Michelle Shepard
Appearances
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But he was an FBI undercover. There's a reason we couldn't put a name or a face to the voice.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The most of what we knew then about the undercover agent actually came from a man named Tom Lane.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Tom was the father of TMB, real name Luke Austin Lane. Luke had established the base's so-called small man 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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But why would you think he would be FBI? I mean, why would you think that there would be an FBI guy hanging around?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I knew from court documents that hint of racism was Nazi propaganda, and in particular, a flag hanging on Luke's bedroom wall.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
What was the actual flag? Was it something identifiable?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
So when you saw it, you didn't recognize it as that necessarily? Or you thought, okay, he's going through a Nazi phase?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's the crazy thing. All the time we were reporting and wondering about this Scott, he was listening, wanting to talk to us.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But you know, Tom Lane making excuses for his son didn't really surprise Scott.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
And the court documents make it clear that Luke Lane was an active recruiter.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But then he decided to talk to Rolling Stone.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's Paul Solitaroff, 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, a.k.a. Donnie Brasco.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But once you started talking, it turned into a profile of Scott. How did that happen?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Paul is an incredibly vivid writer. Go for it.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Scott's perspective is one we rarely hear. Journalists report, academics analyze and opine, lawyers debate the law.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
But what does it look like from the inside when far-right extremists believe they're among a fellow believer?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
That's coming up on Agent Pale Horse.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I'm like, just get out of my house.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
This series was written and produced by me, Michelle Shepard, senior producer Ashley Mack, and producer Eunice Kim. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Our intern was Rachel DeGasperis.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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 Evolvement 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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Okay, so... 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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
I'm Michelle Shepard. From CBC, this is White Hot Hate, Season 2. Agent Palehorse. 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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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. Fuck! We spoke for like an hour and a half.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Later, while running home, Ryan regurgitated everything they'd talked about, recording onto his phone. He...
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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 U.S. border. Matthews was a hot topic among both the Canadian and American feds.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
It was Patrick Matthews using the brand new call sign, Punished Snake, like it was an added disguise while on the lam.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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. Like, what did you feel at that moment?
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
Just Matthew's luck, he escaped the clutches of Canadian authorities, only to jump right into the arms of the FBI.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.
White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse
Season 2, Episode 1: The Insider
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.