The Jordan Harbinger Show - 673: Ken Croke | Undercover in an Outlaw Biker Gang Part One

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Ken Croke is a retired ATF agent who worked undercover for years to bust numerous criminal organizations, and is the co-author of Riding with Evil: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Keep an eye out for part two later this week!] What We Discuss with Ken Croke: What's the hardest part about keeping an undercover identity intact while under heavy scrutiny by some of the world's most paranoid and dangerous miscreants? How does the hierarchy of an outlaw biker gang work, and what does the process of becoming a trusted member entail? What does an undercover agent do to pass among criminals without actually committing crimes (or stepping outside the boundaries of what's been cleared in advance)? How do outlaw bikers really feel about the way their subculture is portrayed in popular media (e.g., Sons of Anarchy)? What did Ken's wife and kids do while he was undercover for two years? And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/673 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. So the chapter president at the time was like, hey, listen, I got permission for you to get Soutar's sword early. They'd broken a bunch of things with me early. Like, I became an officer earlier than I was supposed to. I got arrested, and so I should have been pushed out of the club

until that case got adjudicated. There's all these different things that they had rules they had broken for me. So when it came to this, I'm like, I mean, I go home with Soutar's sword in my neck. This is not going to play well. with my wife to start with and then forget where else. And so I said to him, I said, hey, listen, man, I'm already getting some attitudes for some folks because, you know, I've been cutting corners and you guys have been doing things from me earlier than, you know, probably should have. Let's just let this one run out. Let me do my time and earn this one. The chat of president was like,

hey, man, that's stand up 100% behind you. So it was another bullet dodged. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations. conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional organized crime figure, former cult member, or rocket scientist. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, our starter packs are where you do it. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Topics like persuasion and influence, disinformation and cyber warfare,

scams and conspiracy debunks, crime and cults, China and North Korea, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today's guest, man, folks, where do I begin? Okay, he spent years undercover with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the ATF. Now, usually these guys specialize in catching bad guys, moving guns, bombs, other super dangerous, illicit material. If you're not from the United States or you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's kind of like the FBI, but focusing on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. And most undercover operations, they are a few weeks, maybe a few months. This operation lasted years, which is just

unreal. He infiltrated the Pagans Motorcycle Club. So think Hell's Angels or Mongols or Sons of Anarchy, if you've seen that show. Just a crazy dangerous group of guys. That would be scary to even be around, let alone go into the lion's den for years at a time and try to dismantle the organization from the inside. The stories in this episode are absolutely bananas, and we are just lucky as a society to have guys like Ken Croke keeping us safe from some of the absolute animals out there who just don't give a crap about anything or anyone. This is a two-parter.

There's a lot here. Let's do it. You know, when you're undercover, you must see these guys' ideas sometimes, or no? Or is that kind of not a thing that happens? It depends on, you know, the type of undercover. Like, if it's short-term or regular undercover, you know exactly who it is your meeting with. You know what their background is, what they're capable of, and you'll know their names, but it's short-term. When you're doing this long-term, particularly when you're meeting hundreds of people over a period of time, the odds of use.

Because some of them go by their real names. some of them go by their club names. And so whatever, it's just like I'm introduced to Jordan. You know, if I knew your nickname was Bill and somewhere I referred to you as Bill and you'd be like, where'd you get that from? Oh, I see. Yeah. I always told them, just don't tell me.

As long as you know who they are, now you can tell me, hey, how bad are they? Like if they killed five people, so I know, you know, I have that going in. But outside of that, don't give me much more. Yeah, because you don't want to say like a gang name that only a gang member would know. And if they haven't introduced you is that way. and they've given you something totally different, it just totally blows you up, right? Because it's like,

who do you know that knows me that told you my name, right? Or these guys use aliases all the time. They'll throw them out there. And if all of a sudden they threw an alias out five years ago and I happened to use that alias as opposed to, they'd be like, only a cop would know that. I just try to keep it as simple as I can. And like I said, this type of investigation,

you know, people are always like, oh, yeah, it's amazing. The hardest part of this was keeping your story straight. I bet. For two years. People have always asked me like, how do you do it? And I'm like, well, you know, how difficult it is it? And I use the same analogy, which is, so tell me a lie about last night where you went to dinner, who you went with. What was the restaurant? What did you eat? What was the environment? Who was sitting around you? And get into some details. And you'll sling that out in a second. And it'll sound very convincing and I'll believe you. But then I'm going to circle back next week. And I'm going to come back and I'm going to say to you, hey, how did you have your steak cooked last week? And you have told me, and if it was a real memory, you'd remember. it. If it's not, then it's very hard to recall because you just made that stuff up. And so then do that over two years and it gets to be really difficult. And these guys would regularly, particularly Roadblock, would regularly circle back on my stories to see how valid they were.

Roadblock is one of the guys in the club. Was that the guy that sort of sponsored you to see if you were, it's hard to keep these names straight for me having read the book. There was one guy who kept testing you. I assume that's who that was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, him and Peter, probably the two biggest when it came to testing, but Robloch was my sponsor. At the time he was Sergeant Arms, the chapter president wanted me into the club. But presidents generally are not supposed to sponsor for folks, so he designated Robloch to be my sponsor. Yeah, so that seems to be one of the reasons why you hear undercover say, like, always use as many real details as you can so that you don't have, you can always default to like, hey, I get my steaks done medium, maybe I'm a vegan, you know,

or a vegetarian. You don't have to pretend you're not or that you are for something else. And maybe you use like what, like a real first name, but a fake last name? Is that kind of the general gist? Most folks will use their real first name because, again, if I'm going to an alley and meeting you and buying a gun and it's going to be a half hour, whatever, you know, you could stay focused for that. But over a two-year period, if all of a sudden I changed my name to Harry, inevitably, somebody would have been like, hey, Harry, and I wouldn't have turned around. Like, you just wouldn't click. Whereas if keep the same first name, you know, you'll naturally respond. Yeah, that's, oh man, the pressure is just ridiculous. Let me back up a little bit.

