Shawn Ryan Show - #333 George Christie - Surviving 40 Years in the Hells Angels

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

George Christie is the former longtime president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's Ventura, California chapter, where he spent decades leading one of the country's most well-known outlaw motorcycle clubs. After leaving the club, he became an author, speaker, and commentator, sharing insights on leadership, loyalty, the justice system, and personal accountability. His memoir, Exile on Front Street: My Life as a Hells Angel—and Beyond, chronicles his experiences inside the Hells Angels and his life after leaving the outlaw world. Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier - https://srs.site/glacierapp Website - https://theglacierapp.com Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Start your new morning ritual and get up to 43% off your MUDWTR with code SRS at https://mudwtr.com/SRS! #mudwtrpod Go right now to https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 and get 50% off your first order. Or, you can use code SRS50 at checkout. Upgrade your eyewear for summer at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. Go to https://moinkbox.com/SRS to get free chicken wings in every box for a year as long as you're a paying customer. Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at https://bubsnaturals.com/srs George Christie Links: Official Site - https://www.georgechristie.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/p/George-Christie-100063588966258 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgeGusChristie Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/georgechristiejr Book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982109516 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So at what point did you realize you wanted to be a Navy SEAL and pursue? Probably around sophomore, junior, high school. Was it like a particular event? No, I just, well, let's see, how did it's... But I was just always into the military. I grew up playing with G.I. Joe's and carp and spears and shit like that out in the woods. But to be... And then I lost sight of it.

But to be honest, I was just a fucking turd, you know, in high school. I didn't really have anything going for me. No direction. Uh-uh. And other than booze and trying to get some chicks, which I wasn't very successful with. Well, who is in high school? Right. Right.

Everybody's lying. Yeah. And my dad was, we just butted heads and one day fucking kicked my ass around. And is he, you know? And said, I'm not paying for your fucking school. I'm not doing, you know, basically like you're on your own. Like, fuck you. And I was like, cool.

I already joined the Navy anyways. So, well, I didn't already join. But I was like, yeah, I'm already talking to a recruiter anyways. I'm going to be a seal. And how did you respond to that? Totally, like, changed everything. It was like, you did what? And proud or concerned or nervous or both?

Yeah, probably all three. And what year was this? Did I join or? Yeah, that you did this when you told your dad, this is what I'm going to do. I guess what I'm trying to put in my mind what was going on in the world at the time as a parent. You know. Pre-9-11. So probably like 99, 2000.

Well, yeah, okay. Well, shit was kind of getting kind of. Yeah. But, I mean, I don't know what the hell was going on. I was in high school. Sure. The George Bush election. But, yeah, that's kind of it.

Yeah, you know, for me, probably 1955, 1956, I don't know what year, probably eight or nine, maybe. I saw my first outlaw biker. It was in San Fernando Valley.

Standing around the corner with my dad, he's talking to this Italian he has a restaurant as well. My dad was on a restaurant business and they're discussing the restaurant business and I'm just, you know, just a goofy kid and I hear this noise coming and I look up the street and you see this guy coming and he gets to the stop sign stops and he does a series of things he pushes his glasses up on his head and he's like messing with

something to his left side over here which I've learned later it's a jockey shifter you know it's a hand shifter and I hear this distinctive rattling and what they are is I've learned later it's the bearings in the clutch basket. It's, you know, he's engaged the clutch and it's spinning. It's not engaged, it's spinning. And these bell bearings are making this whirling sound that's very distinct. They don't do it anymore because, you know, it's a whole different motorcycle nowadays. But so I'm just watching this guy's got a Levi vest cut off and everybody's tripping on this guy.

And, you know, he's not paying attention to anybody. And the light changes, he dumps it in gear, pops his glasses down and he, just shoots across the intersection and i'm what i'm like what the hell was that you know and i look at the italian guy and he looks at me and he goes that's your america and he spit on the ground and i thought to myself that's my america and you know metaphorically i jumped on the back of that bike it was another 10 years and i didn't get a bike till 1966 as i you know i was a kid yeah but uh that pushed me into the direction I wanted to go. It was just so profound and so

it was just something else. Oh, shit. Yeah, you know, it's just like that one event for me probably changed my life. Yeah. You know, I hadn't gone down to L.A. that day and saw that guy, you know. Who knows how I've all turned out.

Maybe I'd been a cop. That would have been a change of events. But I got a hot question for it, actually. Okay. There are a handful of patches on biker vests that everyone recognizes. And a few that people whisper about because they're considered notorious. For someone who doesn't know the culture, can you break down what the main patches mean,

what they represent inside the club, and generally how a guy earns the right to wear each one? Well, the Hell's Angel patch, the top rocker, the center patch, which is called the Deathhead. Then you have your MC motorcycle club patch below that. And then you have a bottom rocker that identifies what state you're from or what area you're claiming to basically kind of control. And, you know, the big dogs run the state rockers. And, you know, the smaller, you know, they're subservient to the bigger clubs. They might have, you know, Topanga Canyon or a town in,

Des Moines or whatever. But each club is pretty much structured. Like the outlaws, they have a piston. Have you ever seen the outlaw patch? It's a piston double. It's a skull with two pissed cross pistons. Almost kind of looks like it could be mistaken for a pirate type patch. It's a really distinctive, very iconic like the death head itself.

And they were kind of like the number two in the world of outlaw bike clubs. And on the front, you've got these various patches that some of them are very esoteric. Nobody knows what they mean. Certainly over the years, things are getting out. You know, people become informants and they debrief and they tell the police, well, that's what this means. And that's what that means. But the problem is, with the gentleman doing that, they, They embellish sometimes.

They have their own agenda. No way. Human beings, embellishing. They have their own agenda. So, you know, they want to seem informed. They want to engage these cops because they're trying to extract themselves from a problem. So a patch that, then I'm going to use it some leading up to some. The filthy few is in the outlaw bike world morphed into an urban legend.

And what it means is you have killed on the behest of the club, if you will. Okay. And that entitles you to wear a filthy few patch. Would that be one of the highest patches? Yeah, yeah. That, and there's another patch called the de quelo patch. This is Hell's Angel stuff, I'm speaking of. They have the de qualo patch, which means you're willing to fight law enforcement for what

you believe in. You know, like maybe a cop will say, you know, it happens. I'll go, take that patch off. We don't allow that patch in the town. And then, of course, the exchange starts, well, I'm not taking it off. Oh, you're going to take it off. And then next thing you know, they're fighting. If somebody did that, and he physically engaged a cop in combat, hand-to-hand combat or whatever you want to call it, he would have the right to wear the decoelow patch. The filthy fuse started out with the first to arrive and the last to leave. They were like a crew of guys that their whole life was just about partying. You know, riding motorcycles partying.

They were the first guys to come, the last guys to leave. They started calling themselves the filthy few. And they were from the Bay Area, San Francisco, all the area up in that Northern California. The Southern California guys, in response to the filthy few, started an organization themselves called the Raggedy Ranglers. And that was the competition between the two now. I recently... There's competition between...

The clubs with the inner conflict. No shit. So the Hells Angels North Cal, Hells Angels, South Cal, they fucking don't like each other. Well, not that they don't like each other. It's like... It's like a healthy rivalry?

Yeah, yeah, you want to be a real, Hells Angel. You ought to come up here with us. So it's like East Coast, West Coast seal teams. Exactly. Okay. And that's where I was heading with this. We'll fight you.

But if it comes down to it, we'll also fight together. Yeah, we'll fight each other. And when the chips are down, I'm right there with you, brother. I'm going down with you, even though I may have kicked you a couple weeks ago in that bar fight. But so I work as an expert witness sometimes for the defense, which is kind of something new. In the past, the prosecution always bought in. brought in their gang expert. And then, you know, he goes through, you know, for four years, I did this.

And I was undercover here and I did that. They bring me in there. And I, you know, I tell the judge, well, Your Honor, I was in the Hells Angels for 40 years. Prior to that, I was an independent in the outlaw bike world for 10 years. And then the judge says, okay, he's an expert. And they allow you to testify. There's a big controversy in law enforcement. they say that anybody with a filthy few patch on has killed somebody at the behest of the club

and I've got a big argument with the prosecutor and you know the judge finally kind of settled the thing I explained to the jury like I just did to you that initially it was guys first to come the last to leave and it sort of morphed into this urban legend that that if you weren't a filthy few patch, you killed somebody. The problem with that theory, and you know what, I'm sure some of the guys wearing the filthy few patch, you know, have committed crimes up, you know, to murder. I don't know.

You know, I'm not speaking for everybody. But my point was everybody in the Hells Angels now wears a filthy few patch. I mean, you go somewhere and you see 20 guys in a charter with a filthy few patch on. talking in a circle. And my argument was, where are the bodies? You know, I mean,

these people are getting these patches because you're professing that they kill somebody. Well, you know, where's the indictments? Where's the bodies? Where's the cases? So, it's become an urban legend or not. You know, I told the jury at the end, I said, you know, who am I to interrupt an urban legend?

You know, let it be what it's going to be. You'll have to, as a juror, you're going to have to determine whether he did that crime or not, not whether he's wearing a particular patch or not. That's what it really boils down to. You know, of course, I got accused of perjury and, you know, and we're going to indict you your line under oath. I said, we'll prove it, you know.

I mean. So are you saying they may have flooded the club with the patch? Yes. Would they do that to? Not intentionally. They would not do it as like a sci-op to other clubs. It makes a thing. Yeah, kind of like, hey, I'm willing.

to do this or I've done it yeah or have done it and that's for you to determine by how I conduct myself I'm sure and I don't mean any disrespect to anybody in the military but I'm sure you know you run across somebody else that's a seal you're gonna size them up you know you want to make sure this guy can have my back is this guy did he take his training seriously and how committed is he you know I would assume most seals are committed 100 percent but you know you would have to tell me yes or no george i mean most of them yeah there's always uh there's always one turd there's always a lunch bowl right yeah yeah yeah i understand completely you know it's always the guy when you you got a new guy come around the club in the beginning i was like

oh this is great i'm embracing this guy and uh you know just so happy to see him you know 10 years down the road i'm thinking it's just a guy going to flip Yeah. What's he made of? What kind of medal is he really? You know, how do we test this guy to find out he's going to hold up? What is, what is, if you don't want to name names, I get it. But what is one of the most rarest patches that nobody knows about?

Well, you know, and what do they have to be to be? The Bastur Brigade was, you know, I get people write me all the time. what is the bastard brigade you know this is a small group of individuals I mean I guess you could describe it as a small

cartel within the organization and really maybe only those guys know what it is what it's about and what it entails to become one of them I know that you go back east you've got bad you got a group of guys that call themselves bad company

I mean you know guys back east there's some badasses back there. You know, if you look at your history with the New York guys, the Cleveland guys, the Lowell guys, I mean, look at the history of Cleveland. I mean, these guys worked for Danny Green. Are you familiar with Danny Green? No. Danny Green was an Irish mobster in the 70s. Oh, yeah, they made a movie about that.

Yeah. Kill the Irishman. Yeah, the Teamsters. Yeah. He was up against the Teamsters. The mob. Well, Hell's Angels worked for the Italians, and they worked for Danny Green. And they worked both sides of the fence, you know, because they didn't support Danny Green or they didn't support the Italians as an organization.

But people within the organization were hiring out. You know, Danny Green would say, I need, I can't get in this area. I need somebody to do something. And, you know, somebody take the job. Right. Did they create little patches? Sure, they did. And they were distinctive to that specific group of guys, perhaps specific acts.

You know, in the early days, those patches initially were, and I'm sure you're aware of this, everybody would wear wings. And they had to do with sexual acts. And, you know, the red wings, the black wings, the broken wings. whatever they may be we had an individual in the club called terry the tramp you know he had a whole array of wings and if you see hell's angel 69 yes yeah terry was in that he was the kind of stole the show he was the guy with the big gauntlets and long hair and uh red motorcycle created a that movie created a conflict between him and sunny no shit because he seemed to be getting the

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It's protection. What was, so what would happen if somebody was wearing patches or a color that they didn't earn? What would happen? I would say anything from, a stern lecture to, you know, a hole in the desert, you know. Gotcha. Yeah, it just depends on the circumstances. But I think maybe this is something you could relate to.

I think a lot of it has to do with how people explain themselves or conduct themselves while they're explaining the situation. You know, you start, and I'll use the word interrogation, you start sounding somebody, about something, he's gonna drive how the end processes, because if you had an intention to hurt this guy, you wouldn't be talking to him. Somebody would walk up behind him and shoot him in the head or something.

But if you're negotiating with somebody, it's because you're trying to avoid something or you're trying to achieve something. And if you're talking, you know, figure as long as you're talking, you're not fighting. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So you guys are looking for ownership, somebody that owns their fucking shit.

Yeah. Gotcha. And, you know, is it still that way? You know, I don't know. You know, I left the club in 2011. I got disillusioned. I was disappointed in the direction things were heading. You know, I walked into that world in, you know, 1966, immediately started running around with the question marks, which were endorsed as a 1% club by the Hells Angels.

the saint slaves again. These are the guys I ran around with. Ultimately met the Hells Angels up on Kern River and met a guy named Allman John. You know, this is in the mid-70s, early 70s. He was already old back then. You know, he was an old man. But former Navy, I don't know if he was a CB or Navy.

He had been in the Pacific Theater. You know, I don't know specifically where. But, you know, like a lot of the guys, You're familiar with how the club started. You know, they were from returning vets from the European and Pacific theaters. World War II, right? Yeah. Let's get into that in a minute.

Okay. Let me give you an introduction here. All right. George Christie became a full-patched Hells Angel in the Los Angeles Charter in 1976. And six months later became president of that charter before founding the Ventura Charter in 1978. Your tenure as president was longest in club's history, spanning seven U.S. presidential terms, beginning with Gerald Ford, and ending with Barack Obama. Survived RICO indictments, ATF stings, internal rats, and murder contracts, and time in prison.

Since you've resigned in 2011, you've written books, starred in documentaries and consulted on other projects. You launched felony prison consultants and worked with defense attorneys to analyze their cases and prepare strong legal defenses. you work with defendants to assist them in coming to terms with their situation and prepare for the complexities of court as well as as well as protocol of prison life. I forgot to mention they're also a U.S. Marine. And so I had eight years with the Department of Defense too. Oh, really? Yeah. I do have that in the outline.

Real quick, just one, what is the, I know what it is, but it may be diluted from my days of research. What does a one-percenter mean? Okay, when these small groups of veterans started teaming up together, you had the pissed-off bastards, you had the galloping goose, you had the yellow jackets, the booze fighters, 13 rebels. You had these small... The booze fighters was one of the original clubs? Yeah.

They were at Hollister. And I use Hollister. whether fairly or unfairly, as a starting point for the West Coast birth of the outlaw biker. They went to Hollister in 1948. There were hill climbs and races and I don't know what else they had going there. They went up there. In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle sent a got wind of this new phenomenon of these bike clubs. they sent a reporter to Hollister.

A reporter went there. They brought a camera guy. They were snapping shots. They were interviewing people. And they came back and wrote this what became a salacious story about how these marauding veterans rode into the small town of Hollister

and were raping and pillaging. They took over the town. And the reporter asked the American Motorcycle Association, So what's what's with these rowdy bikers and they said their actual comment was it's only 1% that ruin it for us wholesome riders and these guys, these club guys now I'm just you know a baby or a little kid then they get this term one percenter and they embrace it and they become the 1% that ruin it for the wholesome riders and they're still continuing. you're going to ruin it to this day. So that's how that started. And they didn't start wearing the badges. And I'm going to, I have a challenge coin I want to give you along with my book. And you'll, you'll look on the front of that. One percenter.

And then, you know, you see the, that's me standing in front of the clubhouse. Thank you. Yeah. And I figured you'd appreciate it. you'd understand it. I get it. And I, you know, I traced the challenge coin back to the Roman legions. They go back that car?

Back to the Roman legions. The, they carry, anybody that did a specific bravery in a battle or fought in a really hard fought battle, they would give them a challenge coin that was also valuable. It had, you know,

had a monetary value. But in addition to that, it identified you secretly as being part of the Legion. No shit. And if you got caught carrying it and you weren't part of the Legion, you can imagine back then with the consequences. Oh, yeah. So maybe things haven't changed that much.

