The Current - The Current Introduces: Agent Pale Horse

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

FBI undercover agent Scott Payne’s job was to infiltrate the most dangerous gangs of our times: outlaw bikers, drug cartels and the international neo-Nazi networks hellbent on inciting a race war. He was taking down these groups from within. And Scott was good at it — people confided in him their most audacious plans for mass violence and domestic terrorism.In the second season of White Hot Hate, host Michelle Shephard gives you an unvarnished view of a life undercover. Because after a 28-year-long career pretending to be somebody else, Agent Payne is ready to tell his side of the story. This series was produced alongside a book co-written by Scott Payne and Michelle Shephard titled Code Name: Pale Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis.More episodes of White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/KxHmW1

You know what I'd like to hear people say more often? I'm not sure. Let me think about that. I'm Nala Ayed, host of Ideas, a podcast that brings you deep thought every day. We're a show for listeners who like to slow down, to check their assumptions, and maybe even change their minds. If that's you, find and follow ideas wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

We have a special bonus episode for you today from Agent Pale Horse, the second season of CBC's White Hot Hate. FBI agent Scott Payne went undercover to infiltrate the most dangerous gangs of our times. Outlaw bikers, drug cartels, international neo-Nazi network that wants to start a race war. What is it like to lie your entire life in order to expose the truth? To join the Klan one month and then be a hired hitman the next? Become friends with a biker that you're trying to jail for life? To almost lose your mind, your marriage and your job? After a long career of pretending to be somebody else, Scott Payne is ready to tell his own story. Here is the first episode of Agent Pale Horse of a Listen.

The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening. Okay, so let me start with the bass. Alright. Ah, what a great group of guys. Okay, so how did you... Let me introduce you to Scott.

He's 6'4", 260, likes cowboy boots and Jack Daniels. And in the summer of 2019, he wanted to join a group of white supremacists. They called themselves The Base. And Scott had already passed a crucial phone interview. That Saturday, they reached out to me and said, hey, we'd like to have you in The Base. And I said, awesome, I'd love to be here. So he says, you're gonna be contacted

by your closest cell leader. And it turned out that the closest cell leader was a guy going by the name of the militant Buddhist, TMB, and he was in Rome, Georgia. Now we're not emailing, now we're not texting. Now it's not a voice phone call. Now I'm actually gonna meet somebody. So I drive, you know, it might be a four-hour drive down to Rome, Georgia, and it's kind of a rural area. It's a small town. I was

instructed to pull into town. He even told me what parking lot to park in. In downtown Rome, there is a statue of a Roman wolf, oddly enough, and he said when you get there take a picture of that Roman wolf and send it to me. So I'm driving, I'm keep looping on these streets and I see the Roman wolf statue. I take a picture of it and I send it to TMB and I end up parking on a pretty steep hill. It is hot out, suffocating hot August Georgian heat with a darkening sky that looks pretty ominous. Scott stands by his truck under a tangle of power lines and he spots two figures coming up the hill. And I see a guy who's probably about 6'2", about 21 years old, probably about 220 pounds.

I mean, he's not a small guy, a little frumpy maybe, not like super muscular, pretty thick glasses on, mopish hair pushed over the side. I don't remember him being dressed like anything crazy, but the guy walking with him, who I learn is pestilence, he's wearing a tank top of some black metal band. He has on black BDU pants that are bloused into his 8 inch combat boots, tactical boots. And his head is shaved on the sides, but his hair is long. Like it's, I mean a ponytail probably down

in the middle of his back, right? So no harm, no foul, I get out, hey, you know. So I don't even know if we shook hands. And TMB says, I need you to put your phone in airplane mode. And I'm like, okay. And I'm expecting that right. He pulls out this thing that I've never seen.

It looks like some kind of Geiger counter. I mean it's got lights all over it, a triangle card, and I'm looking at it going, hmm. So he wands me, no big deal, I'm fine. As TMB is walking down towards the back of my truck on the driver's side, that thing he's holding in his hand starts making all kinds of racket. And I can see the lights kind of jumping and I'm like, oh crap, I'm thinking to myself, he tells me to shut my cell phone off and I'm like, does this thing pick up a cell signal? And I'm thinking, oh man, this is not good.