How did you end up deciding to slash getting selected to work undercover? Do they, I assume they don't make you do that. They ask you if you want to, right? Yeah, you're talking it all the way back at like day one of my career. Yeah, yeah. You know, they do not make you do it. When you're in the academy, at least when I went to the academy, everyone was, you had to do it in that environment. So you could at least, for two reasons. One, see if you liked it. Number two, you have to have an appreciation of what it's like to be an undercover. And again, it's an academy environment. Nobody's going to die. But it is, they do make it as real as they possibly can. And even if you never did it again, you'll understand what undercovers go through. And when you are planning your operations and you're

asking someone to do undercover for you, you'll have a little bit more understanding of how that process works and what they're going to when they're doing that. But then afterwards, it's just for me in the academy. And, you know, I thought I did pretty good. at it. And I also felt like a lot of the undercover work was kind of pushed on to different minority groups. And so it would be like, hey, you look the part type of thing. And I always felt like, you know, looking the part, you're going to be able to explain what you look like. And so, you know, I did undercover with African-American gangs, Hispanic gangs. It's all your story and who's introducing you in. So I did, you know, a fair amount of undercover with MS,

the Marisup to the street gang. And everyone's like, how's a white guy, you know, do that? Yeah, isn't that El Salvador-based gang? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so this is when I was in Los Angeles, and they were big in Los Angeles. But my story was there was a prostitute who worked out in that area who's white. She introduced me into the gang, so I was her brother. So then they accepted like, all right, yeah, we've got this white guy here.

He's buying some guns and some drugs and what have you. So it's really your story more so than it is what you look like. And so I wanted to kind of change that. And then further I went along with it or got into it, the more. I enjoyed doing it. You know, I looked at it as a challenge. It's almost like a chess match. I was not one-dimensional in my career, and I never intended to. You know, I worked really good cases. I had gone up into management up to the highest levels within the agency. So it was, I just wanted to be a well-rounded agent. Yeah. It sounds like the level of excitement for undercover

is much higher than I'm stereotyping here, but it seems like if you're joining the police or the ATF in your case, to be close to the action. There's no closer to the action than pretending to be in a gang and selling drugs with a gang and running guns with a gang for whether it's half an hour or half a year. Some would view it that way. And I think it's, but there's also, you know, if you're on the SRT team, you know, there's a lot of adrenaline. That's like a SWAT team situation. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so there's a lot of aspects of the job that get that adrenaline flowing. But this to me was one where it's kind of like a skill set and you develop it as you go along and you get a little bit better. You have to be very quick in thinking because even

the short-term stuff, all of since something comes up and somebody throws something out of you, you've got to be able to respond to it just like you naturally would. In this case was full of things that happened that I would get out of bed every day and I'd have a plan and what I was going to do. By 9 o'clock in the morning, that plan completely was blown up. Not a single day when a to what I thought it was going to do. Yeah, it sounded like that from the book, too. You know, this is a full-time job, and we'll kind of get to this because I took a copious amount of notes. But tell me a little bit about how biker gangs work. There's different club ranks, right? There's like the full-on patched members, and then there's these kind of, I guess,

prospects who are, for lack of a better word, like applicants almost, right? Initiates. More like indentured slaves. Yeah. So the process starts with hangarounds. And so hangarounds actually, you know, if you're ever going to hang around a biker gang, that's the level you want to be at because they get to go to the parties. They have no responsibility. Nobody cares what they do. They're also not involved in any of the inner workings of the club. They won't know any of the criminal activities. They won't know a lot of anything, any of the dynamics that are happening inside.

But they go to the clubs, you know, they go to the parties. They'll support them and so forth. But for the biker gangs, that's an important part because they're watching you and how you are just normally. And so they're wanting to see, you know, is this a stand-up type of person? Is this somebody we want to be part of this? Do they have what it takes to be a part of it? And then if you do, the next phase, they're going to ask you to prospect. And that is by far the worst phase.

It's a little bit different for each club. For the pagans, it's six months. And they can add days to it depending on what happens. And during that period of time, with the pagans, your prospect for what they consider to be the entire pagan nation. So you don't belong to a chap, you don't belong to a person. you belong to the entire pagan group. So on a normal day, you're beholden to the chapter that you're in.

But when you go to these mandatories where there's a thousand bikers there, you're beholden to every single one of them. And so it is like indentured servitude. So like my first mandatory, we were up at 4 o'clock in the morning after, you know, maybe going to sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning. You're running the grills, you're going around picking up trash. You have these bags of things that you have to carry with you. being like spark plugs, lights for the motorcycle, cigarettes, tampal, like you name it, you're carrying all this stuff. And there's a list, like figure you have to have a lighter, you know, all the stuff. And if you don't have one of these items and one of those members ask you for it,

several things can happen. One, they'll bang check you, which is an open palm strike to your forehead. Two, they can hit whack you with an axe handle if it's significant enough. I mean, if you're missing a toothpick, you're probably not going to get an axe handle, but other violations you would. Or they add days to your prospecting. And so you have this little calendar book you carry with and you cross off days as you complete them. And so if you screw up, it'd be like, hey, add another week, which I'd rather get bang checked than add time to the prospecting phase. So like they say it's six months, but it's not like six months you're watching the clock wind down and you're like, hey, I've got four more hours. It's not that way. Six months is the

general time and they'll let you know in their own special way when you've made it and when you, you know, or if you haven't. Right. So you're done when they say you're done. Not when you're like, hey guys, this is my last day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, then you're a patched member and you're on probation for a period of time, and then there's offices within the club. And so back to your original, there's a treasurer secretary, there'll be a vice president who really doesn't have status unless the president's dead

or in jail. Sergeant Arms, which is the number two in a chapter and also responsible for the weapons, but also the discipline. And then the chapter president. And then those chapters report up to what they call it president of presidents, a pop. And that's the level right below Mother Club. And then Mother Club has its own chapter. So the national president, the national vice president, the National Sergeant Arms are all across Mother Club.

And so everybody reports up to that. So Mother Club sounds like what? It's the national chapter instead of the local chapter of the pagans? Exactly. It's the national oversight. And so you'll have each Mother Club member will have an area. So, you know, I was in New York. So the mother club member at the time was Connell, and he had New York and northern New Jersey.

That was his area. So everybody reported up to him, and he was part of Mother Club. Wow, it's like regional management. But it's also like a mafia with the commission and everything, right? Or the, is that what is called the commission? Yeah, no, that's exactly. And there is a hierarchy. I mean, you know, people think that these are just a bunch of morons running around a party.