But anyways, so everybody embraced that title. In the late 50s, early 60s, nobody seems to know for sure. I initially thought they started doing it right away. and then I myself, as I'm creating this historical record of all this outlaw lifestyle, I find out that it didn't really happen with the one-percenter badges till the late 50s, you know, early 60s. And, you know, there used to be one-percenter meetings. In the California West Coast, you had the Hells Angels in the Bay Area.

In Monterey, you had a club called The Losers. and in Ventura County, you had a club called the Question Marks. And then in San Fernando Valley, you had a club called the Saint and Slaves. And then the Gallup and Goose and the Booth fighters, these guys were all part of this one-percenter coalition. And, you know, they have meetings, but, you know, there really were reasons to get together and party. Yeah.

They weren't really meetings, you know. You know, it would be anybody got any business? now let's drink. But they became... It's interesting. I thought about doing this. Did you really? I did.

And at what point in your life? I was contracting for the agency. Yeah. And I left the SEAL teams, tried to do some real estate stuff. I fucking hated it. I could not stand being with civilians at the time. And that, and I was getting in fights all the time. It was just all I did was drinking.

fight. And, and then I, so that's where I kind of started to think about it, because I just could not fit in. And did you, did you hang around anybody or? No, I bought, well, where were you from? I didn't have any money. I didn't need any money, man. So where were you at? St. Louis. Oh, well, St. Louis at that time. St. Louis. That probably would have been the perhaps Elfesteros or the outlaws or? Well, I was just reading. And then, uh, and then I wound up contracting for CIA. And it turns out there was a bunch of guys, uh, that I was contracted with that it all thought about the same thing. And, um, it kind of goes along with the, yeah. And so my, when I,

in my readings, I, I, in my research, I was just, I realized, it sounded like everybody was coming back from World War II. Nobody could fit in. So media related to it. And, um, And yeah, that's, that's, so I was drawn to it. I was, I was like, oh, so this is how all these places started. Right. And then it's, and then talking to other friends that were also looking into it, it kind of sounded like maybe the clubs had been diluted a lot by this point. There probably weren't very many veterans.

What years is this, you think? Probably around, probably about the time you were leaving, 2011. Yeah. And, and, and then I had heard. heard, one of them told me that they were like, yeah, I wanted to do it because I fucking love motorcycles. And he goes, I went to a bike shop where a bunch of them were working, and I realized they were all stealing each other's bikes. He was like, I'll, I just think it's stupid that a motorcycle enthusiast would steal somebody else's bike. Yeah, you know, in fact,

we had a moratorium in Ventura. We ruled, as Hells Angels Ventura, we ruled Ventura with an iron hand and that was one of the things that was not allowed in that county or not the county so much but the town it was hard to control the whole county but in the city of ventura there was no bike thief you know nobody even locked their bike in fact if you came to our bar and locked your bike we would ask you to unlock it because we took it as an insult oh wow I go man you know I go are you inferring that we're a bunch of bike thieves I go because you need to unlock it and if you don't want to unlock it, I understand that, but you got to leave. You got to unlock it, and you got to leave. And we're not going to warn you again. So make your choice what do you want

to do. And, you know, most of the people would always unlock it and go, well, I didn't know, you know, and whatnot. And, you know, the police knew that was a policy in town. We had one guy got caught stealing bikes, and he spent the weekend in the clubhouse. It was funny. The cops knew he was in there. The word spread all over the street And the sergeant This guy I've known for Since 1978 Pulled up

They said hey he's out there man So I went out there I go what's up and he goes I know you got the guy in there He goes scare the shit out of him But don't hurt him He says we don't want to do no reports man And you know we kept him in there all weekend

Made him assemble the bike He had taken the bike apart We made him reassemble the bike, and then we made him go pick dog shit up in the backyard. We had two big Rottweilers. Nice. They didn't like anybody. So we told him, go out there, and we didn't even cage a dog. We're not caging them up, man.

You can just go out there and deal with the dogs. And they were just like watching his ass. But we're spread fast, and, you know, no more bike thefts. I'll bet. Yeah. Well, we got a couple things that crank out here real quick before we get two in the weeds. So one, I have a piece. Patreon account, it's a subscription account. And they're the reason that I get to sit here with you today.

So I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is from Brian. In hindsight, would you have prioritized keeping the DOD career that you had after military service rather than pursuing life as a hell's angel? Follow on. What obstacles did you encounter when transitioning from military service to the civilian world and how did you address them? So is that two-part question? Yeah. Well, I didn't like taking orders from people I didn't respect. That was a real problem for me.

And I wound up. I was in a Marine Reserve unit, and I was in it for over four years. And 03 11 was a rifle unit. We had a new gunnery sergeant come, and he was very disrespectful. And he had old, guy, you know, now I felt we, the unit, the company was tight, but we were reserve, we were reserved unit, you know, so people were living their civilian life and blending the military life together. And the platoon I happened to be in, man, we were taking psychedelics and, you know,

we were getting high out smoking pot. And he knew that, he thought he was going to come there and change everything. And him and I wound up getting. in a beef and we were on the rifle range and I was kind of fucking around I didn't think he'd do anything but I we were you know standing the firing and told it was four or five guys between this he was down the range talking shit to me you know like he always did he just rode me and so I told everybody get off the range and I put my rifle to my side and I told him draw and he ran off the range went and ratted me out, got court-martialed.

At the court-martial, it kind of drifted into, perhaps you'd fit in better working by yourself. And I wound up getting, you know, I went out under a general discharge under honorable conditions, wound up going to work for the Department of Defense. at Point Magoo I was a communication trouble shooter there was a summary surveillance this is the middle of the Cold War

with the Russians in the late 70s took care of the RCA building it was a submarine surveillance system they had one in Santa Cruz it's all declassified now they had one on Santa Cruz Island then they had one on an island in northern California

and they watched all the Russian subs you know didn't let them get too close. And that was my job. And they found out I was the leader of the Los Angeles Hells Angels. So I got called in the office. I'll bet you did. And they said they would need to ask you something. We know this rumor's been floating around. We thought it was a joke. But are you really leader of the Los Angeles, Hells Angels? And I said, I am. They just looked at me and my, my boss was a cool dude, you know, and he just goes, Jesus Christ Christy. And he goes, we're going to pull your security clearance.

You can't be with those guys and be with us. And he said, you got to make a choice. I made my choice. I walked away, you know. Do I reflect back sometimes now? I, when I walked away from the club and everybody turned their back. back on me after 40 years of service. I had my feelings hurt.

I was mad. And, you know, I look at you. I look around this room. I look at the things that were presented to you. And, you know, you guys, military guys, you guys risk your ass every day. Now, I used to risk my ass every day, too, but it was for ourselves. It wasn't for our country, you know. The Hells Angels are a self-serving organization.

But it was a fun-loving organization at one time, which I thought it was. It was a live-and-let-live world. But, you know, I look around the room here. I look at you. I think, yeah, I wonder what would have happened. But it's a hypothetical question. And, you never get a concrete answer for it.

You know, I, what rank would I've made? What would I have accomplished? You know, I have a great story. When did the SEALs start? They started in, what, 65, 66? Oh, man, I'm going to get killed for not knowing this. Okay, I'm going to tell you. I think that's about when, and I'll tell you why.

I had got hit in the head. I got in a fight with another Marine, and he clipped me with his rifle, you know, went to sick call, had my head stitched. Wouldn't tell him what happened until him I hit my head. the rack, which really up my bar with all the old school Marine sergeants, you know. And there was a guy in there that had broke his shoulder and collarbone. He was a, he was trying out for something new. And he said he was going to be a Navy SEAL.

And he had jumped out of a plane. And did you guys jump? Yeah. And he had hit his shoulder when he landed. in land right and he couldn't wait to get back to where they you know they took him out and you know I don't know the structure how it works you know you listen to a guy like that and you think wow now another story is of when I'm getting I'm in the reserve unit I get activated when I when I challenge that gun resurgence they've got me down at Camp Pendleton and I'm walking I

I can't remember, you know how the little camp, you've been in Camp Pendleton. You know, all the little pink, they got all these little satellite camps everywhere. Yeah. And I'm walking down the road and across the street is a guy was in boot camp with. And he stepped on a fucking mine. And, you know, he looked like he was, you know, we're all 19, 20 years old at the time. I don't know how old I was, but, you know, just in my early, early 20s at the most. And he looked like he was 60 years old, man.

you know the way he was walking then like i walked down with my two hip replacements but you know just there's a higher power i feel that generates all these moves and you know you have to assist them in uh in the journey but uh i don't know i don't know if i even answered the question but i think you did i i mean Who knows, man? Well, I got you a gift, too. It's not a challenge coin, but. Goodsurance League.

Gummy Bears. Made in the USA. Legal in all 50 states. Really? In all 50 states. That means there's no funny business in those. But, yeah. I got you.

I'm going to appreciate that. Thank you. My pleasure. Could you give us a history lesson on the Hells Angels, how they started? when they came about? Well, you know, there was, they were originally the pissed off bastards. Okay.

And a couple of the guys started two leaders, you know, two leaders and one squad doesn't work sometimes. And they split. And the part of the pissed off bastards became the hell's angels. And the little town, blooming tomb down there by San Bernardino, Riverside. There was a gentleman who in 1978, 79, claims that he started the Hells Angels.

His name was Dick White. You know, nobody kept any records back then. There was, it was just unwritten rules. If you didn't make it or you didn't stand up for yourself, you know, usually wind up get beat up and a runoff and somebody went up with your motorcycle and your jacket and it was a pretty tough world and we started in San Bernardino in 1957 of well 19 I'm gonna back up in 1956 sunny barger joined the army and he was 16 and they found out he was was not a legal age, and they discharged him honorably.

He started the Oakland Hells Angels with another gentleman named Boots. I don't know Boots is real name. I just know him by Boots. A lot of monikers in the Hells Angels, you know. The power base that was in Southern California made a transition. Sunny Barger was a kind of a natural leader,

very critical. Mismaradic guy and he pulled the power to the Bay Area and probably by the early 60s and then into the mid-60s he became the voice and the face of the Hells Angels and he was very adamant that it was his club him and I used to argue all the time I was kind of 10 years behind him in the pecking order and And his attitude was the club belonged to him. My attitude was we all belonged to the club. But that's a brief history lesson.

We started a tug-of-war, and we mentioned this earlier, between the north and the south. And it was a healthy rivalry, but sometimes it turned unhealthy and deadly. I know that Sonny initially, if people look on the internet, the deathhead was called the bumblebee deathhead. It was very small, and it was kind of at a 45 degree angle,

and you could see both wings. And Sunny met, there were two Hells Angels charters in Southern California. There was a SoCal Hells Angels that had nothing to do with the Burdue Hells Angels. It was two separate clubs with the same name.

And Sonny basically said, we're going to, you're either going to join with us or are you going to get pushed out. And in the process, he liked the patch better that gentleman named Vic Bettenhart created. It was the side view deathhead, basically the deathhead you see nowadays in the patch. And he took that style, had him rewrite it, and then sent 12 patches to San Bernardino, 13 patches. I don't know how many people were in the club at that time down there and said, this is the new patches, put these on, or the next time we see you guys, we're going to fight. And so, of course, San Bernardino being San Bernardino, Hells Angels, shot the patches full

holes, put them back in the box, and sent them to Oakland. And then, this is about 1965. I was told, I wasn't there. I was told it was 1965. I was still in high school. And the north and the south met at Bass Lake that year. And they fought it out. And that war went on for about, you know, inner conflict, if you want to call it.

Three or four years, nobody was killed over that patch. But there was a lot of people beat up. I know that a sunny pistol whip Grubby Glenn at Bass Lake that year, because Grubby said, I'm never putting that patch on. And I'm never not being a hell. Angel. And this is kind of a side story, a backstory of 25, 30 years later. I can't remember. Sonny gave Grubby Glenn the pistol as a gift he pistol wepted him with at a big party at the San Bernardino Clubhouse. So, you know, you got that weird rivalry. I think the military

people would relate to something like that. You know, citizens are like, oh, my God, what the hell? You know, you guys are crazy. Yeah, perhaps, but that's just all part of the game, you know. Yeah. But I remember being at that party, and Glenn opening that gift up, and Glenn looked at it and Sonny said, that's the pistol I pistol whipped you with. At Bass Lake in 1965. Wow.

What kind of pistol? And they're both felons. It was some revolver, I think. Oh, right on. special. So let's talk about you then. So how actually what is so when it comes to the, do the clubs recruit? Well, are they looking for people? There's two, there's two ways to build a club. One way is to push out the weak winks, if you will. The other philosophy is, how do you do that you just start pushing and shoving kind of you know you know what it's like i mean

i'm sure you guys if you don't think somebody's uh i know how we do it i'm curious how you do it well we start kicking people's ass and uh putting them through tests uh put them in a test well put them in a situation perhaps uh with go to a bar you know there's going to be a problem uh what are these guys made of how are they going to conduct it maybe ask them to do something that uh a felony favor and uh will they do it will they not do it how important is getting in the hell's angels or any club to that particular individual i'm sorry i thought you meant pushing out the week from well that are already in well no that this is people coming in but i'm going to i'm going to address that in a second the second way to do that

things is you want to take over a club you just take them over bring everybody in put a ear patch on them and then start weeding them out oh okay okay the end result is the same you're gonna lose 50% of the guys uh you're gonna lose 50% uh in the old school guys they don't ever want those individuals to say well i used to be a hell's angel you know even though it was a three-month span they don't want you know you got guys like dug the thug running around and moldy Marvin you know they didn't want these guys having the ability to say that like up in Canada I don't know if you know anything about Canada very serious guys up there in Canada with the Hells Angels they had a complete country patch over I can't remember what your

country patch over just took over all these clubs and put Hell's Angel patches on them and they used the second, you know, way to weed things out. They put the patches on them, and they weeded them out. And, you know, but what they did was they probably stopped a lot of law enforcement investigations prior. I mean, I'm sure the investigation started once the people put that new patch on, but you kind of go around the investigation and get in front of it, if you will. It's probably like invading, if you guys are going to do an operation, you know, you just go there and do it like, you know, they took that Venezuela president.

You know, they just went down there and got him, you know, brought him back, whether, you know, right, wrong or indifferent. Yeah. Pussy foot around, you know. I mean, I would think a lot of these guys would fight to the death. over switching teams. Well. Maybe not. Well, I think that there's a pecking order in the outlaw bike world.

You've got what they called the big four at one time. It was the Hells Angels, the outlaws, the banditos, and the pagans. Now you've got some additional clubs. You've got the Mongols who've really earned their place in that culture. You know, we fought them in Southern California. we're still fighting. We started in 1977 and it's still going on. I mean, a lot of lives lost on both sides. They're a real contender of the outlaw bike world.

You've got the sons of silence. You've got the pagans now making this big move, I'm told, all over the United States. They're going into places they never went before. But you would hope that someone would fight to the death, you know. I'm sure that, you know, you know, You know, you hear about things that these different elite military groups do. You know, these guys are there. I don't think they want to surrender.

You know, I don't know if I'm answering the question. Yeah, you are. And so with the recruiting, is it, I mean, are you, I guess, is there outreach or is it just intake? Well, again, there's two philosophies, you know. you you if you start petitioning people to get in the club uh how on board are they you know it's better i think uh i think it's better to have them come to you and want to want to be in the be in the organization be part of it uh they want it so bad they can taste it i don't know i'm sure you know that feeling man you want it so bad you can taste it and uh those are the

hungry guys those are the guys i always uh looked at i know never went and recruited anybody. We had a situation in Ventura when the phenomena of street gang violence started, where these specific little street gangs were shooting at each other. We brought all the street gang leaders into the Ventura Clubhouse and basically had a moratorium on the violence. You guys aren't going to shoot at each other. And Ventura, we don't want the heat, man.

It wasn't because we were being selfish. about it. We don't want to danger the community, of course. We don't want to see anybody get hurt, but it was really self-serving. We didn't want the heat. We didn't want the government grants coming to town. I don't know if you know how much federal government, man. You got a hell's angel charter in your town. You can apply for government grants. You can get a attached to a federal agency, create a task force. There's a lot of things that can transpire. And when we stop that moratorium on the violence of some of these clubs these street gangs are not clubs or street gangs we called ourselves a club but i mean these guys call themselves street gangs we started having

some of the members gravitate from these street gangs we wound up probably getting one to two or three new members in the mid-90s from every street gang that we had approached and said, you're not going to be shooting at anybody. And we never petitioned them. They came on their own free will. A lot of people accused me of going out and, you know, poaching these guys in these street gangs. That never happened. These were guys that saw what was going on, saw the writing. What if it did? What's that? What if it did? Yeah. What if you did recruit them from Yeah, who cares? Yeah.

