39:08that was a situation where if this goes bad, this guy put a bullet through you.
39:13And then I was assigned to a drug task force with DEA.
39:18I began to do all the undercover work that anybody would ask me to do.
39:25A lot of drug stuff. But it wasn't until people started asking me to do anti-government groups and
39:33hate groups that it really got more serious. More serious is what I mean by going in a
39:40one-man, one-gun type operation, or a one-man, one-eight ball type operation.
39:47But with DEA, you know, it was kilos of stuff. When you start buying dope out in Los Angeles,
39:58you start dealing with some of the organized groups, some of the groups that you know are violent,
40:05and ATF wants to go after these violent groups. It's very, very real then. You do go in knowing.
40:15Although ATF might be next door to you. You know if it goes bad, they're going to kill you before
40:22ATF
40:22comes in, or the cops come in to save you. They're not going to save you. You just better be
40:31ready.
40:33The more serious the crime, the more excited that I was about doing something about it.
40:42White supremacy organizations, anti-government organizations, violent organizations are the
40:50people that I wanted to go after, and they were the most dangerous. We got involved with them as ATF
40:57because of that violence. I was going in against violent people, and I knew that.
41:08The Hells Angels and the Mongols were always going to be at war, and they are today. They're just as
41:14violent today with each other as they were back then, or when I was then. Did the ATF learn from
41:22this operation? Yes, they did. They did another outstanding undercover operation against the
41:28Mongols. Twice as many people got arrested, but they did learn. They didn't do it with a single
41:35undercover operative again. They did it with a whole group, and they did it with people that didn't have
41:42everything to lose. It ain't his life that's going to change, but it's everybody that
41:48is associated with him personally associated with him. His family, his life's going to change.
41:55My ex, she was born and raised in San Diego, California. She was born there, raised there. Her
42:05family was there. Her friends were there. They picked her up one day and moved her all the way across
42:13the
42:13country. No warning. Her life was upside down because of what I did. Really good for ATF with the people
42:23out in California, but it was a tragedy for Billie Queen.
42:31Had I known what it was going to cost me, I'd have never done that.
42:37Hi, I'm a producer and authorised account. If you enjoyed this video,
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