And they're not, they're very sophisticated in how they move their money. They're very sophisticated in their structure. And they're also very sophisticated in what they do. They plan operationally. They have undercovers. The other people who they call it Ryan Slipback, no colors, no nothing, people who kind of look like they'd blend in. If they're going to events and stuff, they'll have those people out there planted

watching to see if rival gangs are showing, see what the local law enforcement are doing. They're planning maybe not on paper like what law enforcement agencies do. But in the end, it's really the same thing. They would brief and debrief after their events. Wow. It's surprising because some of these guys are really horrific human beings, and I've got some examples that we can talk about in a little bit here. Early in the book, you talk about simulating using drugs and drinking at a party. And this is something I'd never thought about, right? Okay, you pour out a beer when no one's looking. Maybe you hold a shot in your mouth, and then you kind of spit it back into your beer bottle when it looks like you're chasing the booze so you don't get super drunk. But how do you fake a line of cocaine, right? That sounds like a challenge. Yeah, so people ask that question. And honestly, I don't go into it, and I'll tell you why, because it just makes it more difficult for the people behind me, the folks that are going to be doing this type of work.

Yeah. But I will say this, and it's easier to talk about the alcohol in that sense is that, you know, there'd be playing in a night's that folks would be like, oh, my God, you know, we were out, slam had 10 beers last night. Well, the reality is, like, you think about the last time you're in a bar with some buddies. And, you know, they were ordering different beers where did you really see them drink the beer? Did you really watch that liquid cross across their lips? Now, if you're watching somebody drink a beer and you're, you're paying attention to it, you're going to be able to tell whether they drank it enough, but who does that? If you're going to sit there and say, hey, watch me and I'm going to fool you into think

I drank 10 beers, but just stare at me the whole time, you're not going to be able to pull it off. But that's not how it works. And so you do, like when it comes to alcohol, hey, take your beer to the bathroom, dump it out, most of it out. And then you go back in your order and make sure you buy everyone around, you know, so people know, hey, you know, he's back up at the bar again, you know, doing that kind of thing.

And again, it's just people assume. And there was a time in the book where I talk about where, it was a test in a test that I would have failed if I didn't have some dumb luck on my side. And I had plenty of dumb luck throughout this case. You definitely had some good luck in this case, which is fortunate. It's probably why you're here to tell the story. I just doing the fake lines of cocaine, it seemed like there were some close calls. And I guess I've done all this training and tolerance building just in case I need to go undercover

and I didn't need to do it for no reason at all. Could have just done it. Could have just fake cocaine. Could have just faked it the whole time. But you know, to your point, like you could sit here and say, hey, I'm not, because there is a huge risk to faking, you know, using drugs or the alcohol, whatever it is. Yeah. And even if on the alcohol, you know, people are going to say, oh, he was drunk the whole time.

So when you take the stand, they're going to be like, oh, you were drunk because you had 10 beers. So you're like, you're always going against that. But the reality is take the flip side. So here's this guy who parachutes in from nowhere. All of a sudden he's hanging around with these guys. Oh, by the way, he doesn't do drugs or alcohol. Right. But he's willing to be a biker.

It's like, come on. You know, at some point, they're going to be like, really? Mother Teresa now wants to be a biker? Like, how does that work? Why not just do, this is probably a dumb question, but why not just do a real line of cocaine, right? It's not, it's probably not going to kill you right away. I don't know. It seems like the risk, but the guy, if he finds that you're not doing it in front of him,

he could kill you right away. Yeah, and listen, this rules against it. It also would put you on the influence when, you know, and these are all things. Like, everything, everyone thinks like, oh, you're just hanging out and you're having a good time. There's nothing fun about this. Not one minute of it is fun because it is a constant chest max. You're constantly at risk. But you're also constantly building a case.

and everything you do during that time is going to be scrutinized later on when it comes time for trial or motions or what have you. And so you constantly have to be on guard against that. And you have to get the evidence you can get as far as whether it be recordings, video, or audio, copious notes and be able to, you know, attest to everything that happens during that time. And so if something does happen on a script, now listen, if somebody were to put a gun to an undercover set and said, do this line on blow your reins out, the undercover's going to do the line. But then they're going to come out and they're going to write a report about how they did the sign. They're going to go to the hospital because, you know, I know this comes to shock to you, but somebody may say it's Coke and it's not Coke. It could be something else.

Yeah. And there's all sorts of bad things that, I mean, that alone would be a reason not to do because you don't know what the hell they're actually giving you. Yeah. So having that documentation, anytime you had like, you know, for me, anytime I, you know, was part of any illegal activity, you had to make sure you documented all that because it's coming back. I'm going to say, he was there. You know, he saw this person get beaten or whatever it was. And you better have documented.

Yeah, you can't be like, I was really high on meth, but they made me do it, Your Honor. They made me do it. Yeah, exactly. I think this is what happened. It doesn't really play well in court. Right. I was seeing triple, but I'm pretty sure that that was the guy that hit him. One other addition to that. I mean, we've all been drunk at some time of our lives, and that's generally the time you do the stupidest of things. And so if you're real life is what it is, and then I also need this undercover rule, and you let your guard down and you drink 12 beers, what's the odds that you're not going to say the wrong name or the wrong thing about yourself? It's super high. Just another reason. It's hard enough to do it when you're sober. Now the mind trying to add that into it. Yeah, good point. Yeah, you don't want to start crying about your ex-girlfriend from back in Michigan. And I thought you were from New Jersey, man.

What? Oh, yeah. And also then you can't really defend yourself because you can't see straight. Yeah, exactly. You talk about the devil's disciples, which is like, I guess like a minor league support club versus the outlaws who are legit. So what is the difference here? And why would somebody be in one but not the other?

Why be in one club if you're trying to hang out with that Pagans all the time? It's like AAA baseball. So, I mean, in some ways it is. And that's, you know, when I do some training with law enforcement, when I talk about it that way, it's like it's the minor leagues. But really, you know, I don't mean that to sound negative. What it really is is that it's a proving ground to start, number one. Number two, the support clubs are not as regimented as the big five are or the big six

depending on the day. But the bigger clubs, there's a lot more to that membership. is a lot more expected from you. The smallest support clubs, it's like, yeah, they're on. If they're going to a mandatory in support of like the pagans, you know, for example, yeah, you better have your stuff dialed in because bad things can happen to you there as a support role. But generally, they're pretty good because they want numbers.