But, you know, there's, look, I left the club on good terms, and then as soon as Sunny and I were, like, fighting, like, you know, unbelievably, before I got in this, before I made the decision to leave. We'll get there. Yeah. We'll get there. Okay. Let's stay with recruiting.

Okay. So are you guys, I mean, I'm just curious, do you intake anybody that wants it bad? Are you looking for specific skills? Do you know, is there places? I've been asked this question a lot. I'm just going to address it. Maybe you'll stop me if it's something that you're going to get into later. But it's usually white young guys.

It's not because we're racist. There's Mexicans in the club. There's Filipinos in the club. But for years, there were no blacks in the club because we adopted the West Coast prison guidelines. And that is very strict. I don't know if you guys are aware of it, maybe not in the military so much as

the prison culture, but you don't, the whites hang out with the whites, the Mexicans hang out with the Mexicans, the blacks hang out with the blacks. You've got three factions in the penal system in California. You've got the Aryan Brotherhood. This is the original prison gangs.

You've got the black guerrilla family. And you've got the Mexican mafia. And when you go to prison, the first thing they ask you is, and they use this term just like this, they'll say, hey, what car are you in? And you say, well, I'm in a black car. If you're identifying with the blacks, or I'm in the white car, I'm in the Mexican car. So the people that that was... Wouldn't that be pretty self-explanatory?

You think so. I think just go to fucking prison? Yeah, but, you know, there's a lot of people. I've gone on shows in the past and not only podcasts but television shows, and we're accused of being racist, you know, and, you know, it's just not true. You know, the East Coast Dragons are, East Bay Dragons are a black club up in the Bay Area. They don't allow white guys in it, you know. It's an all black club, you know, you could say the same thing about them.

It's not about race, you know. It's just about the guys you were hanging out with, you know, and the culture of that prison mentality. I mean, if you go to prison, though, and it's all based on race, why would they ask you what car you're driving? They just, that'd be pretty selfish. It's just kind of a... Like, we'll look at... Let me tell you, in the old days, I tell you, I went to prison in Texas in 2011. It was a completely different ballgame.

You know, I had gone to prison in 86 the first time. So now it's 2013 when I get to prison in Texas. And they're still doing what car are you riding in? Nobody asked me because everybody knew who I was. But the average inmate, they say, what car are you riding in? And you tell them. And then they say, what's your crime? And you tell them.

Now, in the old days, there were particular things that weren't acceptable. child molester, you know, whatnot. Now they ask you, well, what's your crime? And they go, okay, what's your name? And they go, let's go over the phone. They go to the phone and they call home and go, hey, look this guy up. Everything's on the computer. And they know immediately if this guy says he's a bank robber,

but in fact he's a child molester or he's there for, you know, some sort of pedophile type crime. I mean, these guys aren't accepted on the yard. You know, it's very difficult for them. But I, these guys came and the club started growing, you know, the club got like a shot on the arm. The interesting thing is some of the old guys didn't like the way the young guys dressed. I don't know if this happened in the military at all.

They didn't like the music they listened to. They didn't like the philosophy was different than the old history of interdition of the old guys. It was a whole new ball game for a lot of these guys. There are a lot of dog foods out there, and they all say they have the best ingredients. But when you actually look at a lot of them, it's still over-processed kibble. Fillers and ingredients you can barely pronounce. That's why I like Sundays. Sundays keeps it simple. It's vet-founded human-grade dog food made with real meat,

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slash sRS50 Sundaysfordogs.com slash SRS50 or use code SRS50 at checkout. How has the what would I How have the core values

of the Hells Angels changed from its inception to what it is today? I think the breakdown would be in the brotherhood there's breakdown in in the brotherhood uh i think and i'm gonna use i'm just going to pick a date out of thin there in the early 70s late 60s if you didn't build your motorcycle from the ground up

and you wrote it into some party or some camp uh to party with everybody people would know and you would not be accepted you probably get asked to leave if uh you know not getting a physical Back then, you have to understand, there was no warehouses where you can mail order all your parts. Hey, I want to chrome this. Hey, I want a special clutch lever. I want everybody was making that stuff by hand. And I'll, you know, admit that there were a few people leading the way like Dean Lonsa, Dick Woods, these different bike builders up and down the

coast and you could tell you know geographically you could tell where somebody was from was like an accent you look at somebody's bike and you go this guy's from San Fernando Valley this guy's from the Bay Area you know this guy's a San Diego guy because they they had a particular accent to him and it's it's been diluted now you can go in the shop and if you got $30,000 you can buy Hardy Davidson and you know you can be a biker I had lunch with Davidson family once. And I was serious, but I was giving them a hard time kind of joking.

I said, you know, and this is a true story. In the old days, you go into the Harley shop and you were an outlaw biker. You know, they didn't want your business. They didn't even want you in there. And I was actually telling Willie Davidson and his son. I can't think of his son names. He was head of marketing at the time that they should. should give me a bike because they were now selling cut off vests.

They were selling leather pants. They were selling bandanas. They were selling things now that when we were dressing like that in the 60s and 70s, they were condemning, you know? And it just made this huge transition. So we had a name for them. And as things progressed from the 70s into the 80s, and by the end of the 80s, we called them rubs.

Have you ever heard that term? Rich urban bikers. Oh, man. This is another thing that drove. Rich urban bikers, man. Anybody can buy a bike. This is embarrassing. I want to tell you this story about, well, hold on, I got to cut out of court just a brand of, what's your favorite bike of all time?

FXR. Oh, shit, right on. What about you? I bought this fucking big Baratina chopper when I was, I had never ridden a motor. So, yeah, what did you call them the? Rub. Yeah, I was a brink. rub. So I told, I was, I was really, I was really interested in this stuff. And then I started

contracted for the, which I'd never made that kind of money before. So I come home after the first contract and I'm like, I'm ready to go by a fucking bike now. And so I went to the cutting edge cycles in St. Charles, Missouri. Do you know who, who ran it? Man, his name was Mark, but I can't remember his last name but this time. But he had the, He had, so I went in there, ordered a bike, got the big Baratina chopper with a 300 rear tire, had never ridden a fucking motorcycle. I haven't even, I've rid of dirt bike once about killed myself. So it finally comes in.

I go on another point when I come back and I'm like, oh yeah, it's in the box. He breaks the fucking box up and wheels it out. I'm like, give him the money, cash, about 35 grand. Expensive. Yeah. And my first bike. I go, I looked at him and I go, how do you start this fucking thing anyways? And he just looked at me, he goes, you just bought a $35,000 bike and you don't know how to

fucking start it. And I said, what, do you want me to return it? I don't think he did. Yeah, he goes, all right, here you go. Tried to get it out of the parking lot, pick the kickstand down. I was like, you might want to deliver this one. Well, he did. And then got home, took off right to the bar.

and there was a biker bar right down the road from where I lived, went in there. And that's what I was, I went in there. Everybody had their fucking chains and their vests and their bandanas and all this shit. And I'm like, aren't you my fucking dentist? And then the other guy's an attorney.

And I'm like, this is like the shittiest bar in St. Louis. And it's full of fucking dentist, doctors, and lawyers. I'm out of here. This is like a costume party.

Yeah. So I went home. Did you sell it? What's that? Do you sell it finally? I kept it. I moved down to Florida. I went to Biktoberfest and about killed myself doing that.

Did you ever go down on it? What's that? Did you ever go down on it? Yeah, at 3 o'clock in the morning with a chick on the back. But, and I didn't get arrested for whatever reason, probably because it was Biktoberfest. And the cops came and, oh, yeah. Did you get hurt? Nope.

How about her? Nope. No. No helmets. It's luck. Really? No helmets. Have you been, had you been drinking? It was 3 o'clock in the morning in Bictoberfest.

I barely remember it. I don't want to start an inquisition here. So, oh, man. Yeah, it was a wild time. And how long did you keep it after that? I probably had it for, I don't know, maybe three years. You know, I'll tell you, if you would have gotten a bike, I'm going to, I always push the FXRs because I've had them all.

in the Harleys. And the FXR was probably the best handling, the most reliable bike Harley-Davidson perhaps ever made, in my expectations. The FXR sport, it had two discs on the front, disc brake on the back. And there was a gentleman that worked for Harley

named Jerry Branch in Long Beach, and he had this port and polished heads in a carbureation, and he had a whole like little kit you could, had them put on at the Harley shop. And I became good friends with this Monty from Ventura Harley-Davidson. And so I got one of the first FXRs in Ventura. That's great. Call me and said, hey, man, you got to come down there.

This motor is unbelievable. They made so many changes in the motor. Like I was looking at the motor over there. For my friend. Yeah. And that motor. was the prelude the next motor was the evolution and it was all rubber mounted and you know it was just it was just like a whole new motorcycle and people are gonna call bullshit but it's the truth I swear I changed the lifters and the valves I mean the lifters and the cam the followers and I don't even think I changed the pistons man I had like 300,000 models on it was just damn Incredible motorcycle.

Just rode it everywhere. I've got some, I got a cool picture. A couple of cool pictures. I'll get to you. But the, before that, built a bike. I want a bike in a dice game from the Saint-N-Slave. This is in 1978.

Bill Reed night. Bill Reed was a Saint-N-Slave. I was a Hells Angel. We were like, you know, real close, man. And I spent so much time with the saint and slaves. The gang intelligence cops down in Los Angeles said I was a member of the saint's slaves. They didn't even realize I was a hell's angel. I spent so much time with these guys. I was always with them.

And we got a dice game going. And he had got a bike from somebody decided he didn't want it. And so he started this dice game. And I wound up with a bike. I've got this picture. It's almost like a prelude to the next bike Harley Davidson made. Now, people will say, ah, bullshit. Harley Davidson didn't copy him.

Yeah, Harley Davidson copy this. Monty was right around the corner. The Ventura Harley Shop was on one street, and then on the back street was the Ventura, Hels Angeles Clubhouse. And Monty told us he would come over there to see what we were doing. And I had a guy, David Ortega, like my closest brother, we were either loving on each other or fighting.

That's one of them deals. And I would do all the mechanical work, and he would do all the fabrication. And we came up with this bike, and he came up with a paint. He's the first. And I said, David, I want an all black bike. And he came up with this paint, painted the heads, the front end. the cam cover, the primary cover, the whole bike was black and it was just highlighted with a little bit of chrome. And probably three years, two years later, Harley came out with what they called the night train.

They had copied it. I remember that. You remember the night train? A bunch of guys on the SIL teams bought a night train. Yeah, I mean, that was a bike that David Ortega and I created. And every once in a while, I'll put that bike up on social media. And people will, they'll go, that's the bike that started the trend for black stuff. And, you know, it was a combination.

David and I did it together. But it was just incredible bike. That's a picture I'll send you. It's a really cool picture. Oh, we'll put it up. Yeah. Yeah, I wound up getting rid of it because I could not, I could just never find anybody to ride with. But, yeah, but you know what?

I bet you if you would have got a. And I lost, and I got to tell him the story and I got lost direction. If you would have got an FXR, a really good handling bike, maybe you still be riding a day. I've been thinking about getting another one. Well, I'm telling you, FXR, a lot of the, they've got some new stuff out. I like the FXR, which you should do. You should go to the Harley shop and say, look, man,

I want a bike comparable to an FXR. I want this all about handling and performance. And, you know, they come now with big motors in them, you know, 101 inches. This is stuff like the first time I built a big hot rod motor in a bike. And nobody would share nothing with you. You know, you'd have to learn trial and error, trial and error. And, you know, I put the bike together. I didn't shave the valve skirts and they're hitting you know and I've got this noise and they're

just clipping each other and they're not enough to hurt anything perhaps over a period of time it would have been I'm like what the hell is that so I take it apart start inspecting everything I see the scuff marks on the pistons you know the skirts okay I got to shave this I've got to cut this out then it's oiling and and what I didn't do was was there's inside oilers on the motors back then. I should have plugged the holes and put outside oilers to the heads to get the oil up there in the heads.

And, you know, I didn't know the trick. And I finally, I said to some old man, I go, maybe I didn't plug the goddamn oil passages on the barrels. And he got this big smile on his face. He was bingo. You know, and he was, he was, wouldn't tell me he could have told me but he wouldn't he wanted me to find out for myself and i think that's part of the thing that's wrong with this country today nobody's like thinking for themselves

man you know i think that's a big part of what's wrong with this country yeah i got another random question for it that just popped in my head i'm just curious you're you were out by now do you remember a couple years ago when harley davison went woke yeah what was i mean what is a guy like you or just the hell's angels or any biker gang in general. I mean, what, what happened there? People were throwing the people were blowing their motorcycles up. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the whole world, I was in Spain, you know, I went to Spain. I come back from prison. My second marriage is in a, you know, it's crashing and burning, you know, trying to keep it together for my son. I have a young son. He's 22 now.

And it just ain't working. So I put out my second book marked. And it's a fictional novel about my life. And so I get this message from this production company. You know, we want to option your book, you know. And so my daughter's my lawyer. So I put my daughter on them. And all expenses paid, you know.

I'm going to Spain. I'm living in a luxury apartment to hold nine yards. So I go over to Spain and I'm looking at the United States now from a distance. And it's just like everything just, it was like I walked into a different country when I came back. And I'll tell you the other time I had an experience like that. It's 2002. I'm fighting a 59 count state racketeering case. You know, anything you can think of.

wedged I had something to do with it. And the Twin Towers gets bombed, attacked. And I'm in solitary confinement. There's a rumbling around the jail that something's going on. The guard, the daytime guard is a complete asshole. You know, I said, hey, what's going on? He goes, you don't need to worry about what's going on. You need to worry about what's going on in here.

I said, yeah, but, you know, my family's out there. I go, there's a war? What are we doing, you know? And in February, that's 9-11 September. In February of the following year, I finally get out. You know, the case just collapses. The lawyers are just tearing it apart. It collapses.

They let me out. They offer me time served, you know. Tony Sarah, very famous lawyer in San Francisco. He says, you got to take the deal, George. He goes, you know, we fight this case. You're going to be fighting in another three or four years. So I take the deal. but I walk out of that jail.

And you asked me earlier about the brotherhood, you know, and I have a stage play that I do. I wrote a two-hour stage play. And in the stage play, I talk about walking out of that solid chariot. You've got sensory deprivation and the sunlight, like, you know, have been in a natural sun in a year, over a year. And not only had the Twin Towers. fall they had fell they were attacked but the brotherhood in the club was affected it was like the whole

world it was like the whole world shifted and i walked into a different world and i could feel it you know and it's like you know cancel culture i mean all this shit's starting to go on and you know like you say harley goes woke i mean who would i mean who would have thought ever would i thought that no who would thought that, you know. I don't know, man. I look back, I'm, you know, I'm pushing 80, man. I'm going to hit 80 here pretty quick. Have they redeemed themselves?

I don't know. You know, I go to the Harley Shop now. You know, I still ride. I don't work on bikes anymore. I don't like it, man. I don't like bending over for more than 20 minutes. You know, they're trying. But I bought my first bike for 200 bucks, man, $250.

I can't even remember what I paid for. You can't even get an oil. I last time I went in to get the oil change, the bill was like $400 or something. Yeah. You know, it's just a completely different world. You know, will it ever shift back? I don't think things shift back.

I think we have to adapt. I think there has to be awareness here with, you know people in the country i'll give you a pretty example my wife and i have a jack russell dog fonsies his name's 12 years old i mean you know what it's like having a dog man you know he's everything to us he gets diagnosed with uh his paw has cancer in it so he has a toll removed you know we get everything done uh we're out of state we have an appointment set up for him we have a person to pick him up, take him, and, you know, the doctor changes the appointment. And we get upset.

You know, I said, look, we've got this whole thing shifted. We're in 3,000 miles away, and we made an appointment. And she goes, well, I called and left a message. And I go, did you get a confirmation? And she winds up telling my wife, Beverly, I don't like the way you're talking to me. I mean, you know, fucking. You know, man up a little bit. Toughen up.

You know, you don't like the way somebody's talking to you. I mean, you're there accommodating people. That's what you're doing. Beverly wasn't out of line. I was right there when I heard what was going on. And I just, I'm like, the degree of anger, you know, is like, rising. And I mean, how do you deal with people like that? And how do you straighten it out?