I guess now is a good time to tell you that Scott is an undercover cop. FBI Special Agent Scott Payne. He's not wearing a wire just in case he gets patted down. But there is a GPS tracker on his truck. So when he says not good, he means holy shit this is not good. You know you get kind of the fighter flight, you know, and I'm like well it's definitely picking up what's on my truck and he's not even close yet and is picking it up. I don't realize I'm doing it really but I'm already setting my right leg back like almost fighter stance you know not like bowing up but I'm getting ready and as he's getting toward the back of the truck Pestilence says and you think it's the power lines and TMB is it says you know what I don't know and he walks over so he starts walking over the power lines and that

thing goes nuts and he's like shit man yeah it's it is picking up the power lines so he tells me hey I need you you follow us we're gonna go somewhere else well as I get back in my truck I'm now calling the cover team and I'm saying, Hey, you need to shut this tracker off. But while I'm talking, I'm actually like bringing my drink up to my mouth because I don't know if they're looking from their car. I don't know if anybody else is following me. I don't know.

I'm holding the phone down in my lap and I'm talking, trying to not be so obvious. phone down in my lap and I'm talking trying to not be so obvious. Scott and his FBI cover team don't know a lot about these guys in this group, but they do know they're probably armed and definitely paranoid about their secrecy. So that tracker. And what the team tells me is we're not sure if we shut it off remotely, if we can get it back on. And I said, well, you need to shut it off, or it's going to be probably the quickest undercover meat I've ever had.

So I'm following him and he pulls into this parking lot of what appears to be an abandoned, or at least nobody's working while we're there, concrete plant. I just kind of giggle and I'm like, yeah, empty concrete plant. I mean, in what movies has nobody died at the empty concrete plant? All the, like, half the action movies I've seen. Scott gets out of the truck and stands arms out, so TMB can use his whatever wand thing to search him again. And it starts to rain, like the heavens open up

in a southern monsoon. Perfect pathetic fallacy for this Hollywood drama. Scott is trying to look nonchalant, but his heart is beating louder than the rain. If he needs backup, he knows the team doesn't have eyes on him. TMB moves towards the truck. Like they said they shut it off but what if remotely it didn't shut off, right? There's all these what-ifs going through your mind. And he goes past the truck, And he goes past the truck. Truck passed the test. We get back in and now I follow him in pestilence. I hung out, got to know him a little bit, had a couple of drinks.

And after passing the face-to-face meet, I am now gifted with a black balaclava, which was the signature for the bass members, and I'm afforded a patch with the three runes on them, which was the bass symbol. So I go back that night to my hotel room, and I meet with one of the case agents who flew down to Georgia, because this case is bigger than Georgia. It's all over the nation and the world. And he took a picture of me. I put my balaclava on and I put the patch right in my mouth.

And there's a picture of me like in a red Harley-Davidson shirt with two thumbs up going, I'm in. I'm Michelle Shepard. From CBC, this is White Hot White Hot Hate Season 2 Agent Pale Horse Episode 1 The Insider If you listened to the first season of White Hot Hate, maybe this is all sounding a little familiar. And you're right. We began that season with another infiltrator. Voice memo.

I'm trying to get everything I can remember. I've caught my head. This game just ended and I didn't record it. His name is Patrick. He's about 5'10". Grew up in the country. Used to live in Winnipeg. That's Ryan Thorpe, who was a reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper.

In 2019, someone in his city had been putting up flyers that read, Save your race, join the base. So he tried to find out more. He filled out the online forms, passed a vetting call with the group's leader, and eventually met up with the base's local recruiter in a park. Later, while running home, Ryan regurgitated everything they'd talked about, recording onto his phone. ranted with homophobic and racist language. He's anti-Semitic. He talked about fighting a race war.

He talked about derailing a train that we were nearby, sabotaging a train track. He is a violent extremist. Hold on. That violent extremist was Patrick Matthews. He was a reservist with the Canadian Armed Forces, a combat engineer who was trained in the use of explosives. Two weeks after that meeting in the park,

Ryan and his editors decided to out Matthews in front page reports. The story blew up, and soon after, Matthews disappeared. American sheriffs along Manitoba's border say they're on the lookout for a Beausazier man with alleged ties to a neo-Nazi group. Former military reservist Patrick Matthews has been missing for more than a week. He packed up his home in small town Manitoba, gave away his four beloved cats, and fled. All police could find was his red pickup truck dumped near the US border.

Matthews was a hot topic among both the Canadian and American feds. We've got to find this guy who has now been outed as Patrick Matthews because Ryan Thorpe, the journalist, infiltrated him. Where's this guy? What is he doing? But Matthews wasn't Scott's main concern at the time. After he'd successfully made it into the base, he'd been busy hanging out with the Georgia crew, building a case.