And so when there is an issue, they're going to call that support club and bring them in. So for some people, that's about they're willing to be a weekend warrior, if you will, but they don't really want that full-time commitment. A lot of them go in there and they stay exactly there. Or their lives change and they decide, hey, this isn't for me or whatever it is. But a lot do come up to those ranks. Oh, okay. That makes sense.

You can keep your day job as a truck driver or lawyer or doctor, and then you can sort of almost like larp, badass biker dude, and hopefully you don't get shot during a Hells Angels dust up. Yeah, exactly. You said Big Five or Big Six, you're talking about the major biker gangs, right? So what, Hells Angels, Pagans, Mongols, Outlaws, which other clubs are there? It depends on, you know, the Warlocks, the Vagos, depends on kind of the time. Their numbers swell and shrink, but really the biggest and most

violent would be those gangs. Warlock, I've never even heard of them. I guess I have heard of Votto. That's a Latin gang. So Vagos is, people will consider them to be a West Coast gang. And part of my backstory was that I rode with the Vagos. I was not a Vago, but I rode with the Vagos. Now, I had done some undercover work against Vagos when I was in L.A. And it seemed like a safe bet to use that as kind of back, and I had done a bunch of research, and, you know, we had some folks that we knew where their bars were, and I went out and it was a part of that. So I had my whole backstory in tech. What I never expected was the Vagos to skip the entire country and open a frigate chapter

and you are in the middle of our case. But that's like, that was an example of really bad luck. Yeah. But going back to my point at the beginning where I said, you know, you've got to be quick on your toes, their initial inclination was to talk about me, knowing that I knew people, like, oh, hey, you know, in the time I was a prospect, you know, Kent. And so I had said to them, when I caught one of this, I was like, hey, listen, man, something's shady about this. Like, Divago's skipped the whole country and decided to open up in New York. Something going on here. I said, let's not let them know, you know, who I am.

And let me check through my people back in California. And they bought that hook, a lion's singer, thank God. And they never did tell that. And I would feed them a bunch of BS intel that I was getting out of California. That made sense, but it wasn't true. They were like, hey, this is great. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Ken Crow. We'll be right back.

If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the show, these authors, thinkers, creators, undercover agents every single week. It is because of my network. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. This course is about improving your networking and connection skills and inspiring others to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.

That's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Ken Croke. Okay, so to clarify for people who are listening and may be a little confused. So your cover story included you were riding with this other gang back on the West Coast

that wasn't present on the East Coast. And when you were undercover with the pagans on the East Coast, suddenly this gang, the real actual gang, wanted to come and start a chapter there, and you were like, shit, they're going to ask about me. Then the people are going to say, I've never heard of this guy. Then your cover's blown, or at least there's a hole in it. So you made up some spiel about how they shouldn't say anything

because it looked shady that they were jumping into York, and thankfully they just decided to keep it quiet because of that. Yeah, and if they don't know that I have connections there, then we could check on them, them unknowingly. Right. It worked like a charm, but it was, you know, for a minute or two, I was like, oh, man, I'm screwed. Yeah, oh, my God.

There's no way this is going to stand up. Pagans and these other clubs are the big five, big six. These are full-time jobs, right? So these are not things where you go, oh, that would be fun to do. You know, I can probably take Friday afternoons off now that I'm older and I'm established my career. This is your life, right? This is how you generate revenue. It's how you support your family if you have one. This is your job, right, when you're in a gang like this. So some of these, you know, a lot of them don't have jobs. Some of them do have jobs. And some of them have, like, there was one guy worked on Wall Street. And he did a lot of the money laundering, sent up the LLCs for the funding and stuff

like that. He's not the guy you bring into a bar room brawl because he's about five feet tall and he looked like a bowling ball and ball. But there were some that had legitimate jobs. The club priority is the club activity. And so you have to live by that. But I will say that if you had a legitimate job, they would work around that for the most part. They weren't looking to get people fired from their jobs and just say, hey, you have to be full time, you know, paying and be here, you know, whatever. Now, if there's a manager, you better be there. But managers were planned out so you would know. And if one of your brothers needed you, then you better drop whatever you're doing and get there.

So most weren't working in the corporate world, if you will. But you'd have a lot of mechanics and folks like that that were part of the gang. And a lot were unemployed. Everything I've learned, like everyone else, you've probably talked to about this, everything I know about bikers is, aside from your book, from the show Sons of Anarchy. I got to wonder, did these guys watch that and go, oh, that's not how it is, or are they obsessed with this show? That wouldn't surprise me.

So they referred to as the Sons of Malarkey. Okay. But I will say this. It was the ultimate and irony. So I'm a make-belief biker, hanging out with real bikers watching a show about make-believe bikers. Like, he can't make this stuff up. And they would just make fun of the show the whole time.

Now, part of there, there was some H.A. Hell's Angels consultants, rumored to be on that show. So that just made the pagan tainted even more. But yeah, these guys, and not so much with the Sons of Anaker, these guys did their homework. When there was books written, like, they gave me two books right when I, was part of the gang. They said, read these and look for information in there that can help us identify who undercover cops are. Wow. And they would watch all those shows on discovery and things like that, gangland and all that stuff, looking for tidbits. It's one of the reasons why when I wrote this book, I was into your question at the beginning about, you know, hey, how do you fake a line?

Like, I don't give up that stuff in the book because there's no purpose. It doesn't change the story, but it does make it, I don't want to make it more difficult on the person who comes behind. No, I completely understand that. I've had all kinds of people on here. before and they're like, hey, that was a little bit of tradecraft that while interesting to you probably shouldn't be, because it's going to be very interesting to al-Qaeda or like Iranian special service, secret service. And I'm like, okay, I'll cut it out. I'd feel pretty bad if somebody got in trouble at the expense of me entertaining somebody with an anecdote on this podcast, right? Yeah. Tell me what the one-percenter thing is, because I've heard of the patches. I've heard of the one-percenter

clubs. I've seen that in movies as well. What's the deal? What is a one-percenter? So it all comes back from a study that was done by the military back in I think it was either late 50s or early 60s. And everyone was saying, hey, motorcycle enthusiasts, bikers are all bad. So they did this whole study. And basically out of the study, it came back and said, hey, listen, 99% of them aren't. You know, 1% of these bikers might be problematic or gang members or what have you, but the rest aren't. So the point of the report was like, don't judge just because they're bikers. Well, in the bikers, the real bikers, the outlaw bikers, we're like, hey, this is great. We are the 1%. we're proud of being the 1%.