Will it ever be straightened out? I don't know, you know. Yeah. Is that how cold? cultures collapse. Is that how societies come to an end? You know, this is an appropriate time for me to talk about my speech when I left the club, but I'm going to wait because I know you probably want to talk about that. But it's, did Harley redeem themselves? I don't know, you know.

There's a lot of things going on in this country that need redemption. Yeah. And it's not happening. Well, let's get back to you. All right. So we know that, we know what caught your end? interest in motorcycles and in and in clubs how did you get in how did it all start you know it's interesting so i'm running around with the question marks and uh dick woods is the founder and leader of

the question marks and got some serious guys on the question marks and dick the hesson steel one of the St. And Slave's bikes. They bring it up to the Ventura area. So the St. and slaves, we're part of that. Now, the Hessians aren't in that 1% or coalition at this time. The St.

and slaves say, hey, we're coming up to Ventura, man. Heson stole one of our bikes. We're coming up to get it. You know, we want you to know. So question marks, you know, we all go down to the center's palace and recover the bike. You know, a few people get lumped up.

some hurt feelings. Dick Woods comes in there after everybody's left. He thinks the event's still going on. We're dealing with these guys. Walks in the back door and somebody that holds the position of hang around with the Hessians stabs Dick in the back. Dick becomes partially paralyzed, never the same. The question marks slowly begin to unravel. Start hanging out with the saint and slaves. We go up on the Kern River,

doing a lot of runs. The Hells Angels show up up there. And in that group of Hells Angels that show up, there's a gentleman named Old Man John. And he's an old man. Like I'm 20, you know, mid-20s early, probably mid-20s by now, 24 maybe. And I mean, he looks like an antique to me, you know. I think he looks pretty good now that I think back.

But at that time, I'm thinking, man, this guy's old, you know, and he's riding his bike. And he knows, it seemed that you live in this very small community of outlaw bikers. And the saint and slaves had been talking about me. And old man, John got word. and the saint and slaves had a different posture for recruitment than the Hells Angels. We talked about this a little bit earlier. The Satan slaves, you had to ask to join. I didn't know.

I didn't know any of the rules. I'm just some kid hanging out with these guys. I want to be like them. Old man, John sees me. It takes an interest in me. The Hells Angels have a different posture in Los Angeles. They would say, you have any interest in the club? And that's what Old Man John said to me.

He said, do you have any interest in the club? And I just, you know, I have interest in the whole lifestyle, John, and he gives me a card. It says, come to the clubhouse and visit me. And that's basically how it all started for me with the hell's angels. Start hanging out with them. You know, the interesting thing is everybody wants to know about what happens when you're a prospect. You know, what do you do when you're a prospect? You basically do whatever they ask you to do, you know.

And it's a shit job. It, a lot of menial, meaningless jobs, you know, just get me a hamburger, you know, make sure the beer is cold, things of that nature. The real learning experience and what really defines your tenure in the Hells Angels is what you do after you make, member. You know, a lot of people would just assume go sit on the couch and not do anything. But if you want to make a name for yourself, you've got to engage, you got to get involved. And one of the first things I had to do, I mentioned the war with the Mongols earlier. I walked into a room and there was four or five guys in there. We were having a beef with the Mongols.

And they were talking about blowing up their clubhouse bike shop. And I immediately heard it was happening. And I told the guys, I go, look, man. I don't know if you've ever thought about collateral damage. I go, you want to put a bomb in a public business? I go, I don't think that's a very good idea. I go, I don't want nothing to do with it. I'm out of here.

I was a hell's angel at the time. So they went ahead and put the bomb in there. The Hells Angels put the bomb in? In the Mongols club bike shop. It's called a frame-up, but it was kind of a clubhouse bike shop place. And this is why you were a prospect? No, I'm a member to have. You remember.

It was 1977. and put the bomb there. I don't know what the trigger mechanism is or whatever. It didn't go off. So John comes to me and goes, so you walked in with those guys and you walked out? And I go, yeah. He goes, well, you know, they don't think you're committed. And he goes, so I'll tell you what I want you to do.

I want you to go get the bomb. And I want you to retrieve it. And then we had a place downtown that we called the Armory. It wasn't a real armory. It was a storage place, a garage. And in the storage place, we had 2,000 pounds of dynamite. We had a British anti-tank weapon. It stood out on a big, you know, I don't know what size shell it was,

but it was on a big tripod. It was as big as a car. And we had machine guns in there, handguns, had a lathe to make silencers. John sent me to retrieve the bomb. myself and another guy, Jesse, we went and got it. And John said, just bring it back, drop it off. I'll have the guys that made it dismantle it.

Because I kind of said, look, man, I'm getting getting involved. I don't know what the hell is going on here. You hope you to go get some unexploded ordinance? Yeah, that's somebody that didn't know what he was doing. Bring it into the building with all of our fucking weapons and ammo. Yeah. And I just, I go, whatever, man. So this is the thing when, you know, you start.

getting deeper and deeper now what happened was John got fed up we were fighting with Oakland at the time John got fed up stepped down a new guy took over the club it was guy Ray Glore and Ray had somebody come in that knew how to make a bomb and what they did is they took a tire they stuffed it full of dynamite around the tire and they took the valve and they used it as a pressure release trigger. As you pull it out and the stem comes up and then the contacts hit and then, you know, it goes.

They take it in and the bomb goes off. They go to change the tire and Mongol gets killed. His 15 year old cousin gets killed. And now the war is just, you know, it's full on war with these Mongols. And so I guess the point I'm trying to trying to make is, you know, people think, well, you know, you're a prospect and then you get in the club and it's drinking and party. And that's the way it was supposed to be. But the dynamics of the

problem with the Mongols, it changed the whole structure in Southern California. And it's not something I'm proud of. I mean, I was there when the whole thing was, it turned an abrupt, you know, reverse or whatever you want to call it, wherever it went. It was now, you know, it was basically urban warfare. Jingles and you got a guy, jingles and Redbeard, they get shot off their bike. Holy shit. They get killed by Guy Castellano. Guy is the president of Senate.

Guy's dead now. You know, a lot of people make claims, oh, you know, you're telling this and you're telling that. Hey, everybody's dead, but me. There's a couple of guys left, and guys gone. Who's going to jail? Nobody. So I tell these stories, but...

What was the beef over? The beef started, Chester Green, was a Hells Angel from the Bay Area. There was another guy, whispering Bill Pfeiffer. He was a Hells Angel from the Bay Area. These two guys were... wrote in I can't remember if they came from Georgia or Texas and they wanted to become Hells Angels and so they ride from Cal into California up in the Bay Area and they're petitioning people hey we want to come around we're cool guys and

whatnot well we had a little thing we used to do back then we called the acid test you give people LSD and sometimes you gave them too much sometimes by sometimes by accident and one of the guys flipped out they were trying to restrain him and he died he's to come to what whatever they hog tied him or whatever trying to keep him restrained so somebody in the upper echelon I could only speculate who they make a call and they say this guy died we got to witness his partner still here and he's alive so somebody says he's got to go man and they decide to kill that guy so they killed both these guys

they take them up to a well abandoned well in northern california former member named george weathering they dump him in the well and whispered bill is dying of cancer and somehow he gets tied into this and picks up a beef he becomes an informant tells them there's bodies buried up at this ranch on George Weatheren's ranch and whisper and Bill George Wetherin and Chester Green all become informants and are testifying against the other people that were involved in that crime Chester Green refuses to go into witness protection program. Whistmer and Bill goes in the witness protection. George Wetherland goes on the witness

protection program. Chester Green decides he's going to hide in plain sight. He goes to Southern California and joins the Mongols. So if you if you read what law enforcement says, they always say the fight started over the California bottom rocker. It's not really what the fight started over. The fight started over Chester Green becoming a Mongol and him being an informant and you know Chester Green apparently convinced the Mongols he was not an informant I you know I don't know how or how or why or you know why they didn't check up with us nevertheless he was now a Mongol would they I mean would that have been I would imagine that would not be a welcoming call

Hey, we got your guy here that wants to join the Mongols, but we would just want to check and make sure he's not an informant. Yeah, you'd think that they'd do some follow-up, but, you know, and perhaps they knew what the consequence was that these guys would have said, oh, yeah, hold him in the back room. We'll be down there and six hours. So that actually would have been a friendly call between clubs? Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. But it didn't work out that way. You guys hated each other, or you didn't hate each other at the time. Oh, okay. They were this, their own little motorcycle club, And at that particular time, you know, the Mongols were a new obscure club.

And at that particular time, the Hells Angels were, they were royalty, man, you know. It was our world. You know, we were the number one club. And no other clubs, we go, well, we were just as good. And perhaps they were just as good. But in California, we ruled California. It was our state wherever we were. went. So we all decided to go to a swap meet. You got to pay attention to this

convoluted story. So we all decided to go to the swap meet. Swat meets are new. It's 1977. They got this new deal they do where people bring motorcycle parts and they put them on the floor and people walk around and they you know they bid on stuff. I'll give you a 200 for that or whatever. They sell alcohol in there. They have loud music. It was probably not a good combination. in that particular environment. So we're in there. There's nine Hells Angels in there. And there's probably 40 to 60 Mongols in there.

Now, there's two people in there that are, their worlds are about to collide. One of them is a Hells Angel. One of them is a Mongol. You've got a Hells Angel that's wife ran off with the Mongol. And they walk in there and they see each other. And the Hells Angel and him and I are best friends still to this day.

He's an ex-Hels Angel now. He doesn't say a word to anybody. He just pulls back and clocks this guy and the fights on. Now, how do I know specifically how many people were there? Because in the nine, the group of nine Hells Angel, there's a police informant in the group. And if you read chain of evidence, it's a book written by the police officer that was his handling him. So the cops have a crisis of conscience.

Do they jump in and stop this conflict? Or do they don't want to blow his undercover work? and let him continue fighting. They decide to let him continue fighting. So there's, we have specific numbers. It's, you know, you get that book, it's in that book. So you've got nine Hells Angels fighting all these Mongols. And one cop comes in there.

And he's got a revolver. All he's got is a revolver, man. It's, you know, 1977, he, he doesn't look like he's tenure very much. I mean, he's just very young looking. And I remember the gun looking. I had two thoughts. The gun looked that big. But I also looked at the cylinder and I go, he's only got six shots.

There's like 60 of us in here fighting. But a balzy guy. He stopped the fight. The Mongols broke and they ran. They didn't break because they were afraid. They just, they broke first. And I think probably part of the reason was we were surrounded by the Mongols. We couldn't go anywhere.

We were fighting them. We were all back-to-back fighting these guys. And they broke, and we broke. And we had a short moratorium on the violence. We said, let's not let this escalate. Oh, man, John went and negotiated with him later that night, which I thought was a bad idea. I was kind of coming up in the club.

I remember telling John, I go, look, negotiating, man. I go, let's let them brew on it for two or three days. Let them consider what's going to be the concept. for fighting with the Hells Angels. And then I said, then we can go negotiate. And, you know, John was just an old school, up front kind of guy. And, you know, he said, go into goddamn clubhouse. You know, you're a new guy.

You know, this is my call. And I said, okay, whatever, man. So sat in the clubhouse all night. He came back in the morning when the sun was coming up and said, okay, you know, everything's cool. We're not going to fight. John said, I've had enough. You know, he stepped down as president.

president, new guy Ray Glor takes over. The shooting with Guy Castellano takes place to kill Redbird jingles. The bombing takes place shortly after that on Ray's orders. And probably within, you know, six months, there's six murders in Southern California. And one of them is Los Angeles, Hells Angels, new leader. he had sent people over to the garage. He had got busted and then he said he wanted to empty the garage. But what he did is he sent people over to the garage and the police were waiting there.

That's where the dynamite and everything was. And later that night, somebody went back, shot Ray, killed him. Shit. But the interesting thing was, so you've got 2,000 pounds of dynamite. I don't know if the anti-tank gun was still there at that time, but you've got machine guns. You've got silencers. And they got out of the, they got, they beat the case, basically. And how do you think, how do you think they beat the case?

I don't know. It seems very convoluted, but then when you, one of these young lawyers comes up with the idea and he tells the prosecutor, he goes, you're not going to win this case. And the prosecutor goes, why not? It's, you guys are dead to right. He goes, well, let me ask you this. He goes, was there any dynamite in the garage when they got there? And he goes, no. He goes, is there any guns in there? They said, no. They had emptied the garage for community and public safety. They'd taken all the dynamite. Wow. So there was, there was nothing in there. So in essence, they went to an empty garage and this young hot-shot lawyer he tells them how are you going to prove what their state of mind was did they think it was empty or did they think it was full you don't know and he goes i'm not putting them on the stand you're never going to know and he goes you can't win this case and basically what they did is they dropped the charges on two of the guys and one guy pled guilty to possession of a machine gun without a license and he got like

probation, you know, time served in probation. He just did a few days in jail. So people think, oh, you get voted in the club and it's all over with. Well, perhaps it's just beginning. Yeah. Can we take a little break? Yeah, let's take a break. Look, I am really picky when it comes to gear. If I'm going to use something every single day, it has to actually perform and do what it says it's going to do. It can't just look good in a product photo. It has to be light, durable, comfortable, and it has to do what it's supposed to do. And that's why I like Roka. Roka was born in Austin, Texas, an American designed with zero shortcuts. Their eyewear is built for people who are outside, active, training, traveling, working, or

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Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit shanryanshow.com and grab yours today. Well, what you were just talking about was pretty interested. You were talking about the 70s for the Hells Angels was a rough time. Yeah, as the 70s approached, the body count started mounting up.

And when I say body count talking about what the police described as in-house murders or killings. The rumor was somebody had stole something from Sunny, had broken his house and stole something. I don't know if it's true or not. Ultimately, he, you know, he paid for that with his life. And there was a gentleman named Stork that, one of the early informants, you know, prior to that time,

nobody had ever flipped on that. Hells Angels had a pretty solid record and then Stork was going to testify for the prosecution in a case he wound up shot of the side of the road unsolved murder then you had Terry the Tramp who was in Hells Angels 69 sunny took exception to his popularity and underneath everything sending him were in business together and there was some money owed of and they were waiting for a big amount of money to come in and uh what was the money for lsd lsd yeah what are the primary sources of revenue for the hells i think in you know this is interesting like i've always contended and i still do even though i

I'm not a member. I don't have to defend the Hells Angels. I like to tell it like it is. The Hells Angels is not a criminal organization, John. It's an organization with criminals in it. And people see opportunities and they seize them, if you will. And I think that there was a lot of stuff going on. There was a gentleman named Ozley. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He was kind of the premier LSD maker in the Bay Area and then for the West Coast he made I knew him I made drugs for the Grateful Dead and that just kind of you know tentacled out from there was a lot of a lot of money in it you know there's allegations of you know CIA stuff and whatnot that

It always seems... Like MK Ultra type stuff? Yeah. And it always seems that... Was there any validity to that? I don't know. And MK Ultra is a real thing. Yeah, I don't know.

You know, you had Timothy Leary floating around in there. Do you remember Timothy Larry? The LSD guru. Oh, okay. Tune in, turn on, and drop out. You know, you had these things. And, you know, we're coming out of the 60s. of Kennedy's assassinated, the Kennedy brothers assassinated.

Martin Luther King, I mean, you have all these things happening that really create an air of paranoia, if you will. Kind of like today. Absolutely, you know. And look, how do I say this? I guess I just say it is how I say it. you've seen things that probably the average person, they're suspect when you tell them. I don't think it's quite that way anymore.

It's like I've seen things. I used to tell people for years that, well, you don't know what the government really does. And, you know, people kind of, you know, things I said in the early 80s. We're ahead of your time. Well, they made me ahead of my time because they made a believer out of me. You know, when investigations taken place, we got off track, but I'll swing back around. When an investigation is taking place and these guys start going out of the guidelines of investigative things that are acceptable or legal or however you want to describe them, you. you have like having an awakening you're going wow they're really doing this and uh you learn real fast

uh i had a conversation with a guy one time they said that i had ordered a murder and i had 19 conversations with the guy well the tape recorder only worked on two of the conversations i mean it's very suspect uh you know the uh listening uh device or recorder whatever they were using didn't work the other, you know, 17 times. I think that getting back on that subject, Sonny had some real hard feelings for Terry the Tramp. Terry the Tramp was in that movie. You said you remembered the movie, you remember the character.

The club was going through a transition. We had decided that you could not shoot drugs, any more interveniously. We're trying to kind of clean up some things. If you ever been around any junkies, you know what they're like. I mean, they'll do anything to get that fix. Terry kind of got pushed out of the club. That was the main reason.