We're just trying to infiltrate, ingratiate, try to find out if they're actually planning to do something really bad or not. All I know is I'm going down to do another training. I don't know who's always going to be there. He attends a training camp at TMB's. TMB is the online moniker for the guy who vetted Scott. He still lives at home with his dad on a sprawling rural property outside Rome, Georgia. And that's where Scott, whose alias was Pale Horse, and the other base members

shoot guns, share tips on how to survive in the woods, and prepare for the race war they plan to spark. I pull up to the barn and I'm looking at the cars and I'm going, okay that's Helter Skelter's car, that's Pestilent's car that's TMB's dad's truck blah blah blah and I'm like there's an extra body, there's not enough cars for it but I don't have my glasses on, great part of aging so I'm like huh and I go walking up and I see this, I don't know, mid-late 20s guy, reddish hair,

but it's all bushy and a bushy beard. I walk up and I'm thinking, I don't know, maybe it's a new member. I'll find out who it is, what's going on. And then he starts to speak. And I'm like, hmm, that sounds Canadian. Because, you know, I mean, I grew up in the 80s, right? That's a big time.

Strange Brew is one of my favorite movies. So, you know, I mean, I grew up in the 80s, right? That's a big time. Strange Brew is one of my favorite movies. So, you know, and I love SCTV as well. But he immediately pretty much tells me he's like, how you doing? I'm punished snake. You may or may not have heard about me. It was Patrick Matthews using the brand new call sign punished snake like it was an added disguise while on the lam. And I'm like oh my goodness he's here. He's here in Georgia but you know being an undercover I go holy shit man welcome to States, brother, and I hug him.

There's this huge manhunt on for him. Everybody's talking about it in the FBI, and all of a sudden you roll up, and you're like, holy shit, that's him. That's Matthews. What did you feel at that moment? It hadn't even been reported in Congress. They had congressional meetings where they're going,

we now know that there is a violent white supremacist from Canada who's somewhere in the United States. You know, and I walk up and I go, oh my gosh, what are the odds, you know? Just Matthew's luck, he escaped the clutches of Canadian authorities only to jump right into the arms of the FBI. As some people say, it's better to be lucky than good sometimes, right?

And, uh, and of course, as soon as I could, I let the case team know. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, man, he's here. It's awesome. And now he's staying here. So now for the next whatever, four months, every time I go to training in Georgia, I'm hanging out with Pat. I'm Sarah Trelevin and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's baby.

It's a long story. Settle in. Available now. Well, she'll be out. Scott spends months undercover as pale horse with Patrick Matthews and the Georgia cell training, hiking, and listening as they discuss their plans. And he's recording everything. All right. Fusey 8667. It is August the third. It's approximately 924 a.m. Eastern time Saturday.

Eventually, those long hours, they pay off. Five months after Scott infiltrates the base, Matthews is arrested, along with six other members of the group, in a dramatic takedown that makes headlines around the world. And tonight the FBI crackdown continues on white supremacist groups ahead of a pro-gun rally next Monday in Richmond, Virginia. The men weren't charged for being racist. That's not illegal.

Neither were they charged for domestic terrorism, which isn't a federal offense. But they were indicted for offenses ranging from possessing and transporting firearms and conspiracy to murder. Well today, three suspected members of a neo-Nazi group were arrested in Georgia, charged with targeting left-wing activists. The case against them was so strong, the evidence so damning, everyone pleaded out. And they were handed sentences ranging from six years to as long as 20. When we were researching these cases for the last season, we kept coming across evidence

provided by the UCE. That stands for the FBI undercover employee. That UCE came up so often, we started to imagine that we knew him. He had recorded hours of conversations between Matthews and his co-defendants as they talked about shooting cops and massacring black people.

When TMB and another base member took a road trip to case the house where their targets lived, the UCE was behind the wheel. And then we heard his voice on the secretly recorded tape when it was presented in court. Low, gravelly, and southern. So explain to me, because I've been watching, you know, you posting stuff, and I know you guys have been geared up to this thing, and I wanted to talk and see what the hell was going on. But he was an FBI undercover.

There's a reason we couldn't put a name or a face to the voice. I'll call him Scott, because that's what he said his name was, but I'm sure that's not his name. The most of what we knew then about the undercover agent actually came from a man named Tom Lane. He was probably 20-plus years older than the rest of them. 6'2", 6'3", 240, you know, big man. Tattoos all over his arms.