There's only certain clubs that can wear the 1% patch. And if they see somebody riding with the 1% patch and they're out for one of the big clubs, they will go and rip it off of them or worse. They're very protective of who can be in the 1% club, if you will. And a lot of that patch structure, generally when you see a three-piece patch on somebody's back, then that's going to be one of the bigger five clubs

or it could be one of the support clubs. But the support clubs won't have 1% on. Some of them will have like 0.99%, which is kind of a joke. But the support clubs will have something. So like the pagans had, it would be a P or a 16. And a support club would wear that pass. And so it showed that they were a support club of the pagans. So they kind of flew under the protection of the pagans.

There's a lot of symbolism and almost like numerology when it comes to these things. And I noticed that since pagans are also white supremacists, they have that in common, right? Where it's like, this number means this and this is the 14 words from Adolf Hitler. and this is the number of mother club members or branches of the club, and you got to put this in there, and then this skull has this in the shape of the eyes. They always do that. And it's a little culty, kind of. I mean, it is. And you have some that are much stronger believers in it than others. Like others are kind of like, yeah, yeah, I'm into that. And then others are like, hey, this is like the core of what we are. But you're right, there is a lot of symbol. There was one, and I use the term

old lady, because that's how they refer to the females that are either, they're married, two girlfriends, or whatever, it's not my view. But one of the old ladies had said, all these guys are, and she was drunk, and probably shouldn't have said it, but she was like, hey, all these guys are as evil boy scouts. And that was a tribute back to the patches. Like all these patches that they wear,

there's not a single patch they're wearing that doesn't mean something. Some of it may be trivial. And then, you know, with my colors, like I was selective of what patches I would put on. Because some of them earned, some of them, it just depends on what's happening. But there were some that were given to me, you know, like the SS Lightning Bowls,

some stuff like that. I was like, oh, no, hey, I'm not a believer in that. I just took him and never put them on my colors. Yeah, I'm kind of wondering how you got away with that. You know, like, how would you even explain that to some, like, oh, hey, I just, this is an SS necktad. Don't worry, daddy's going to cover it up with a butterfly when he's done with this project at work. Well, after I become patched, so after one year in with the pagans, you would get Soutar's sword on your neck. And it's kind of a level. Like after three years, you can get the word pagans or a small version of the colors, and after seven years you can have full colors like on your back, tattooed that is.

So the chapter president at the time was like, hey, listen, I got permission for you to get Sue Tar's sword early. They'd broken a bunch of things with me early. Like I became an officer earlier than I was supposed to, you know, not to jump ahead, but I got arrested. And so I should have been pushed out of the club until that case got adjudicated. We can get into that in a minute. But there's all these different things that they had rules they had broken for me.

So when it came to this, I'm like, I mean, I go home with Soutar sword in my neck. This is not going to play well with my wife to start with and then forget where else. And so I said to him, I said, hey, listen, man, I'm already getting some attitudes for some folks because, you know, I've been cutting corners and you guys have been doing things from me earlier than, you know, probably should have. Let's just let this one run out. Let me do my time and earn this one. The chat for president was like, hey, man, that's stand up 100% behind you. Yeah, let's do that. So it was another bullet dodged.

Yeah, no kidding. That's one of those kind of close calls. And it's funny, when I search for suit or sword, one thing that comes up is the Pagan's Motorcycle Club Worldwide Trademark Application for their insignia. Yeah. They have this trademark. Like, there's an attorney of record on file. They have a registered agent office, everything.

It shows the patch. In the Mongols case, they seized the trademark for the Mongols. And it was a battle. It's gone on for years. I don't know where it stands right now. Where the Mongols had it could not use their colors. And then they got it reversed. And then they could use their colors.

This is this ongoing battle that went off. But the Hell's Angels, all that stuff. trademark, like they've all done it. It makes sense when you think about it, but it's just kind of, it's kind of funny, like, we're outlaws, but make sure you register that trademark on time and don't let it lapse, right? It's like having a domain name in good standing or something for your meth and money laundering business. And not for nothing. Like, you don't want to be making up your own pagan shirt and wearing it around town because you will get called out and you will be beaten severely. I mean, if they found out somebody was wearing a pegging shirt, like you're not

supposed to have, you could wear a shirt that says support 16s and that's what they do for a lot of the supporters, they can wear those, and they know what that means and people know with it, but you cannot have anything that says pagan on it unless you are a pagan. Even if it's just like a random, the word pagan had nothing to do with the club, they're still going to take offense to, or take issue with that, eh? I mean, if you were on a baseball team and your last name is pagan and you have pagan on your back, they're not going to come beat you out, you know, come out of the stands and beat you for it. But if you're in any reference to like what a pagan would be, so if you had a t-shirt on

and says, you know, pagans are the bad, you'd have problems. Wow. You'd have big problems. And even as a prospect, as a prospect, you can't touch anything in cis pagans. You can't touch pagan colors. Nobody's supposed to be touching. And there was an incident in the book that I talked to where somebody actually put the hand on the back of the chapter president and that created all sorts of problems. Oh, man. Yeah, it's really interesting symbolism. And like, you see the same kind of reverence for the colors as you do for like a flag in North Korea, for example. It really has cult languaging and everything. So you're building trust, you're staying at these guys' homes, you're drinking, you're hanging out with them. another possibly foolish question, but why bother to go undercover and bust these guys? Are they mostly killing each other? It's a great question because there is people out there believe like, hey, bikers just kill bikers.

And it could be further from the truth. People have asked me, I'm like, how would you feel if a clubhouse opened up in your neighborhood? It's going to change your neighborhood dynamics dramatically, like to the point where you're not even going to be able to live there. They do extort. They sell drugs. Like they affect, just like any other gang, they affect the area that they're in. And they recruit from the areas that they're in. And they don't just, when I was in the club, they would extort protection money from whether it would be bars or different establishments, depending on what chapter and where you were.