But shortly after Terry was out of the club, he got given a hot shot. You know, you know what a hot shot is. I don't know if you're subscribed. I don't know what a hot shot is. You do or don't? I do not. Okay.

a hot shot is a mixture of narcotics that will make you unable to breathe i mean you o d you okay your body odes and you shoot it interveniously and you succumb to the narcotics and uh i was told by a high-ranking guy in the hell's angels i write about it in my book out while writing through the storm that he was ordered to go over there and give Terry Hotshot and he did and that's another murder then you've got Gary Robles another strong-minded Hells Angel he winds up dead you've got Harry the horse out of San Francisco he winds up dead and you've got this trail of of people through the 70s that are casualties of a political agenda going to

on and I'm not sure why it just basically happens. The whole thing seems to end in 1980 with the murder of my vice president, Craig Coon, Jesse. It was his answer. We knew him by his, you know, all these murders are unsolved. So when people talk about tough times, the 70s were a real tough time. You've got probably, Rolling Stone did an article about it. a decade of murders that remain unsolved by the, you know, in-house cleaning is how law enforcement describes it, you know.

Was it house cleaning? I think some of it probably was, yeah. I mean, some of it we don't know. Some of it I think was personal. I mean, how high, how is this, I mean, you're the head of the Ventura chapter. Correct. So where do these hits come from? I mean, your VP gets killed.

Right. Murder, assassinated. Well, here you've got a situation, and I'm speculating, here you've got a situation that you've got a group of guys that come out of Los Angeles. You've got murders down there through bombings, through, you know, pistol assassination, or however you want to describe it. And they move up to Ventura. my speculation is somebody got suspicious. Jesse picked up another, Jesse's the guy that got the,

remember I described the machine gun case. He got a beef, he was on probation for possessing machine gun without a license. He picked up a, are you familiar with the term mayhem? No. Mayhem is, if you and I get in a physical altercation,

that's, you know, that's like an assault and battery. If you were to bite my ear and take part of my ear off, then it becomes mayhem. And that's a much more serious degree of felony, you know, a company, an assault. Yeah. So, Jesse got in a fight with a bouncer. Jesse was kind of an unassuming guy, but he was one of the toughest guys I'd run into in a long time. He goes to this bar by himself.

The bouncer, the guy was hell's angel stuff on. The bouncer starts. insulting them. They went up getting in a fight. The bouncer is kind of a big guy, bigger than Jesse. Jesse beats him up and bites the tip of his ear off, just for a good measure. Gets a behap beef. Somebody becomes suspect that, you know, what if Jesse wants to make a deal? So obviously, Jesse was involved in something in Los Angeles that has made somebody nervous. And basically, it's, you know, they're going to eliminate the weak link whether Jesse was a wink link or not no one will ever know he's gone I don't believe he was a wink link but somebody did and you know people think that all these things are structured like I'm gonna make military unit yeah and it sometimes people take things upon themselves I don't know you've probably been in combat situations well hold on so it's not structured like that so is there is there is there is there a risk structure but if if

Look, murder is a serious offense with no statute of limitations. And you don't want to get involved in a conspiracy. Like, you know, people will come up and talk to me about let's do this or let's do that. My first thought was, is this guy on the level or is this guy recording me and trying to set me up? I got arrested in 1986 because the Mexican mafia said they were going to kill a former associate of ours. And I got in this dialogue with this Mexican mafia member who actually had become a FBI informant. So he's got me acknowledging that they're going to kill this guy. And I wind up getting a beef.

I beat the case because the jury said, well, you know, Christy had no interest in killing this guy. You guys had an interest in killing him, but it was a hoax. I don't know if that makes any sense. It does. What I'm asking, I want to know, how is the organization, how is the organization broken down? What is its hierarchy? So is the Ventura chapter of seniority over a, over the San Diego chapter? Each charter is autonomous to itself.

That's why the federal government has never been successful trying to throw a racketeering charge. Are you familiar with the RICO? A little bit. Yeah. RICO is a specific crime where you can take people's underlings and take the crimes they've committed and say they were directed by the hierarchy. so it becomes a racketeering influenced corrupt organization, RICO. And so if they get two or three guys and you get, say, a group of 10 guys that they say are part of the established hierarchy in the Hells Angels,

and you get these guys saying, yeah, I killed this guy, and I did this here, and I sold drugs there, and I did it all to behest of this guy, this guy. this guy and this guy came down from the top the order came from them came down from the top i completed the criminal act they uh they become the informants and the uh hierarchy the guys in the structure get popped we didn't structure the hell's answers like that each charter is autonomous to itself i don't know if that makes sense it does make sense but what i want to know then is who approves who approves a new charter? So when you started the charter in Ventura, who approves that?

I'm laughing because I just grabbed the guys and moved up there and started it, because my philosophy was, if you're a real hell's angel, you don't take orders from anybody. You do what you want to do. And that kind of goes back to when I got in trouble in the military. I take it upon myself to do something. But getting back to your question,

that's the way I did it. Was it appropriate? No, but it was effective because I got my charter and it lasted, you know, it's still going today. I'm no longer involved. But it's a vote, you know. If, like when we got ready to vote the Dirty Dozen, have you ever heard of that club? Dirty, you have? I think so. Yeah, the Dirty Dozen was a club in Arizona, a very strong club. They ran the whole state. And in the mid to late 90s, we voted them in as Hells Angels. And the vote was across the United States. Every charter of the United States had to vote on it. And they got a unanimous vote. And they became a Hell's Angel charter. But it's kind of complex because we're independent yet.

We're structured as an organization. but we don't take, like somebody from another charter can't come and say, I'm the international leader and this is what you guys are going to do. Somebody comes to Ventura and says, this is what I want you guys to do. You say, well, hey, this is Ventura. This is our community. Don't come to town and tell us what you think we should do within our community. We know what's best for us as an organization.

You know, get out of here. But it makes for a good organization. argument in a courtroom of you know we get in the courtroom let's go back or head or wherever we're at to 1979 78 the hell's angels in the san francisco area get indicted for racketeering are you familiar with this case no no okay so in 1979 they get indicted for racketeering they have one trial and it's a mistrial. They have another trial, and it's a mistrial. So you've got two big trials that is very expensive.

They're not successful, and you're going to identify with this. You know who the prosecutor was in that case. You don't because you don't know about the case, but Robert Mueller was a young prosecutor in San Francisco. And he prosecuted the Hells Angels, not once, but twice. And Judge Conte was really down on the Hells Angels. He thought that, you know, we should have all been found guilty. Robert Mueller realized that the way the Hells Angels was structured

and the way we were presenting things to the jury, that they were never going to get a RICO charge. I mean, the case was a catastrophe. they bring in one of the paid witnesses. And this guy became a government informant to extract himself out of his own problem, plus to receive some financial money for his testimony. And he comes into the courtroom,

and the defense attorneys start questioning him. And they said, you did business with this guy, right? And they said, yes, we did. How many times, you know, he goes testimony. And they said, we'd like, is he in the courtroom today? He says, yes, he is. We'd like you to point him out. The paid informant identifies Tony Sarah.

Now, Tony Sarah is not a hell's angel. Tony Sarah is one of our defense attorneys. But what he doesn't know, about Tony's Tony Sarah is a guy with really long hair looks kind of like a he could be a hippie or a biker and he identifies Tony Sarah as the guy he's been doing business with for the last three or four days the courtroom erupts and everybody goes crazy and then the guy admits I've never done business with the Hells Angels the government offered me money and they said they'd get out of jail if I testified so you had situations like that

happening. These guys, they become so zealot in their quest to find the hell's angels guilty or anybody for that matter that they become blinded. You know, justice does not get served. And, you know, I just, and maybe it's unfair for me. I keep thinking, you know, I think about you as a seal i think about you uh what i know about your past uh you understand these things that things like this happen you know it's it's not uh what is uh what's the name saying in that movie it's uh not what you know it's what you can prove you know we didn't have these problems in the seal teams you did not people killing each other yeah No. Not, I can't say never, but not often. Yeah. There's been some incidents. But, I mean, is the leader, is the president of the Ventura, I mean, how many people are under you? How many people are in that chapter? Well, it's at 25. 25 members at its peak. But what you have to understand, you know, you've got 25 members, like a lot of people go, 25 members, that's not very big. Well, that's pretty big. Well, that's pretty,

big for a Hells Angel Charter in which you have to understand each guy that is in the club probably has five to ten people that follow him and will do anything for him because he holds that position of prestige and that where a lot of people go well that's not prestige well in the outlaw bike world you know being a Hells Angels a very prestigious position gotcha and so I'm just curious is the president of that club and you have all this inner I don't know what to call it

I guess it's not inner club but hell's angel on hell's angel killing right I mean what is going through your head what are you telling your guys I would imagine that would be mass confusion that yeah it's paranoid

it's friendly it's friendly's killing friendlies yeah and what you do have no fucking friends no and it becomes and that's this is I think how the outlaw bike culture made a 180 degree turn, you know.

It, you sit in a room with somebody and do you know who Jay Dobbins is? No. Jay Dobbins, uh, if Jay Dobbins was here, like, you know, I like Jay. He's a ATF. He infiltrated the hells angels. Oh, okay. I know who this guy is. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, Jay Dobbins was sitting here. He would say, everything I've said, he would say is bullshit. But that doesn't mean I don't like Jay. I like Jay. He just had a different perception of the Hells Angels. I think that guys like Jay Dobbins were amazingly effective because, and I don't know if the government realized it at the time, they didn't get a lot of convictions. They didn't get long sentences.

But what they did to the Hells Angels and to people in the Outlaw bike world in that culture that are in the 1% type clubs they put doubt and confusion into the room because you're sitting in that meeting room and you're looking around you're going and i think i said this earlier you're going to go who's going to roll next who's going to uh make a deal who here is actually working with the cops and who is actually working for the hell's angels you know it becomes it becomes confusing i Do you know who Anthony Tate is, Tony Tate? Tony Tate was a Hell's Angel in Alaska, and he became an FBI informant for no reason.

He didn't get busted. He just decided he wanted to infiltrate the Hells Angels, and he went to the cops and goes, I think I can do this. And I think the cops kind of laughed at him at first, and then he started, you know, making some progress. And the FBI, this was with the local cops in Alaska.

And then the FBI came in it. And they basically promoted him as a Hells Angel, helped him rise up in the ranks. He became West Coast Secretary. No, not West Coast Secretary, West Coast Chairman. Well, him and I sat in a meeting. What's the West Coast Chairman? I'm not West Coast Chairman. He became the Sergeant and Armed.

I was the West Coast chairman. I was the guy that kind of officiated the meetings. All of the West Coast? Yeah. So then there is some type of a hierarchy. Well, it is, but it's an unofficial, in an unofficial capacity. Okay. You know, it's not like, it doesn't give me any power to, okay, you're going to do this.

You're an organizer. Yes. You know, I'm facilitating the meeting. I'm keeping the meeting on point. and trying to keep any discussion of anything illegal out of the room. Because despite what people think, you start talking about illegal activities in an official Hells Angel meeting, you're going to be asked to stop or escorted out of the room. So Tony Tate's sitting next to me.

Anybody that wants to look this stuff up, they can look up Anthony, Tony Tate. He was a FBI informant. He was a Hells Angel. pretty effective as a informant. He's sitting next to me in a meeting. On his left arm, he's got a cast. And I look at the cast, and it's brand spanking new. It's white, white. You know what a brand new cast looks like.

Well, imagine you're an outlaw biker, and you've got a cast on your arm, and it's just pristine white. It made me very suspicious. I never liked Tom. need to begin with but it made me very suspicious looking at the cast well inside the cast was a bug and he was trying to lead me into a conversation he wanted to blow up the outlaws in kentucky and he basically brought his request to a meeting and you know there was like probably 12

hell's angel presidents from the west coast into this meeting and if you know we would have got engaged in a conversation of killing these guys. It would have been a conspiracy beef. You know, I had enough insight and intuitive feeling that the guy was no good that I stirred the conversation off, confronted him about his cast, why he didn't have any road rash. He left the meeting, went to Sonny's house. They had got suspicious going, this cast isn't going work they knocked his cast off and they put the bug inside a new device that was just kind of coming up on the scene and you're going to laugh when i said it's called a pager and so this gives you a time frame so tony goes to sonny's house and uh he's got this pager on and uh he's got a bug in it

and the ironic thing is he's at sonny's house and he gets a page and it's his handler and this isn't stuff I'm just making up the stuff you can research this stuff it's all out there on the computers uh it all became part of a case in kentucky a conspiracy case um murder case in kentucky uh he's asked sonny he goes oh i'm on call for work i got to just let me call in real quick and sonny says yeah go ahead this is stuff's all recorded And he calls the feds and they say, you got to get him to say this. And he hangs up the phone, takes a conversation, and guides it into this, I'm going to blow these guys up.

I want to make sure it's okay with you. There's going to be a lot of collateral damage of saying things of that nature. Very cavalier comments. And, you know, Sonny winds up getting a conspiracy to commit murder beef. The trial was in Kentucky. He did just about four years for that. And I think while Sunny was away in prison, he was in federal prison, the club went through a lot of changes, you know.

And when he got back in the mid-90s, I don't think he liked the direction the club was headed. And, you know, I kind of skipped here, and I skipped there and passed it in, but you have to understand, Sonny got that cancer call where he relinquished his power. After he had done that,

a couple of years later, he had this revelation that he wasn't going to die and he wanted to take his power back. I don't know if you've experienced that in any of the SEAL teams, but if somebody's a leader, then they relinquish their power. It's kind of tough to get it back.

I know you guys are structured more where somebody has a rank, and in that rank is probably a description of you know what they can and can't do or what they can and shouldn't do but you know in the hell's angels it's kind of a dog

dog world it's the strong survive and I think that by the time Sonny came back from his last stay in prison that was the last time he went to prison for any length of time his power was very diminished interesting

we'd think they would have more respect for him. Well, I think he was respected, but you have to understand, Sonny was taking the position that Tony Tate was the Hell's Angel of the Future, and that's how he was introducing him to people. He was referring to him as a Hells Angel of the Future, and he really was somebody that created chaos in not good. How so? How would he do that? Well, he set up, sonny went to prison, Irish O'Farrell. He's the one that did it. He's the one that did it.

Oh, shit. And he was introducing him as the Hells Angel of the future. Wow. It was a misjudgment. So, you know, what happens is people look at him as a leader and go, you know, maybe he's slipping a little bit. I'm sure you've been in situations where you've got somebody in a leadership position, maybe making a questionable call. You guys probably got to look at each other and go, hmm, just right or wrong. I mean, I can't imagine you guys following somebody blindly.

No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. How did you become, you know, one thing that we didn't cover is how you became the president so fast. What was it about you that you think the guys respected? You know what I think it was? I think a lot of it had to do with the structure in my life.

And I attribute that to the Marines, to the Department of Defense. my martial arts training I was really disciplined I'd like to party but I was strictly a recreational drug user I'd never had a drug problem I could walk away from the party on Sunday morning

and not worry about partying again until the next party showed up I didn't go looking for the party if I came upon a party and I wanted to participate I did but that's a real luxury when you live in that world. I don't know what was going on in the military, but I think there was a point in time, narcotics were becoming a problem. True or not? I mean, I think narcotics are always a problem. Okay. Yeah, I think. Yeah, and it became a problem in the Hells Angels.

I think that probably one of the worst things that ever happened to the Hells Angels and the Outlaw culture was meth i mean it's just it's a mind-altering physical and emotional uh drug it uh you know people think they have this unlimited power and control and the reality is uh it chips away at you this actually does not sound very similar to the military at all to be honest okay well i i don't know i But what are, I mean, so what are the revenue streams? Revenue streams are personal, private little cartels that people set up themselves. You know, Tony Tate, the FBI professed that Tony Tate was very, very successful in infiltrating the Hells Angels and setting Hells Angels up.

The reality is he had access to people. in Canada, people in Europe, people across the United States. And after like a three-year investigation, I think he busted serious offenses, maybe 10, 13 guys. I mean, that's not a lot of people that if their contention is you're controlling the methamphetamine market and you are living off this, you can only get 13 guys. I think the people that were making the money they didn't want to share it with anybody they that's why I my contention has always been we're not a criminal organization is an organization saturated with criminals independent from the

structure of the club this structure of the clubs about brotherhood motorcycles and writing but it certainly taking its toll it's it's eroding you know it was eroding that's one of the reasons I left so you if I'm under understanding you correctly, then revenue streams. So you have your club members. Right. The club needs money, but maybe the club doesn't necessarily know where the money's coming from. So then you have all the members of the club running their own extracurricular businesses. The ones that want to participate. A lot of the guys work, you know, you got to be fair about that. A lot of the guys work.