You know, they all kind of looked up to him, I think. Tom was the father of TMB. Real name, Luke Austin Lane. Luke had established the base's so-called Small Man's Cell in Georgia. And most of their training took place at his dad's 100-acre property, which is where I reached Tom for an interview a few months after his 22-year-old son had been arrested. You know, when I first saw him I was thinking this guy's either a pedophile or he's FBI. I asked him, I said, Scott, you FBI agent? He said, no, no, man, I don't remember exactly what he said, but he denied it.

And I told Luke he was FBI. And Luke said, no, we vetted him. We vetted him. I don't know how they went about their vetting, but it wasn't good, evidently. But why would you think he would be FBI? I mean, why would you think that there would be an FBI guy hanging around?

Why did I think there would be an FBI guy hanging around? Well, anytime there's anything to do with race, which I knew whatever loot was into was probably racial, which I don't agree with that, but they got their ears out everywhere. They'd eat anything that's got a hint of racism, they're going to get in on it. You know, they think that's the worst thing in the world nowadays. I knew from court documents that hint of racism was Nazi propaganda, and in particular, a flag hanging on Luke's bedroom wall. Yeah, I mean, I saw the flag in there, but you know, kids that age, they're going to

kind of dabble in things, and you know, they're still trying to find out who they want to be. Luke's been all over the place. One time he wanted to go move to Russia and then next thing you know he's wanting to move to Ukraine and fight the Russians and he didn't know what he wanted to do. He was just a young boy you know trying to find his way and you know I figured he'd moved something else. What was the actual flag? Was it something identifiable? trying to find his way and you know I figured he had moved to something else. What was the actual flag?

Was it something identifiable? I think it was a Nazi flag. I think it was a swastika. I think. I don't know what it was to tell you the truth. It was a big red flag. So when you saw it you just you didn't recognize it as that necessarily? Or you thought okay he's going through a Nazi phase?

Well, yeah, yeah, I just figured he was going through a little phase. Remember when I told you when we first met, I said I'd heard that podcast and I was cussing at the computer while it was going on. I'm like, that dude is lying. Okay. That's the crazy thing. All the time we were reporting and wondering about this Scott, he was listening, wanting to talk to us. Yeah.

So he knew it was a Nazi flag. I mean, I said, I've sat on the porch of that guy and drank. I drank his alcohol, he drank mine. He's listened to pestilence. My educated opinion. He's saying that because he's on a call. He didn't want to tie himself to anything nefarious. He knows exactly what a swastika is. He knows exactly.

Now to think that your kid's going through a phase, to find out what's what, okay. How long do you want the phase to last? Two years? Four years? Six years? What's a phase? But you know, Tom Lane making excuses for his son didn't really surprise Scott. In law enforcement, I have really, really seen a parent's love.

What I mean by that is I can show you a video of your kid doing crime on camera. Their voice, them, the parent will still say, that's not my kid. I still love my kid. And that's what parents do. What Scott says he doesn't have time for are accusations of entrapment, which seemed to be Tom Lane's explanation at the time for why his son was sitting in jail awaiting trial. I feel like the, you know, the FBI implant kind of led them in that direction. Certainly he didn't do anything to deter it. You know, these were young guys, like 19, 20 years old.

And I think they pretty much just took advantage of their youth. You know, I don't know that the base wasn't created by the FBI. You know, I don't much trust anything they do. The reason that we got involved is because of the crazy stuff that was being posted. All I know is people that go online, covert for the FBI, were talking about this guy, TMB. They're like, this guy is, I mean, saying some crazy stuff. That was before me.

That was before. That's what put him on the radar. And the court documents make it clear that Luke Lane was an active recruiter. It ebbs and flows. You might pick up a new member and they do the interview, they pass, they get the face-to-face vetting,

and then they're down in Georgia training with us. They're spewing hate and pro-Hitler and all this stuff, and then they get off on these tangents of giant Agarthans living in Middle Earth with Hitler, and they're coming back one day, and I'm just like, I need a drink. Maybe I am too old to do this. In the end, that's exactly what he decided.

Although he was only 50, undercover work takes a toll. So Scott turned in the badge in the summer of 2021. He could have ridden off into retirement on his Harley with his wife on the back, belting out some country tunes and sipping whiskey in obscurity. And I probably would have never known who the UCE was or thought of him again. But then he decided to talk to Rolling Stone.