And so they're a criminal organization just like anything else. The reason why to go under cover is you can, from the outside to, you know, maybe some prospects or some hangarounds, you'd be able to deal with, you know, maybe some low-level members and maybe you can build a case on them. You're never getting anywhere near the leadership of the game because they're just, they're insulated. The only way to do that is to go undercover into the club and go up into the ranks. For me, out of the two years, it probably took the first year and half just to get to the level where I was dealing with all the club members and the legs. Wow. Wow.

The way you describe these guys, they're all absolutely enormous. It's always like, this guy was 6'5, 345 pounds. Is that normal, or are these just the absolute monsters that you came across that were noteworthy? Like, is there anybody where you're like, yeah, he was 5'9 on a good day, depending on how thick the souls of issues where former lawyer, now he's got a podcast, probably get his ass beat with two punches in a bar fight? Or is that not exactly the phenotype of what outlawed biker gangs are looking for? I'll be honest. There were some little cats in there, too. Some scrappy ones, but the chapter I was in had some very large humans. And I'm not talking like weightlifters,

fit marathon runners or anything like that. These are some big humans had a lot of weight, but also for some of them were very tall. And so when we walked into the bars and into businesses and some cases, like into restaurants. The presence, I mean, anybody wearing the collars is going to get, you know, some sort of recognition, but these are some large humans. And so people would stop and gasp and be very focused on. And quite honestly, we feared them, you know, and you could see that when you walk into these areas.

Yeah. Or they would be this sick attraction. Like, I could never say it. Like, we'd be in bars and you'd have guys who'd be coming up and like buying you beers and doing all this stuff like you were a sports star or rock star. and they need to have women and some beautiful women who would be hitting on some of these guys and some of these ugliest humans I've ever seen in my life. And they would regularly have, you know, some beautiful women who are very interested in be with them. And I could never,

I could never figure it out why. Yeah, it's a, that whole bad boy thing turned up to 11. It seems like a little bit, it's a little bit too dangerous, I think. It's not, I assume these women don't know what they're getting into a lot of time. You got to figure they have at least some idea. I mean, it's not like you're hiding it. They're wearing colors, their impacts. You know, it's probably not a safe bet hanging out with this group of folks, but there was definitely that attraction. And I'm not saying everyone by any special imagination, but they were, like, I'd be like, you've got to be kidding. How could she be interested in him? And in summer, I think it was just the, like you said, the bad boy image. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, that's, yeah,

it's bizarre. But also, I guess, look, power, if people are afraid of somebody and this person has that pattern in their past, I mean, that's a whole psychological episode of this podcast, I suppose. the pressure just seems enormous. You're no stranger to action and pressure. Tell me about that shootout you got involved in earlier in your career. That was kind of like, it seems like you got to taste right from the jump. Yeah, it was supposed to be kind of a routine activity. And I was in between academies.

And so at the time, I mean, they still have two different academies. You have a basic academy and then like the advanced specialized, like geared towards your specific agency. And so at the time, you would go to the first one, which would be about 12 to 16 weeks. and then you'd have a gap of maybe two, three weeks, and then you go back down for another 12, 16 weeks. So in that gap, when I was back in L.A., we were going and we were executing an arrest warrant. So it was going to be kind of like a by-bust for a couple of kilos of Coke.

And then we were doing a search warrant on the apartment that was above where the bus was going to take place. And so the buy-bust was going to be in a parking garage, L.A. style, you know, it's underneath and you can see into them, but they're gated and what have you. So I was on the team going in to secure the apartment and do the search warrant. But as we approached, it was right out of the get-go. The shots were fired. And so we had an agent go down who shot the foot.

One of the bad guys was standing. So the garage ends up closing. So those were inside, we're inside, and those were outside, we're outside. You were not going to get through the other way. So you're trapped in a parking structure that's locked with guys shooting at you and you shooting at them, essentially? Yeah, yeah. So they had tech nines.

they had some pretty good weaponry, but one of them was standing behind a pillar. And his rounds flying everywhere. There's hundreds of rounds that were fired. He never gets hit, which is amazing. The other one had multiple. It was like, I forget the exact count, but it was like 32 entry and 26 exit wounds. Like he had been shot. But the way he was shot and he was strung out on Coke.

He lived. He lived. Unbelievable. He was crossed behind our car. The only thing that stopped it was his magazine. He had an extended clip and the magazine got shot and all the rounds fell. And so that's really what ended at that. And an agent had come in, or an agent that was in there, had a shotgun with a slug.

And it basically blew his arm off. And that shut it down. And then we still had to go up and clear the apartment because we thought there were two more individuals up there. So we go to do that. And then it gets locked down. And it happened to be only about three blocks from high lived. But it got locked down. And we were there all night.

It got a bunch of coverage. So then it's like you're trying to notify family members. And so, anyway, as long story short, they were like, hey, it's too stressful. we're not going to send you back to the academy. So I ended up being on the job for almost two years before I fully got through the academy. But one of the things they had some undercover opportunities. And so they gave me a memo that said, hey, before you can go to the second academy, we're going to let you do some undercover work.

And so I started doing undercover work before I had finished doing the academy. Wow. But back in those days, L.A. was different in the sense that, you know, there were a whole lot of brand new agents. They were not a lot of senior agents. They were all trying to get out. It was too expensive, too dangerous. And so as a new agent, you got to do a lot of things that you weren't able to do in other areas in the country, just because physically there was nobody else to do it.

So you're given a lot of latitude. So it really helped you learn the job faster than, you know, somebody who might have been in, say, Boston. Yeah, although being short-staffed and under-experience is probably not a good, like, it's not exactly the best way to further your career, I suppose, or the safest way. Yeah, plenty of ways that you could make mistakes or worse. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, I really valued my time in L.A. I learned a lot by being out there. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Ken Croke.

We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to the show. It's a lot of work. Your support of our sponsors keeps us going here. To learn more and hear about the sponsors of the show and all those discount codes, everything, all those URLs, they're all in one place on one page. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is the page. You can also search for any of the sponsors using the search box on our website as well.

please consider supporting those who support this show. Now for the rest of Part 1 with Ken Croke. Your parents must have been thrilled, right? You go to school, you get an accounting degree, and then you come out and you're getting shot at by drug dealers right on the first year in or the first few months in. It's like, what did you do today? Oh, man, this guy got shot 27 times.