They're construction guys. They're truck drivers. But there's a lot of them that are hustlers. So how does the club make money? Do they take a percentage of each members? It's dues. It, you know, the government makes allegations. The club is worth billions and millions. Well, perhaps there's that kind of money running through a particular group of individuals. But the club is a nonprofit organization.

It's registered with the United States government as a nonprofit organization. They don't make money off their trademark. So it's very complex issues, you know, and, you know, it, the club was very simple at one time, you know. You got a motorcycle. You came to the bar. You went to the Kern River. You went to Bass Lake. You hung out at the fire.

You had a beef with somebody. You got it off your chest. Perhaps maybe you threw blows. You know, nobody went and got a gun. Nobody went and got a knife. Nobody went and got bullets. The worst thing was you got to buy breakfast, man. You know, you lost the tussle.

And, you know, it's... That's how it was when you went in. Yeah. And it's made this transition that nobody trusts anybody. Look, Sean, you're sitting in a room with a bunch of guys. Imagine being in a room with some guys. It's like probably like going out in a mission. I used to work for the CIA.

I know you. So I get a room. being in a room full of people you don't fucking trust. And but this is, but this is the thing. And maybe, maybe this is the proper way to explain it. You go from a group of seals, you're on a mission with, you love these guys, you believe in these guys, you know you can count on these guys,

you may not agree with all of them all the time, but you know they're there when the shit comes down. And then you make a transition, you're trying to accomplish the same thing. But now they're in a room of people and you're not sure where they're coming from. And it's a slippery slope. Like the end, for me, it was two years, man.

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Okay. You had mentioned nonprofit. I'm curious why we're not. were the club set up to be nonprofits? Were all the chapters non-profits? Well, the, the club, the Hells Angels name, the logo is people claim this, and I think there's a lot of merit to it that the Hells Angels brand is one of the most powerful and recognized brands in existence, Whether that's true or not, I guess that's up for a debate. When we established in the late 70s, we thought we've got to establish a trademark board.

We've got to protect our trademark. I was on the board. A gentleman I do not get along with to this day. Flash was on the board. Done a lot for the club, did a lot for the trademark. I'm not going to take that away from. Irish was on the trademark board. you know, you know, Irish was murdered.

Different individuals. I think there might have been seven or eight of us initially on the board. We used Limbock, Limbock and Sutton. Some very powerful trademark attorneys on the West Coast. They were located up in the Bay Area. And they handled, I may have some of these wrong, but I don't think so. They handled Levi Strauss. I know that one for sure.

Coca-Cola, perhaps Pepsi-Cola, MasterCard. The rest of them I couldn't really remember. They were insignificant to me. And the Hells Angels. So you had these trademark lawyers representing these powerful trademarks, recognizable trademarks, you know, Levi trademark, the MasterCard, whatever it may be. I get a phone call from Mr. Sutton. He says, George, I like to talk to you.

And I said, well, you know, I'm in Southern California. He goes, it's very important you come up here. I want no misunderstandings. I want to tell you something. So, you know, I'm going, this is not going to be good. So I go up there. This is back, like I say, in early 80s, you can fly to San Francisco for 30 bucks. There's a plane every 45 minutes, you know,

there and then went back. So I jump on a plane, I go up there, and Mr. Sutton says that the other trademark brands have discovered they're also representing the Hells Angels. And he said, they don't want their trademark brushing up against yours because it's not a good image. The Hells Angels don't have a good image. And I mean, you know, how can you argue with them? You can't, really. And I understood. But they helped us set it up. So it was a nonprofit organization. And the idea really was it was about protecting the trademark. Because what happens is when you have a powerful trademark and you don't use it,

people will start doing what they consider fair use. And then ultimately, they'll claim you've abandoned your trademark because you're not using it. Well, you know the American government set up as a capitalist. You're not using it in a monetary, and they'll try to take your trademark over. It's very complicated. I don't understand it all, but I know Mr. Sutton is the guy I dealt with most of the time, and he taught me several things about trademark. And so you've got to control the narrative. You know, what does your trademark stand for? And what does it mean? You got to control the narrative. You have to protect it

from people infringing on it. And if you don't, you don't. don't do that that's that's how you lose control of your trademark it's just like are you familiar with the jkd j k k k k k k d kundo bruce lees martial art thing what about it well he he uh their family didn't protect the trademark and they lost control of the the logo uh and the jkd thing it's it's people can use it uh it's fair use is what they call it And that's what we were trying to avoid with the Hells Angels. We were trying to make sure that the trademark was protected. It was set up as a nonprofit organization of,

I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. In the mid 80s, Marvel Comics made a Hells Angel cartoon book. We immediately got it shut down. And we protected. protected our trademark. We sued them. They settled out of court for, I think, $60,000. We gave the money to Ronald McDonald House, Cancer for Children, because we're a nonprofit. We couldn't profit from our logo. But we could protect our logo. But if we received any money, we had to give it away. Another thing is, you know who Roger Corman was?

Roger Corman was, remember all the B movies in the 60s and 70? Well, you're too young. 82. Huh? Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking about that. Roger Corman did all the B movies with these were upcoming stars. Like one of his directors was Martin Scrosaceae, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper.

These are guys that all starred in his films. He made a movie called Nom Angels, and he used our logo. We sued him and beat him in court. And, like, they paid us, but we had to use the money not in a profitable way. We gave some of it away. I can't remember what we did. I remember he gave us $60,000 for infringing on our trademark. And these are the kind of things you have to do to protect your trademark.

But that has nothing to do. I know what you're thinking about, your question is, what type of money are you bringing in as a club? Are you talking about street money, elicit money? I'm talking about anybody. Where do you get the money for the building? Where do you get the money to throw parties?

Where do you get the money to have a warehouse full of guns, dynamite, and bombs, and machine. The dynamite was stupid. stolen. Okay. I'm being a smart ass, but I'm being serious. The dynamite was stolen. But, okay, I'll give you an example. We started doing benefit, like, dances and parties and whatnot at the Ventura Clubhouse. And the capacity of that place, including the yard, we probably get 500 people there. And, we, we, we probably get 500 people there. And, We would charge five bucks an entry fee and then we would raffle off things. We would, you know, buy raffle tickets and, you know, you get a drawing, you win a letter coat or you win, you know, case of oil, whatever it may be. You sell shots of liquor behind the bar. you sell

hamburgers, hot dogs, whatever it may be. And, you know, we made a lot of money that way. I've personally felt like by the mid-80s after all these guys got arrested by Tony Tate, that dealing drugs, man, it was just, it was kind of a dead end. You know, everybody's going to get busted.

And so in Ventura, I suggest, There was a few bust in Ventura, but they weren't real successful. They came after me in 2001, but I mean, the case collapsed. You know, they couldn't prove anything. Were there people in the club selling drugs? Yeah, they were selling Vicodon. They were getting Vicodon from an airman named Joshua Adams. He was, my son was involved in that, Georgie.

Joshua Adams, Georgi, Rehulio Batillo Betillo was. another guy he was in a gang called avenue gangsters and a couple of uh ventura hell's angels but out of 25 guys you had two hells angels and you know the rest were just associate guys getting involved and i think it i think it adds substance to my argument that people do illegal things but they they confine it to themselves because they want to keep the money they don't want to bring they want to risk their freedom and their ass and make a hundred thousand dollars and then uh bring it in and turn it over the club you know and have to share it with uh people that didn't i mean it's it's just it's interesting it's greed is so you know so if money was not an issue and that the

club is a non-profit i mean where does the power struggle come in where does the because that's obvious i mean it has to be well i think it you're talking about the 70s and all the all the all the all the inner club murders and assassinations and all the shit that's happening what's motivating that because there's not it's not it's oh it can't it's no i think it is there's no money then i think it's money but you know look i never got deep enough into the military to understand uh jealousies and personality uh conflicts it was you know my attitude of the military was you know you have an mOS You fulfill that job.

You take your orders. Some of them I didn't like. But in an outlaw type structure, I mean, you've got people making moves trying to control power, trying to control areas. You've got the dynamics. And you've got the dynamics of who has more power of me or him. It's kind of like, you know, who's dick's bigger? It's kind of that male mentality, I think. And I think that...

So it's very primitive thinking. Yeah, well, it's a primitive culture. It's a primitive culture. Because, I mean, I don't even understand how you would take over a territory if you do not have the funds to get what you need to do to enable that. Well, when you say take over a territory, are you talking about narcotics trade? Are you talking about perceived power? Are you talking about real power?

I don't know. I mean, whatever you're talking. Well, you know. I mean, if you're saying that a lot of the guys in the clubs had regular jobs. They did. And then we're talking about taking over a territory. When I think about taking over a territory, I think it's a, I think of gang wars, some type of. Which you're thinking of military takeover, are you?

Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, maybe you could do it psychologically. You could do a brute force, but perhaps a combination of all. But it would take, it would take money, right? I mean, even if you'd have to pay your guy, I would think that would be a full-time, a full-time thing. Hey, we're going to take this fucking territory. You guys are going to have to take off work. Well, then how are they going to make a living?

Well, it doesn't work that way. But, you know, that's certainly a legitimate question. uh you know you're just you're gonna need gun you're gonna need logistics right logistics costs money right that's true uh but if you're living in a small town uh you've lived in the town of ventura there's we come into the town of ventura there's eight bike clubs there's let me see let's count them there's the mollocks the mongles the carnalis the syndicate the question marks who I'm friends with at the time and the orphans. So that's seven clubs there.

And you just slowly run everybody out of town. I mean, you know, that's basically what we did. And it wasn't for to control the narcotics. It was to control what was going to transpire in that town, who was going to come in that town, who was going to be allowed in that town. And it sounds like that. like perhaps a lot of bullshit, but it's not. I mean, you know, the, you mentioned the term primitive. I think the outlawed bike culture is very primitive. And there's a lot of instincts going on.

It's like in 1987, when I came back from prison, I've learned something that was really unique, and it just resonated with me. The day I got to prison, I mentioned Guy Cassidy alone earlier, that he'd killed red beard and jingles remember the mongles so i i go down to prison guys are there at terminal island prison this is before they had the uh holding centers you if you got a beef and the feds you went right to the prison in uh terminal island and then you went back and forth between court and the prison until your case was resolved and then they send you off to a particular location but when i got there i asked guy i said hey guy uh who do we have a problem with in here and guy said we don't fight with anybody in here now this is the war with the mongols was going

we had a problem with the outlaws back east uh we had on and off problems with the banditos a constant problem with the pagans but when i asked him that question he kind of startled me and said well, we don't fight in prison. And I'd never been to prison before. And I said, what do you mean we don't fight in prison? He goes, we don't fight in prison. And so what there was was a unwritten rule of, you know, nonviolence. So when I came home from prison, I wanted to apply that on the street.

I thought, well, if we're fighting on the street but we're not fighting in prison, it would make more sense to me. that we would be able to interact with each other. If we're on the street with all the luxuries of everything we have, our bikes, our women, the drugs that people want, the alcohol, the party scene, or whatever, why couldn't we apply that to the everyday lifestyle of the outlaw biker? And I started petitioning people, you know,

set up a meeting with the outlaws, set up a meeting with the bandito, set up a meeting with the Mongols, eventually got an end. on the violence with everybody that lasted until 2002 and it just it's kind of all unraveled but that position is not popular in the outlawed by culture they see it as a position of a weakness to me to petition people in the hell's angels and the outlaws and these other organizations to not be violent it takes more nerve than

then the act of violence. It's, you know, your manhood's getting questioned. Your loyalty is getting questioned. You've got all these things going on. And I had some really interesting dialogue with the leader of the bandito's, a guy, Harry Bowman, George Weggers, international leader of the banditos. I mean, these were people that wanted to hold onto their power. These are guys now you talk about structure.

These are clubs that hold absolute power the leaders do. And both leaders of these clubs, you know, one of them's in jail doing life. The other guy, Taco died in jail because the racketeering law worked on them because of the way they were structured. Gotcha. Yeah. So I think the bike culture at least. large is very primitive in its thinking, you know, it's very primal. And you start fighting.

It's pretty easy to get along with people in the 60s. You see another guy on an outlaw-type look with his bike, and even if he might be in a club, you kind of want to hang out with him. You kind of want to stop, talk to him. Hey, you broke down, you need anything. That was kind of the essence of the lifestyle. Then the 70s come, you know, it gets a little bit tense. The war with the outlaws breaks out back east.

By 1977, the war with the Mongols breaks out in the West. And you can't, you can feel the shift. You ever feel the shift in something? You feel the shift and you go, you know, what's going on here? and it just ultimately changes and changes and unravels until 1986. I go, when are we going to end these wars? Why are we fighting all these battles? Not only are they not productive, they're endless.

And you know, you as a military man, when you guys go into someplace, you have an objective, right? You're trying to achieve something. And I used to ask people, I go, this is like these wars that were, involved with, they're like a train with no destination. Man, I was just going to ask you that. There's no destination. And I'm trying to reason with people. So I'm in a dialogue with Sunny.

I've worked something out with the banditos on territory. We'll stay in these areas. They'll stay in their area. There'll be no issues, no pushing and pulling. and, you know, I go to Sunny, and this is an open meeting with, you know, 12, 15 leaders in there from different charters. And I say, look, I want to meet with the banditos. And I said, I want to take you with me. I said, if you, if Sunny Barger shows up at this meeting, they'll know I'm in earnest.

And I go, we'll be able to negotiate and get whatever we want because I got the man with me, Sunny Barger. And he wouldn't go. And I said, well, at least give me a reason why he won't do it. And he said, because I just don't fucking like him. And I think what it really was about, he just made me like the violence. I don't know. I mean, how do you explain something like that? It's very primitive.

It's ego. Yeah, a lot of ego. It's the inability to change your fucking mind. And why is that? Because you're worried about what everybody else thinks. Exactly. Yeah, it's absolutely. And it's, is that like the guy that, you know, discovers the other tribe with a cave in a, you know, going, that looks a lot more comfortable when standing out in the rain.

And so what do they do? They, you know, they decide, you know, we're going to get Joe and Harry and Bill. We're going to go over and maybe we'll act like. we're going to be friends with them and, you know, we'll beat them with our clubs that they've never seen before because they've never seen weapons. I mean, you know, I don't know. I can only speculate how this stuff happens. And, you know, I find it fascinating because I've been in the middle of it. And I watch people and I know how they think. And sometimes people are just unpredictable.

You think you've figured them out. And then something happens and they go sideways. Did you total, just popped in my head. I'm sure, you're in this through Vietnam, you know, and I think a, I mean, I don't know about today, but there was a lot of draw. There was a lot of interest in biker clubs from my generation, coming home for more, a lot of interest. Vietnam sounds like, there was even more interest. Right.

And I think those are some of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet, the guys that served in Vietnam. Right. Did you have a lot of those guys coming in? We had some, not a lot, I think by then. Do they have a... They had their own club. They did.

The Vietnam vets. They started their own club. And we were never at odds with them, but we never got close to them. them. But, you know, I used to argue with Sunny all the time about certain things, but Sonny sometimes would say the most profound things. And when kind of had free reign, when I mentioned that earlier, we were kind of the kings, the Hells Angels, man. Everybody knew who the Hells Angels were. The Hells Angels were in the paper all the time.

Hells Angels had movies made about them. Hell's Angel this, Hell's Angel that. And perception perceived perception achieved. if you will. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying. Sometimes people think you're tough. Perception is reality. Yeah, you think you're tough because that's what they read in the paper and that's how it's perceived on a movie. But you've got these guys coming back from Vietnam

and they're going to fuck those guys, man. I'm not going to do what they say. Sonny and I got in a big dialogue about it one time. We were both on the same page and we weren't arguing. He goes, you know, fucking Vietnam. Vietnam changed everything. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, what do you want you laughing?

I'm looking forward to hearing where you go with this. Yeah, and I said, what do you mean? And he goes, you know, he goes, before the war, he goes, we told people to do shit, they just did it. He goes, now they're, oh, yeah, get off your fat ass and make us. And that was basically it. There was a lot of people that got military training. And, you know, we talked about our roots were within the military, but it became diluted over a period of time.