He wasn't allowed to tell his story until the day after he retired. So he had reached out. That's Paul Solitareff, a staff contributor at Rolling Stone magazine. He wrote a profile on Scott that cast him as the most storied FBI agent since Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco. I didn't set out to write about Scott. I set out to write about the kids he was chasing. But once he started talking, it turned into a profile of Scott. How did that happen? He left me no choice. You know, the force of Scott's personality and the force of his persona, right?

He just has this extraordinary ability to make himself the center of every room he walks into. And I challenge anyone who meets Scott to write about something on the margins after you've met that guy. Shall I just start? Paul is an incredibly vivid writer. Go for it. He's been lifting all his life and has the setup to prove it. Mailbox quads and meat plow arms that dispose him to sleeveless tees. In his piece, Scott comes off as a type of superhero who not only took down the base, but in his 28 years in law enforcement, also managed to infiltrate the KKK and biker gangs, and put away aspiring killers, opioid dealers, dirty cops, and mass shooters.

He knows better than anyone that it's later than we think, and that each day brings us closer to the next 9-11. After reading that article and talking to Paul, I had one thought. Bonus episode. Paul put us in touch for an interview. But before I knew it, I was talking to Scott every week. Hello.

What's happening? Oh, not much, not much. I'm sitting outside today. I see you there. Yeah. How are you? Good, man. I've been doing a lot of outside stuff myself with the daddy doggy daycare and watering plants and shit. And you know. Long story short, I agreed to write his memoir with him. And our podcast bonus episode turned into this series.

I gotta confess, it's weird as a journalist being on the inside with an insider. I usually write about cops, not with them. I'm an agnostic feminist lefty Canadian who spent most of her career holding authority to account. He's a devout Christian Republican American from the South who bleeds blue. We definitely have our clashes and agree to disagree on many subjects. But where we come together is trying to understand what drives groups like The Base. There are very few people who have spent so many years seeing that lack of respect for

human life up close, witnessing that hate. The time for words has ended. The time for podcasts has ended. Derail some fucking trains, kill some people and poison some water supplies. You know you can think of them as like Tim McVeigh's children or Tim McVeigh's little cousins. At least 49 people have been killed in two mosques in Christchurch. In Charleston, South Carolina, nine people were killed in a shooting at a historic African-American church. The Associated Press is reporting that at least 10 people were killed in a shooting at a historic African-American church. The Associated Press is reporting that at least 10 people were killed in a shooting

at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Eight people are dead after a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall in Texas. Scott's perspective is one we rarely hear. Journalists report, academics analyze in a pine, lawyers debate the law. You get more than just a 30,000 foot view. I mean, you're right there. You're not guessing. But what does it look like from the inside when far-right extremists believe they're

among a fellow believer? This is what they said. This is what they talked about. We had a few drinks and they're saying, hey, what would really be cool is if we start killing a bunch of people and you're going, oh, okay, all right, well, okay, that's different. When you're spending your days and nights with violent bikers for a year and a half and some of them become your friends or pretending to sling hillbilly heroin with the pill mills of the deep south, What does that do to you

as a person to always be living a lie? You get a up close and personal perspective. That's coming up on Agent Palehorse. I was like, Scott will never fit in there. He is just cultured. He'll get out. There was a mystique about him because he wasn't around him all the time. I can't just walk over there into a sea of testosterone and leather and say, hey, you guys ride? We've never killed anyone yet, but we've had people medevacked out by a helicopter. I'm like, just get out of my house.

And he looked at me and he said, so I just vouch for you. So don't fuck this up. This series was written and produced by me, Michelle Sheppard, senior producer Ashley Mack and producer Eunice Kim. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Our intern was Rachel DeGasparis. Special thanks to Andrew Friesen, Lara Antonelli, the CBC Reference Library, Ryan Thorpe, the Winnipeg Free Press, Rolling Stone and Paul Soloterov, Sean Powers, Oralation Studios,

and Evolvment Music. Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez are our executive producers. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. This series was produced alongside a book I wrote with Scott, Codename Pale Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. You can catch up with season one of White Hot Hate wherever you get your podcasts and if you're enjoying this series and want to help new listeners discover the show, please take some time to give us a rating and review on whichever is your chosen app. It really helps. That's the first episode of Agent Pale Horse. You can find and follow Agent Whichever is your chosen app, it really helps.