I'll tell you, they were, again, as you just said, I went to school for accounting. My dad was a CPA, my brother's a CPA, so they were like, oh, he'll be a CPA. I was like, it's just not in my DNA. to sit behind a desk for 25 years or whatever it is. And I applaud those who do, but it just wasn't for me. And my mom had, you know, a couple big things. She hated motorcycles, hated tattoos, hated guns. And so I was, you know, pretty much like the giant disappointment,

you know, because I had done them all. But in really, they were just concerned about my safety. I think they knew how much I liked the job and how much I put into doing the job. And they just wanted me to stay in one piece. Sure. Yeah. No, understandable. You're doing all this exciting stuff. It's hard for them to be like, have you tried spreadsheets? Those are fun too. They weren't digging when I was, particularly in this case, because I just looked like a dirt bag. Yeah. And so you're going to family events and even for my kids and stuff.

It's hard to explain, you know, your shitbag, the son. Why does he look the way he does? But, yeah, they got through it. Yeah, this is my son, the deadbeat. Oh, no, he's going to make something of himself. Like, oh, man, they must be so disappointed at him. Yeah, oh, man. It sounds a little bit like my career, except to replace accounting degree with law degree

and replace taking down international drug rings with doing a podcast in your underwear. So a lot of these guys, they seem mentally ill, the bikers. One of the least disgusting examples, aside from the violence, is the guy who found freshly born kittens and licked the blood off of them. And he did so many worse things in the book, but I'm afraid if I describe them here, people will literally, if they're eating right now, they're going to at least stop eating, if not worse, because some of the examples are just like, I can't get them out of my head. They're so disgusting. And that's not even the crimes. This is just the weird personal habits to some of these dirt bags.

Yeah, it's funny. One of the folks that I knew who read the book, their advice was don't read it while you're reading for that reason. And your story's tie back to Hogman. There's worse, I chose not to put in there. Yeah. And so he, you know, he had a blood fetish. He was a vile human being. even when you have, to your point, we know we don't have to cover them all here, but when you have a chapter president react in a very negative way and throw him out of the hospital that we were in when he had done something. It's like, you've crossed a lot. You've really gone above and beyond if you can get a pagan to actually feel that that was discussed. So yeah, he was at a different level. But, you know, people always ask about like what was the makeup. And the makeup was really different, just like society,

just like any group of people. You know, you'd have some folks that were narcissists, you had some folks that were, you know, just looking for a belonging. You know, the other people are just straight out criminals. You know, the other people are just like, hey, I like to intimidate. I like to bully people. Maybe by themselves they couldn't do it, but in a pack they could. There was no really hidden for me. Like people were like, oh, there's a lot of military during biker gangs.

That's not what I saw. I mean, there were some military members, but no, not huge amount. I mean, there's a lot of different bike organizations out there and going back to what we're talking about the 1%. The vast majority of them are just in bike clubs. And listen, law enforcement has bite clubs. Much to my chagrant, when I do presentations, I ask, anybody in here, law enforcement, any part of a club?

And if you have a structure in there, like a sergeant arms and a president of those things, and I'm like, you know what, you're in the wrong profession? Because why do you need a sergeant arms? What does the sergeant arms do? But there's, like, really no rhyme or reason of who belongs to it and who's successful at it. You've got to really work to create this sort of undercover life and character, right? because I assume you need to have like a fake high school diploma or bills laying around or fake junk mail that's addressed to your fake name.

There's got to be an office that helps with that, I assume, at ATF, right? Yeah, and it's one of those things that you do over the course of your career. You have one or maybe more undercover identities that you're building over time. Like, they do an extensive background. I had to fill out a bunch of forums, a very long background. They were supposed to polygraph, which they ultimately ended up not doing. but they have and other clubs do. So you have to have all these things lined up.

And then, so my criminal history, you know, so I was a convicted felon in my undercover world. You know, my felony was for kicking the shit out of a cop, which was not a good choice that I later lived to regret. But all of a sudden I get arrested and now all that comes into play. So you have all these different levels of backstopping, if you will. And you never know if it's going to come into play. But you better have it squared away because when something, happens. So like when I got arrested, they're going to pull those prior convictions. And they, there better be prior convictions. There better be police reports when they order them and all those

kind of things. Or that's the end of it. Because the attorney that was represented me was a pagan attorney given to me by the pagans. So you don't think they're going to make a quick call and say, hey, by the way, this guy, I know you told you he's a convicted felon. There's no felony a conviction. He never was convicted. Matter of fact, that name doesn't even exist. So there is a lot that goes into it and a lot that I don't spend a lot of time talking about. But I don't spend a lot of time talking about because I don't want to give up something. But just simple things, like, it's just more common sense, but like, you get all this junk mail at your house. Well, you get it because you belong to all sorts of different things. You do different things. But when you don't do anything because you don't exist,

you don't get junk mail. So like, how do you get junk mail? So you actually have to put in an effort to go out and get yourself on these mailing lists that you wish you could get your real life off. But you have to do that so you can have this stuff. Because when they come to your house in your apartment, you better have that stuff there. It can't be this sterile environment. Yeah, you need like a birthday card from a used car dealership that's like, come in and look for your new ride. Yeah, that annoying ass crap car warranty spam. Yeah, and you better have a story about like, what's your family? Who are your family? Where are they? Because they did, you know, background checks and they went and did surveillance on where I said I were. They did a lot of their homework on me. And so if you say, hey, your dad lives at 1, 2, 3 Main Street. They're going to go by to see if your dad's there. Now, they may not knock on the door. They may just sit there and watch to see if he comes out. Who knows what they're. they're going to do, but you better have your stuff squared away. What's really cringe that I remember reading in the book, this is really cringe. Y'all kiss each other on the lips as a greeting.

Like, what the heck is that about? That's so gross. It is a accepted biker, you know, they all do it. Most will kiss on the lips, some will kiss on the cheek. It's kind of hard to explain. Yeah, but it is what it is. But there's some that, like Hogman, dude had a blood fetish. Like, who wants to be kissing that guy?