Now you've got a bunch of guys that have gone off to war. Sonny was smart enough to know all that. Do you remember when Sonny Barger announced to President Johnson? He wanted to send a squad of Hell's Angels. You know, he wanted him to be trained and all that stuff. Look, Sonny's smart enough to know that was never going to happen. But, God damn, it was great publicity. I mean, you know, it was all over the news and, you know, talk about controlling the narrative.

I mean, Sonny knew how to control the narrative. You know, it wasn't real sophisticated, but some of the stuff he came up with, you know, it was sort of brilliant, you know. But I think the Vietnam War changed a lot of things in this country. As far as people doing something, then you have to understand. And now I'm speaking from experience as an old man, okay, I'm almost 80. I'm going to be 80 here, a year, a little over a year. People come back from Vietnam. It was a very unpopular war.

Now, you're a military man, so you know and you respect all those people that were in country. But there were a lot of people in the United States that didn't find them very attractive, didn't find them very heroic, and it was wrong. But you guys came back from the United States getting attacked at 9-11, and it's a whole different ballgame, man. I mean, you had the, it was almost like the country was unified in. At the beginning.

Yeah, in the beginning. But it all gets diluted. But it never got as bad as Vietnam coming home, not even fucking close. But it did get very underappreciate. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Before you guys go into combat, I don't know if this is true.

I have a couple of friends that are SEALs, ex-SEALs, actually. Did they used to give you guys a psychological evaluation? Every time? Before you went into combat? No. No. No. Initially?

Initially, to get into the teams. And did they give you one after your missions? No. When he came back, that's the thing that kind of alarmed me, that they put you guys in these precarious, awkward positions. And you come back, and it's like, I mean, what do they do for you? And, you know, my daughter goes to- They don't do anything. My daughter goes to- My daughter's a lawyer, and she takes advantage of military.

I can't remember veterans court or it's a special court it's criminal court veteran civilian what's that veterans court yeah and she's used it several times and uh it's beneficial for the for the veterans but it appears that bring these people back and just kind of turn them loose and uh i'm gonna take a chance here and and equate this together i'm sure some people out there are going to go, that's a bullshit. But I'll tell you, when I came back from prison, and so in 2007, there was a fire bombing, two fire bombings at tattoo shops in Ventura. Of course, they said I was responsible. I gave the order. I certainly didn't do it, but I gave the order. By 2011, I get indicted.

2013 we start going to trial. The case starts collapsing. My daughter's like hammering away at stuff with another lawyer. They offer a sweet deal. I take the deal because on count six, seven, and eight, I'm looking at mandatory minimums of life. And you know, with that sentence is, you know, you get found guilty in one of those counts.

You go to prison for life. It's just a mandatory sentence. So I now come back. It's 2014 or 2015, and I stay on parole or probation, whatever you want to call it. Fed's changed it. They don't call it parole anymore. They call it probation. Stay on probation until 2018.

So that's 11 years. You've got the investigation going on. You know, the cops are crawling around. They're investigating you. They're asking questions. Then you get the beef. Then you've got the first. pending trial, then you do your sentence, and then you come home and do your probation, parole,

whatever you want to call it. Not once, not once did they ever ask me how my reentry into society was. All they wanted to do and all their interest was they thought I had a bunch of money hidden somewhere. They were looking for the money, and they wanted to, and they wanted to do. And they wanted, wanted their fair share of any money I had. Any money I made. I did a show, Outlaw Chronicles. They wanted to take all my money. They said I wasn't, I shouldn't profit off my criminal past.

You can imagine what they were saying. Who is this? Who is they? United States probation office. So they never once asked me. And I guess the point I'm trying to make is, you know, I don't know what the count is now. what is it, over a quarter of a million people incarcerated in the United States? I actually, I mean, that's a big business, you know.

And what's interesting is everybody and each family, it seems at one time people didn't talk about a family member going to prison. It was kind of embarrassing. It's now, it seems like every family's at least got one family member that went to prison for something because it's become such a big business. I guess I'm just using this platform to complain that, you know, they put people in a position. They put you guys in a position. Like I said, you come back. I mean, you just went over there or you engaged some people.

You know, I don't know what you did or didn't do. How does that affect you guys? I mean, it sets out. It's horrible. I mean, it is the, it's, I mean, suicide is, the, the suicide rate is insane. the divorce rate is insane the addiction rate is fucking insane i mean but i don't think it's a conspiracy i think that no it's not a good think that the country literally just doesn't give a fuck about veterans and they've proven that over and over and over since fucking world war two they just don't

the country doesn't give a fuck the government doesn't give a fuck the people don't give a so if they did it wouldn't be this way okay so we've got a 98% conviction rate with the feds. And I don't want to insult anybody. I'm not comparing ex-convicts to military or whatever. Trying to make a, you know, I'm trying to make a comparison here, but not that in the same manner that some people may not misinterpret. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying.

The conviction rate is 98%. It's pretty goddamn high. And, you know, the fact. feds. There's a lot of veterans in federal prison for just various things. A lot of people said they've been putting in scams like selling them weapons, doing this, doing that. I was in Texas, there was a couple of Navy SEALs down there. I didn't get close to them. I don't know what they were there for. Didn't ask, you don't ask people what they're doing. But why are the prisons so full?

And I think a lot of it is in 1986, I fought my case. I pled not guilty. And I fought my case. And I beat it. I proved that the government framed me. The jury came back and said they want to send a message to Washington to knock this shit off. In 2013, my daughter and I, you know, we talked it over. She didn't think she could win the case.

She goes, I think because of the public. I think because the outlaw bike movement has gotten so big and it's a worldwide phenomenon. She goes, I don't think you're going to get a fair trial. And she goes, we got to hammer at these guys, chip them away to where they offer you a deal. And I think that's why the prisons are so full. And, you know, what point am I trying to make? I guess I'm just getting on a soapbox here a little bit. I know it's something you're very passionate about.

Yeah, you know, it's, you know, people don't get. I had a prison, I'm an expert witness in trials for the defense, something that defense letters never had in the outlaw bike cases. I also had a prison consulting business, and, you know, I would try to help people come to terms with what was going on in their life. And, you know, I have this story I tell. I had a guy call me one day. He was a client of mine, and I tried to touch base with him, you know, two or three times a week. And every time he went to court,

when he got done with court, if I wasn't in court with him, sometimes it wasn't good for me to appear in court with him because in California, I'm very recognizable and especially law enforcement. It's not appropriate. And he was really down. And I said, what's the problem?

He goes, well, you know, George, they're treating me like a criminal. and I said you are a criminal. And I think sometimes people just can't come to terms with the situations they put themselves in. Now, I don't know what it is for vets. I tell you, if I had all the money in the world, that's probably what I would focus on vets and dogs

because I love my animals. But, I mean, I had to make this guy understand, you know. They're treating him like a criminal, because he embezzled a bunch of money from a movie company. And I don't know, I just don't know where we're heading as a country, that's all. I guess I'm just venting a little bit. I think a lot of people are wondering where we're heading as a country,

and I think they've been thinking that for a long damn time. Yeah. But, well, you know, it's like I was successful for about a decade, and having an amnesty, you know, got along with the outlaws, got along with the Banditos. It was a war, and are you familiar with the Nordic Bike War? No. It was just a hellacious war between the Hells Angels of Banditos in Europe. I was instrumental in, along with George Weggers, the international president of the Banditos,

and stopping that. The Scandinavian governments, the Danish government specifically, petitioned the United States government. They wanted two felons to be allowed permission to enter the United States. So George Wegners and I could sit with him and try to negotiate a peace. And the Hell's Angel representative, his name was Blondie. I don't know his real name. I can't remember it.

He was a convicted double murder. The Scandinavian government convinced the American government to let him enter into the United States and come to this meeting. The bandito representative was a guy named Jim Tinian, I think. He was the international leader of the banditos in Europe. So we had George Weggers, myself, Blondie, and Jim. and we had a special number that if anybody in law enforcement interfered, we were to hand them the piece of paper and there was a, I don't know who it was in Washington, but they would tell them to stand down and let us finish doing what we were doing. They had a, I don't know how long the visa was for. They had a special visa to get into the country, negotiate. They did, and they went back, they went back and settled the war.

They publicly met with the politicians and a lawyer, and it was crazy. They announced it over Danish TV that the war between the Hell's Angel of Banditos was now over. Wow. It was quite a scene. But everything seemed to be gone. It was very unsteady. I was constantly negotiating with people trying to go to Europe. I went to Europe one time.

I went to Amsterdam. I was refused to entry. They had a five-day hold on me. I was meeting with the banditos and Hells Angels over there. There were some fires that were trying to put them out. Refused me entry, put me on a plane to send me back. Just by chance I wound up in Texas, wound up meeting with the banditos anyways. I met with them in Texas instead of Europe.

I wanted to go to Europe because I thought it would be more effective. but so we had a amnesty on the violence with the outlaws the banditos the Mongols I was trying to negotiate with the pagans but I never really got anywhere with them they just had no interest in negotiating and everything was shaky how would you negotiate how would I negotiate yeah what are you negotiating peace peace stop the violence. When I ride through Chicago, is it really necessary to shoot at me?

I'm on my bike. I'm riding from point A to point B. I'm not there. I'm not trying to set up a town charter. I'm not interfering anything you guys got going. I'm just trying to get from one point to the other. And I was successful, but the bottom line is, you know, we said earlier, It's just, it's primal. That whole outlaw culture is very primal.

And people just, they just didn't want to be perceived as being weak. And I, you know, just before the arrangement with the outlaws was suspended, the peace talks were called off. You know, I talked to Taco one day about it. And he said, you know, George, he goes, I don't know how much longer I can do this. He goes, I don't know how much longer I can do this. He goes, my positions is threatened. There was an upcoming guy named Spike that basically told talk of that he was being perceived as weak by the club.

And Spike must have been very convincing because if you look up on the Internet, United States of America versus Harry Bowman, you'll see that he put a murder contract on me. They actually came to Ventura not once but twice. I think the first time was just surveillance. The second time they came there to shoot me, whatever reason they didn't. Why do you think they wanted to kill you? I think that spite was an ex-ranger,

Army Ranger, very aggressive guy. And I think he had his eye on Taco's job. as international leader. And I think that he felt that this would solidify him, at least to put him up at the same level as Taco. Taco was a real ruthless guy. Him and I negotiated for probably three years, met with him twice in person.

I lost count of the phone calls I had with him. But Taco died of cancer in prison. prison. He, uh, they wouldn't even give him a compassionate leave to come home and die in his own bed. I mean, they let him die in prison. That sounds much that he disliked him. And Spike, uh, I don't know if you want to call him, describe him as top lieutenant. Uh, he's doing life for racketeering. You know, uh, it just, these guys just don't want to be perceived as weak. And, you know, Taco said that to me. And I said, you know, Taco's not a popular position. world we live in. But I said, I think it's a necessary position. You know, my thought is every time

we shoot at each other, we get a case and somebody goes to prison or somebody gets killed, I mean, we don't win anything, you know. I think the government wins. I think that, like I said, you know, you talk to Jay Dobbins. He has a particular thought of what we're all about he thinks we're all about crime and criminal activity thinks the club does it as a whole you know i interviewed jay myself and i you know i mean we had a cordial conversation but i you know i don't agree with anything he says uh i can't get him to concede that uh it's not the club it's individuals in the club the club wasn't established for that reason the club was about riding and brotherhood and building motorcycles and probably

who I walked away because we lost sight, somewhere along the way. Yeah, I mean, it definitely attracts a certain culture. It does. Aging is inevitable. And if you're anything like me, you feel it a little more every year. Soar knees, tight joints, recovery takes longer than it used to. We can't stop the clock, but we can take care of ourselves. That's why I take Bubbs' naturals collagen peptides.

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Sunny and I continually were fighting about protocol rules. He was bending the rules. Every time I confront him, it would turn into a big case. scene in 2002 had a member named Josh Harbor. He went to Cave Creek to party and have fun. And somebody killed him. And he was a Ventura Hell's Angel. And word on the street through law enforcement was that he, that was a message to me from Sunny. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, Sunday and I never had that conversation. But subsequently, six months later, four months later, one of Sonny's guys got murdered. And law enforcement said that was my answer. I think that

was kind of the beginning of the end. It still took me like another eight years, if you will, but I just felt like we were losing the sight of what we were trying to head. You know, It's like, and when you're a leader, you know, you want to reach a goal, you want to try to achieve something, and you have a vision. And if the people around you aren't sharing a vision anymore, you know, maybe you're not an effective leader anymore. You know, I think Sonny, I have a saying, you know, don't make yourself bigger than the position you hold. And I think Sonny did that. I think he lost a concept. He made himself very large.

Don't fall for your own bullshit. Sonny had done several things that I didn't think was appropriate. You know, I confronted him. The club seemed to be divided. There's a lot of speculation from law enforcement who was really running the club. Was it me? Was it sunny? You guys both in Ventura?

No, he's in, he was in Oakland, then he went to Arizona, then he returned to Oakland. he pretty much did what he wanted that was sunny barger you know and love it hated or condemn it i mean it just was what it was and you knew he was going to do that true outlaw yeah absolutely you know and i respected him for it and i hated him for it at times because he didn't do what was best for the club i felt like he did what was best for him he was a type of guy I'm sure you've ran into this in the military. You run into guys that will not reverse themselves. You know, you can show them in black and white it's wrong.

They will not accept responsibility. Probably around 2008, 2009. Can't remember exactly where I started thinking about maybe it's time, you know, to move on, you know. and there was one thing that kept stopping me. It was my ego. Did I want to be the guy that used to be George Christie? And a really difficult time.

I did it kind of on the, without telling anybody, didn't even discuss it with my son, discussed it with nobody. I went to the meeting, explained what I was doing. First of all, they misunderstood. do it. They thought I was stepping down as president. And I said, no, this is it for me. I've, you know, I've given you 40 years. It's time for me to move on. And I gave what I thought was a, kind of a passionate speech. You know, I said, we're fighting with the banditos again, fighting with the Mongols, we're fighting with the outlaws, fighting with the pagans,

And now you guys want to fight the Vagos. This was a bike club we had gotten along with since the mid-60s. And they wanted to fight these guys. And my position with them was when I get phone calls from another club and says, hey, what's the problem, George? You know, we've always gotten along. Why is there an issue now? And we can't find a way to resolve the issues that,

that kind of makes me feel like we're being bullies. When you pick on somebody, whether you win or lose, when you pick on somebody, you're being a bully, you know. So I just basically said, look, we're fighting wars on forefronts. Now we're going to have a fifth front with the Vagos. And I said, don't forget law enforcement. And I said, look, if you look at your history, when societies or culture,

run out of people to fight, they turn inward. And I said, I don't want to be here for that. And I said, I think I'm played out. I give you guys 40 years. I'm going to move on. It took my patch off. I folded it up. I put it on the edge of the table by my chair where I sat.

I had a chair at the kind of head of the room. And I remember, I said, look, we've turned into the people rebel against. I go, we're not outlaws anymore. And I said, I want to get back to the roots, and this is what I'm going to do. But I said, I want you to keep in mind that you guys need to do something because there's going to be a problem in the future. About six weeks later, four weeks later, something transpired up in Reno, Nevada. Jethro, who was president of San Jose, who was a good friend of mine, got an argument with one of the vagus, and they shot him and killed him. So Jethro was now murdered by the Bago, so it's a full-on war.

At the funeral in San Jose, Steve, I think it was Ruaz, he was a Hells Angel, and Steve Tosson, another Hells Angel, who had a reputation of just being, fierce as a fighter. And he started picking on Ruas, telling Ruiz he was responsible for Jeff Pedigrew's murder, that he should have protected him better. He was the president. They started arguing, and Steve Tawson's reputation caught up with him. He punched Steve Ruiz, and Steve responded by shooting him three times.

So you've got a funeral, five to seven thousand spectators. You got Hells Angels being, Hells Angel being buried, had been murdered. And you've got two Hells Angels now fighting who's responsible. And one of them gets murdered. It was just a chaotic scene. I wasn't there, but I'm told it was a chaotic scene. Ruas snuck out of there somehow. They couldn't locate him.

The police thought that perhaps Ruas had got thrown in Jeff Pedigrew's grave site, and they exhumed Jeff's body a couple days later. They didn't open the casket, but they pulled the casket out, looked underneath it to make sure Ruas wasn't there. Eventually, they arrested him three months later. So what I predicted basically came true. Was I happy about it? No, not happy at all. You know, Jeff was dead.