Yeah, that's why it's gross. I don't care about the dude's kissing each other. lips, that's the least gross part. The part that's gross is these guys probably have hepatitis for the last 20 years from sharing needles and stuff. And a lot of them did. And it openly we tell you, I have hepatitis and be like, hey, by the way, you want to try my pasta. It's like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm all set, man. Thanks. And that's why, you know, I had a wonderful personal doctor who every opportunity was testing me for everything under the sun because you just never knew, you know, what you were being exposed to. Yeah, I have to clarify that. I don't want people

to think that it's a homophobic thing. That's far from it. It's mostly that these guys are, the guy you talked about before we licked the blood off the kittens. When you read the book, you'll understand why you wouldn't want to kiss a guy like that on the lips besides the kitten thing. That was like the G-rated version compared to the stuff that was in the book, and you said there was stuff that didn't even make it. And yeah, he's not the only gross one in the pack. That's for damn sure.

They would joke amongst themselves. You know, there was one guy named Wiz. Dude had lizard breath. And it was like, nobody wanted it. Every time he's come, they're like, oh, God, here comes Wiz. So they would joke amongst themselves about who is still part of the culture. You had to do it. but nobody enjoyed it, you know.

God. How do undercovers get permission to do illegal things? I had a guy on the show named Joe Barone. He was a mafia gangster turned FBI informant. He showed me a lot of his court documents and the FBI clearing him for doing illegal activity. But it was pretty vague. You know, it was like maybe involved in money laundering

and other racketeering gambling activities. And I was like, man, that's a wide berth of illegal stuff. But there's no one who's scripted, right? You don't know, like I was saying earlier. Like I don't know how my day was going to turn on. any day and you don't know what criminal activity. Now, there was never going to be a day that I was going to go out and be part of a murder or anything like that. You're not authorized to do it, nor would I do it even if I was. But, you know, when it came to narcotics trafficking or

weapons trafficking, then, yeah, those things could happen and did happen and that you had to have the authorization. So your agency, along with the U.S. Attorney's Office, they basically signed a memorandum saying that you're authorized to participate in these, you know, tier one, tier two activities, blah, blah, blah. And it's all part of when you're starting the case up and you get those things in order ahead of time. You did all this when you had kids. Your wife must have just loved that. That's so stressful already, but when you have kids and you're married, it's just 10x.

Yeah, like, I could tell you, people are always like, oh, I can't believe your marriage is surviving. I'm like, well, listen, the first thing I'll tell you, if you're ever looking for, like, how to strengthen your marriage, going undercover for two years is not going to be on that list of things to do. But, you know, my wife was an agent. And so that's great. She understood what it was.

but it was also horrible because she understood what it was. Right. You can't lie to her and be like, no, no, no, I'm safe the whole time. They're right next to me. I'm wearing a wire. She's like, that's bullshit and I know it. She could go in and pull up the report. She had access to the system.

That's even worse. She could see every single thing. So, yeah, there's absolutely no BS in her as to what it was. But yeah, and then she had the burden, you know, our girls who were teenagers at the time, you know, that's just a tough age to start with. And so she's dealing with that. She had her own job. And then she's got, you know, she's getting phone calls in the middle of the night that

can't get arrested or whatever was happening in that time because the case agent would try to keep her as up to day as he could to what my activities were. So it was a very tough time, really for the whole family. A lot of stuff with the kids was kept for me at the time because my wife wanted me to focus on what I was doing. And you learn a lot about it after or later. And even to this day, they now know they have a really good view of the case, but they didn't know a lot of what had happened. And then, you know, they read the book. And they're a big part of why I wrote the book. I had no intention of writing book. My wife and my daughters are like, you need to memorialize this because you'll be

gone someday and the story needs to be told. So that's what made me do it. Yeah, I loved it. I applauded to the book in two days. I mean, I'm a fast reader, but two days that's fast for a book of this size. That's good. I wanted it to be an easy read. I wanted to be, you know, an ability for somebody to come in and take a look inside my world during that

time to just really kind of get a feel for it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so your wife was an undercover as well. What was she what type of work was she doing? So it goes back to the original question about, hey, do you have to do undercover? And so my wife, Hispanic female, and so she was kind of like, hey, we need you to do this. And so she was working in New York. And so they would ask her to go in and buy drugs, more drugs, sometimes guns in the projects

in New York. And, you know, first of all, there's no cover team. Some of those projects go up 30, 40 floors. There's no cover team ever going to get to you. And being a female, that brings up a whole lot of other concerns and risk. She was very good at it. But she didn't like it. And when we were early dating and I was in California, and I had the better end of the deal

only because she'd be doing on it. We'd both be doing undercover at the same time or in the same day. And so for her, she'd be, you know, doing a drug by at 11 o'clock at night. Well, that's 8 o'clock for me. We would notify each other when we were safe. But for me, if I'm doing it at midnight, it's 3 o'clock in the morning for her. So she lost a lot of sleep over those that time because, you know, she wouldn't, you know, here for me.

And I was involved in the shooting in one of the undercover deals that I had done. She didn't hear from me for like a day. So there was a lot of stress that went with that. But she was really good at it. But when you got married and she came out to L.A., she's like, you know, I really just don't like this. I don't like doing it. I'm like, then don't do it.

And I said, here's a clean break. You come in a new division just so that the ASEC at the time, who was a really good guy, said, oh, I can't wait to get you going undercover. I heard all the stuff he did in New York. That's the special agent in charge, right? So he's like the assistant special agent in charge. So he's like, there's two of those below the special agent in charge. Oh, you said ASAC.

Okay. And he was like, hey, can't wait to get you involved in undercover work out here. You'll be a great fit. And so she told him, she's like, yeah, I'm not doing undercover work anymore. And he was like, what? What are you talking about? I was like, hey, this is a perfect opportunity. So she focused her career more on arson and explosives.

Arsend and explosives. Wow. Yeah, that was her thing. And more of a who done it, like something blows up and you figure out who did it, where mine was more like, okay, here's the people who are doing it, build the box around them type of thing. All right, part two coming up in a few days. Links to all things.

Ken Croke will be on the website in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links. If you do buy the book, it does help support the show. Transcripts are in the show notes, videos up on YouTube, advertisers, deals, and discount codes, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I always love talking with you there. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use every day. most of the guests who hear on the show are subscribing or contributing to the course or both.

So come join us. You'll be in great company. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you can find it. You've got to build those relationships, folks. Dig the well before you get thirsty. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you'd know somebody who's into these undercover true crime or biker gang stuff, cop stuff, share this episode with them. It's a great episode to get people started with our show. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike

Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.