Jeff Rueh, Pedigrew. Jethro was dead. Steve was dead. Ruiz was going to go to prison for three years. He put on a defense because Steve Tawson, I said he had a fierce reputation. He had killed somebody with his bare hands before by punching him. He had hit a guy at a bar.

He was a security guard at a bar. He hit a guy and the guy died from the punch. So I, I left. I left in good standing. Within a couple of weeks, Sunny changed my status to out bad. It wouldn't allow anybody to communicate with me.

And basically, try to cut off any influence he thought I still might have. And he attacked my character and things slowly started unraveling for me. Made a deal. Went to prison. pled guilty to one, what was it, account of interfering, you're going to love this,

interfering in interstate commerce. You know, by firebombing, they said I ordered the firebombing, by firebombing the tattoo shops, I interfered in their ability to make money. So it's interfering in interstate commerce. It's a federal crime. I mean, it's kind of one of those. Interesting. What's that?

Interesting. Yeah, it's kind of one of those racketeering crimes, but, you know, you're not recode. It's a federal crime. I went to jail. I came back. Sonny got word that the History Channel had approached me about doing a six-episode series. Told me I couldn't do it. I did it.

Told me I couldn't write a book. I did it. He threatened to sue. St. Martin, the book publisher, I did the book with my first book, Exile, just was real careful, you know, what we put in the book, what was said, what, you know, wasn't said. You know, the book was successful, outlawed comics were successful. I wrote a second book. Like I stated earlier, I wound up going to Spain. The book was optioned. And spent three years in Spain. I came back. I was single now.

I married a girl that I'd known since I was 12. We're a lifelong friends. And kind of started over. I want to ask you something. Okay. What do you think happens when you die? What do I think happens when you die? In all honesty, I do not know.

I believe in a higher power. I, you know, I like to microdose, and I contemplate on where I'm going and what I'm doing. I think perhaps hell is here on Earth, or perhaps if you leave this planet and you're not satisfied with how you conducted yourself. I mean, even bad people have to have that little voice in their head telling them, hey, man, you're fucking up. I just truly believe that. And the reason I believe that is interacting with all these men for decades. Some of them are very dangerous and I think their biggest enemy most of the time was themselves. I don't know.

What do you think? what do I think? Yeah. Well, I'm a Christian. Oh, you're a Christian. There you go. Okay. You go to heaven or you go to hell. That's about it.

Well, I'll tell you, I got, I came back, I was very satisfied. Really, my wife and I were having a lot of fun, and I got a phone call. and that was the premise for this book, crossing the Rubicon. I got a phone call from a club member. Club members aren't supposed to talk to me.

And they can be punished by, you know, and ask to him all the way to being expelled from the club for communicating to me or with me. And the guy said, you recognize my voice. And I said, yeah. And I said some smart ass to him. He goes and this is my rabbi. And he said, look, I called you.

And he used the term, you know what his close friends used to call Ralph? Are you familiar with that? We used to, Sonny's name is Ralph. Okay. So we would say, hey, Ralph, you know, like if I was one to really be serious or brotherly, I go, Ralph, you know, I'll talk to you, man. I want you to listen to what I'm saying. So anyways, a person on the other end said,

if you're going to reconcile with Ralph, because you need to do it because he's not going to be around much longer. And I got up out of bed and made myself a cup of coffee. And I started thinking about all these decades of interacting with all these people. And in the morning, I started writing this book. And it took me three years. I wrote it in the ending. the ending was true, but I felt it was soft.

And I just said, hey, you know what? I'm going to pull all the bullshit away. And because people ask, you know, why didn't you go back or why don't you try to reconcile? And I explain all that in the ending of this book. But it's interesting that, you know, you tell me you either go to heaven or you go to hell. And I'm not going to say what it is.

is, but I have a message for Sunny at the end of the book. But anyways. So how did you become a Christian? That interests me. How did I become a Christian? That is a long story. But I was going through some serious internal battles. With yourself?

Yeah. Christ is a conscience or emotional instability? Very troubled with the world. Okay. Angry at the world or just angry at the world? A lot to do with kids. A lot of, I started diving into a lot of the shit that happens to kids sexually. Okay.

And exploitation, trafficking, you know, abuse, all that kind of stuff. And I got really deep into it. And then some of the minor in possession or a minor attracted persons, have you heard about this shit. there is a section of the country who wants to make people that are attracted to kids a condition. And they want to call them minor attracted persons. And that makes it okay? That makes it okay in their mind. That's going to be a problem.

You know, let me tell you. So, okay. Let me finish. So now it's very, I still am, a very vocal about it. And I just didn't really see people doing anything. and a lot of the people that I respected leaned that way politically, and I just could not understand how you could be okay with that. And anyways, so having this internal battle in my head,

and I had basically tried to convince myself, Sean, this, if you're the only one out here fighting this shit, who fucking cares. Maybe you're the one that's fucked up. Maybe you shouldn't be doing this shit. Maybe you should just let it happen. Not that I'm fucking stopping anything anyways, right? But it just really troubled me. And I just couldn't understand like how it was happening. And in short, I was on a hike and I had felt like I had just surrendered my fucking soul to the devil. you know but I didn't really believe at that time and I walked through this gate we were on a me and my wife were on a vacation I walked through this gate and this guy comes up to me and um

tries talk to me I don't want to talk to him obviously I'm in a fucking mood right and uh and I had I had smoked a joint before I went on this hike I tried to calm myself down that didn't do it damn nothing was working uh-uh and my of course my wife turns around and talks to him but I'm like fuck you know i just want to go to bed and um so i turn around and i look at him and he fucking looked at me in the eyes and he read every single thought from front to back in my fucking brain and articulated it and said you don't need to be worrying about these kids that's not your fucking problem that's not your battle and then he went through all the other things there were stuff about trans kids there were stuff about China all these things were going on in my head and uh after the the first thing my

i blanked out because i couldn't understand how another it's almost like it's too much information coming in i hadn't even articulated this shit to my wife yeah and this guy's just yanking thought after thought after thought out who is this guy i've never seen him never seen him and haven't see you're there for a week we were there for a week and i'm you know i was a seal, I contracted for CIA. I pay attention to security. And a lot of those guys that were working at that gate knew who I was from the, from the podcast. So I had, you know, stopped and talked to talk to them. Never saw this guy, though. Knew the other ones, never saw this guy. Never saw him again. Never saw him before. Never saw him again. This was the last night. So he reads my mind,

legitimately reads my fucking mind. And I walk back, I'm walking back to my bungalow and talking to my wife and I'm freaking out because I'll tell her, I go, holy shit, I think that was fucking God talking to me. And before that, there's some other things that happen. I'll shorten it up a little bit, though. Three things happened. There was another guy, my best friend died of a heroin addiction. He was a seal. We contracted at CIA together. I didn't wind up joining a biker gang, obviously, but I did go down to Columbia and got really wrapped up into drugs down there. And he was with me. And so anyways, point being, we were very, very close.

He was my best friend. But he was also always known as a protector. He was a pro hockey player before he was a seal. He was a seal. He was a CIA contractor. In each one of those segments of his life, everybody around him considered him to be a protector at every level. And I had tried to save his life.

He had moved in with me. Obviously, you know, you know the out end. Anyways, we go there. I'm in the super vulnerable position. There's this guy running around all fucking weak. He looks exactly like my best friend. If we go out in town, he was out in town. If we're on a hike, he's on a hike.

It was really odd. If we're at the pool, he's at the pool. If we're at the fucking restaurant, he's somewhere in the restaurant. Turns out we'd been there all week. We walked back to the bungalow from the gate, maybe a three to five minute walk. The entire time we were there, it turns out, there was only two things, two, two rooms in this bungalow was like a duplex. He was in the other fucking side. So first time I'd seen him. So that was a sign. Then I walked in the room and I went there and I don't really have many friends anymore, and especially here in town.

And I had met another seal, and his name was Dan Cirillo. And me and him had a special bond. He owned a handful of hospitals and had a very successful security company. And I have this. And it was one of the only relationships I've ever had in town where I don't fucking need anything from you, and you don't need anything from me, so we don't have to worry about the asks. And we can just sit down and be friends

and not have to worry about what the fuck do you want from me. Well, he died. And that really bothered me because it was my only friend here. Young guy? No, old guy. He died, in my opinion, had a great death. Died on a hunting trip with his son.

And, I mean, I wish he was still here, but if there's a way to go and you get, you know. I get it. And anyway, so as soon we walk in the hotel, me and my wife are having a discussion. My cell phone dings. I don't answer it because I'm in this heavy discussion. Like, what the hell is going on? How did this guy just read my fucking mind?

Check my phone afterwards. It's his daughter, who I had never met. And she sent me a text that said that she had just walked into her dad's gun room for the first time since he had passed. And he was in there. And he told her that he wanted her. her to reach out to me because I was his I was the person that had become the closest to him and then I knew a side of him that she didn't know and that for those three things to all happen damn there simultaneously literally within minutes of each other I knew something somebody was

trying to fucking tell me and I could go on because the shit continues on but it didn't continue on until I got home. So I started looking into some of the stuff that had happened. And I had called a friend of mine who wound up being a spiritual mentor of mine. His name's name's Eddie Penny, he was a SEAL Team 6 guy. And I'll send you the episode. Okay. And I served with him very briefly. I wouldn't say we were close. We did a deployment together. And then he went on a development group. I hadn't heard from him for probably 10, 15 years. Then I brought him on the show, and he talked about

how he found faith. This guy, back when I knew him before, he's just a, he's a fucking savage. Never in a million years would you think that would happen to this guy. And he told me this, and just like this, told me how it happened. and I released his episode on Christmas Eve. Every single person since him has brought up Christ, one way or another, for over a year.

So I called him, and he started kind of telling me what some of the stuff means, and then my whole team here. Turns out, I didn't even know this, but my whole team here, very well-versed in this. So it was almost like after that moment, I was just completely surrounded with people that could guide me in the right direction. You know. I hope that happens for you.

Well, there would be nice. You know, I'm thinking. You know, I heard you talk about microdosing. Yeah. I have another, you know, I don't know how seriously you take psychedelics, or if you even do plant medicine. but I have another best friend. And so when I do do that, I always have an intention that I want to get out of it if I do a heavy dose.

And I did a journey with another one of my best friends. His name is Nick Kefalidus, and he's still a good friend of mine. He was a Marsok Marine. Marine Raider. And we did a journey together. out in the woods several years ago, and I asked him afterwards what his intentions were, and he said he just wanted to know if he had a relationship with God,

because he wasn't a believer either. And in the same fucking journey, I looked at this waterfall with him and all a perfect sculpture of Jesus Christ's head. was etched in that waterfall and we looked away or I looked away looked back still there walked away still there was there all fucking night until the next day I woke up and then I did not see it so the initial guy could have been an angel you think that well I will finish the story because now you're interested so

then I come home and I told you I called Eddie Penny right and I told him what had happened to me. This hell happened in Sedona. And Eddie started telling me, all right, this is what this is. And my wife's telling me, too, like, Sean, God's always been around you. You just don't fucking take the time to pay attention. And that's why you never see it. But look at your life.

Look at what's happened. He's everywhere around you. And so I call Eddie. I tell him this. and I'm late at night down in a fire, and he starts telling me, you've chosen aside now, all these attacks are going to happen.

These spiritual attacks are going to start to happen because nobody gives a shit if you're sitting on the sideline. But once you choose a side, the attacks will start to happen. And so he starts telling me about guardian angels and that everybody has a guardian angel. I'm very new at this. Even though I grew up Catholic, I still, I just, you know, I didn't believe I was a kid. I was forced to do it.

I didn't really care. And then lost pretty much everything when I went to war. And the next day, I have a meeting with my IT guy. And I thought it was going to be about IT shit. And he's a very devout Catholic. And I had a call with him at noon. I remember at noon. It was a long call, and it wasn't about IT shit.

It was the exact same conversation that Eddie Penny had had with me, and those two don't know each other couldn't be farther apart from their personalities. They would not get along. And he starts telling me, spiritual attacks are going to start to happen. You have guardian angel. They've known you since before you're born. And I'm still like, yeah, okay, whatever. So I drive home for a late lunch.

I have lunch with my wife. Tell her about these conversations. I'm driving back to work. I look at the odometer or the gas left to E. It says 444. I look at the clock. It also says 444. And then I think back and I go,

this is four hours and 44 minutes after that phone call with Adam. So I text one of my guys who you know, you just met him. and I say, hey, look up what 444 means. I'll be at the office center shortly. Get to the office. He has it pulled up on his laptop. And he goes, 4444. What do you think 444 means?

444 means your guardian angel wants to know that they're watching over you. You know, when I got it, I spent a year in solitary confinement and came out of that be very bitter, you know. I try not to appear bitter, and I'm not bitter. Like, I understand police come after guys like me, you know, and it's just all part of the game. And I don't hold animosity. But when I came out of that solitary confinement,

I'd spend a year there, they were using my mom as a bargaining chip. She was dying of cancer. and they were used my mom as a bargaining chip and to get me to plead out and not fight the case and whatnot. And I came home, she died the next day. She came to see me that day and then the next day she died. And when my dad died, I had taken his wedding ring

and I'd taken all the diamonds out of it and I put them in a heart for my mom. because I wanted her to have my dad's diamonds with her. And she was in the hospice. Somebody stole the diamonds off of her. I was so mad. I went to the administrator and said, I don't know what happened, who you got working here.

I said, but tell them, the smartest thing for them to do was walk on the Venture pier and throw it off the end of the pier. Because I said, if I ever see anybody with that, on, I go, I'm not asking any questions. I'm just reacting. I don't care. Who has it on? And like I said, I was so mad and so angry. I just everything was unraveling. The club wasn't the same. It didn't feel the same to me. We were in the midst of a new era with, you know, Chasing Osama bin Laden and everything that had happened. And I had a guy come to the house. And, and, I had a guy come to the house. And,

he was a minister and he came there to tell me that I had gardened angels watching me and he goes I just want you to know he referred to them it was a as some sort of good dogs that protect you or something to do with the Bible I didn't quite understand it And I didn't say no. You know, he was sincere. I mean, I knew he believed in what he was telling me. And I had in, when I was in solitary confinement, they quit giving me my mail. They started sending my mail back to, you know, they start playing little games with you.

And like in the month of December, I had 350 pieces returned to the people that sent mail to me. And the only thing I had in solitary confinement for a while was a Bible. He took everything away from me. And so I was reading the Bible a lot. But I came home and I, there's a lot of things you can't explain in this life. And they're mysterious, you know. Like how the fuck you're still sitting here?

Exactly. Exactly. when everybody around me has been, there's only a couple of guys left and they're dead. And I think of, I met with somebody that I was very close with, somebody I trusted with my life, met with them recently.

And I know you understand this. Him and I had a conversation about things that happened 30 years ago that I couldn't have that conversation with anybody else but him. because we both understand and I think we're both wondering what the hell is fucking going on man anyways so I which I don't brush off what you say what you say and what you've just told me it's it's interesting and it tracks my attention you know but I don't know it's like I have this little hard-headedness, you know.

You know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about. It's kind of like, you know, and it's, it almost goes back to that. We were speaking earlier. It's like, I don't want to pay a weak. That is the weakness. Yeah.

And I, you know, it's just like, I had, like I said, when I had to come to terms with, I had two choices. you know, I can either quit the club or I could do, I can become a hypocrite and do the things that I was condemning other people for doing. And I chose to walk away, you know. But anyways. I think this is a good place to end it. I think so. But before we do.

Okay. I'll let me give you something to chew on. All right. That is the Jesus calling. So for dummies like me that can't understand the Bible. we have to resort to something like that. But what that is, and you can take it, leave it, do whatever you want with it. I will take it.

But that is a short little couple of sentences every day. It's not a big lift. It's easy to understand. See if that tugs on you. I will. I will take it. I appreciate it. I've enjoyed being here talking to you.

I hope I made sense. I I, uh, there, uh, some of the subjects are very delicate and they're very personal. And, uh,

you know, it was an awesome interview. It's been a long journey, my friend. But George, God has a plan for you, man. And you don't have a lot of time to figure it out, but I hope you do. Okay.

Well, I appreciate that. And I'm going to, I'm going to take this, uh, and, I am going to put my nose in and see what it says. Best of love, too. Appreciate it.

Thank you again. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. and leave us a review.

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