We return to Scott’s time with The Base, the neo-Nazi accelerationist group bent on sparking a race war. Taking down this violent cell of white supremacists takes everything he’s learned in his decades-long undercover career. And then… retirement. For someone who has spent his whole life pretending to be someone he’s not: who is Scott Payne?
Chapter 1: What are the warnings about this episode?
The following episode contains strong language, graphic descriptions of animal abuse and racist violence. Please take care when listening. Okay, so tell me the line that I've heard you say many times. Yeah, I knew you were going to get to that. That's unpredictable. Do you want me to say it? Should I say it for you?
In 25 years, I've never had to burn Bibles, set fire to an American flag, I'm damn sure I've never been.
Do I sound that country?
No, I just have to still work on my accent.
Okay, all right. You sound like I mean it.
This may be a weird time to confess something, but I don't trust cops very much. I blame it in part on a career of being suspicious of authority, being lied to or shut down when trying to report. I was once part of a team at the Toronto Star that was sued by the Toronto Police Union for $2.6 billion.
They claimed a series we published that showed racial bias among the police defamed the entire police force. We won the suit, with costs. And then after 9-11, I covered many, many cases of young Muslim men who were profiled and had their lives ruined. Many of those cases involved undercover police operatives and their conduct smacked of entrapment.
It's well reported that the FBI did not have a great reputation for undercover investigations. But it wasn't just post-9-11 cases. There are recent examples too. In October 2020, the FBI announced it had foiled a plan to kidnap and possibly assassinate Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan state governor.
It was a massive sting operation that involved two undercover FBI agents and as many as a dozen informants. But the case started to unravel when they got to court with allegations of FBI entrapment. In the end, four of the 14 men pleaded guilty and another five were convicted, but the rest were acquitted.
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Chapter 2: What is Scott's experience with undercover work?
Five changes of clothing, good quality boots, preferably black.
Despite his youth, Luke had become the leader of one of the base's most successful cells, mostly because they held a lot of in-person training. They were prepping for their boogaloo, when they believe a civil war will cause society to collapse and their white power movement can take control.
Members from around the country would descend on his family's land and spend days learning to shoot, fight, and survive in the wilderness.
Luke was like, you know, I forget how he worded it, but basically you need to be able to use the bathroom because him and his dad's place was on a septic tank. And he said, I can't have, you know, 15, 20 guys going up there flushing the toilet every day.
He was like, you better know how to shit in the woods.
Something like that. Yeah. I mean, bring something. Yeah. I mean, you know, whether you've got your own like portable bucket with a lid or whatever. And I called Luke and I'm like, hey, do you guys have Port-A-John rentals down there? Because here I am an older guy. I actually have a J-O-B. I got a job. You know, I got money. Whereas a lot of these kids are still living at their parents' house.
They don't even have a car, but they've got an arsenal. And I ended up getting one. And, you know, he bragged. He's like, hey, everybody think, you know, pale horse. He basically got us a shitter.
Did they ever try and bring that up in court as like providing material support to terrorism?
They call it what they want. I'm like, hey, I need a bathroom. That's what I'm saying.
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Chapter 3: What was the purpose of the hate camp?
You know, like one of them, he was skin and bones. Here's a guy who hasn't slept in well over 24 hours. He worked third shift, drove straight from Austin, Texas, except for the slight moment he fell asleep somewhere in Alabama and rear-ended somebody on Adderall. And you're trying to watch this guy hold a weapon, and you're like, oh, my goodness, man. Not good. Not good.
Scott has to tread carefully. He doesn't want to blow his cover, for one thing. But this is also where accusations of entrapment can come up later. So he has to act innocent and eager to learn, not like a guy who gets paid to train others to shoot.
I chose not to come in as, like, Mr. Instructor because it's kind of a liability thing. You got to remember, in the FBI, we got a bunch of attorneys sitting back at headquarters. And they're like, well, if you go in there and you coach this person and you actually help them get better at their shooting and they go shoot somebody, well, they definitely don't want to do that, right?
I don't want to help them get better if they're planning on doing illegal, nefarious things to innocent people.
After a long day, he retires to his truck to rest his bones, which are about twice as old as those of the other members.
I remember walking back to my truck, and I couldn't even open the door. It was solid ice. And I looked at the back of the truck, and I went, I'm not sleeping in that. Because I had a sleeping bag, but it was not set up for that cold. So I cranked up my truck, and I slept in the truck with the heat on. And the next thing I know, my window is pounding.
Hey, hey, pale horse, pale horse, wake up, wake up. You're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. You know the goat? Yeah, we got it.
What you're about to hear next may sound familiar. We briefly covered this hate camp in Season 1 of White Hot Hate. But the details were secondhand, drawn only from court documents and media reports. Scott was right there in the thick of it.
And I'm like, oh, well, let me get up. I walk out and I see that several of the members had... They stole a goat. I think it was a guy had like three goats or rams. I think the difference is the size. I mean, it had horns and stuff, but they stole the goat and I wake up to see the goat in the back of Kent Go-Back's truck.
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Chapter 4: What did Scott witness during the goat sacrifice?
And then I think Pestilence says, does anybody have a gun?
No surprise, someone did.
So I'm back there holding this goat and I look and Eisen's pointing the gun at the goat, but then he just turns his head completely the other way. And I've seen Eisen shoot and handle a weapon and he's not good at all. Then the firearms instructor and tactical instructor comes out at me and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, I go, look at what you're shooting at. We're all in a circle, man.
Boom.
And now the goat's kicking.
Scott manages to convince Eisen to put the animal out of its misery with another shot. It's what Odin would want.
Then... They start cutting the neck of the goat and filling some type of glass with its blood. So now we're in this circle, and to start the shaman, we're still in our worshiping experience. Now, Aizen pulls out his sheets of acid, and he's breaking off pieces, and everybody's in a circle kind of on their knees, and Aizen is going to go to each person.
He's going to give you the acid, and then you drink the blood of the goat.
Scott says no to the psychedelics, choosing to hold the flashlight for the group instead. The cup makes its way around the circle until it reaches the member calling himself Big Siege.
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Chapter 5: How does Scott navigate the neo-Nazi group?
So I'm walking back to my truck, and I'm like, okay, here it is, Halloween. I'm freezing my living tail off. I was so cold, I backed up so close to the fire, I'd burnt the back bottom of my pants. Didn't even realize it. I've drank blood. I've ate a gamey, gamey, crappy goat. And here I am wanting to knock about half the crew out.
And I'm just walking back to my truck, and I'm thinking, man, happy effing Halloween, you know?
I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.
I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.
Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, wherever you get your podcasts.
So I get a notification in wire in our chat group for the Georgia cell and it looked normal. Hey, is everybody available for this date for a training kind of thing?
It's about a month after the hate camp, and again, Luke Lane is planning another in-person meeting. At first glance, the instructions seem to suggest that Scott and the rest of the cell are going postering. That means putting up the base propaganda around town, unseen. But then Pestilence, real name Jacob Catterley, asks, Should I bring a certain type of weapon?
And Luke said, bring the sub.
The sub meant a Kel-Tec Sub 2000 9mm semi-automatic rifle. The FBI's Atlantic case team pushed Scott to find out more.
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Chapter 6: What were the plans for the assassination?
Matthews was supposed to join in on the murder, but the Georgia crew had soured on him after the hate camp and all agreed he wasn't up to the task. They told Scott they thought he knew too much and would talk. So they made another plan. Kill the anti-fascist couple first, then kill Matthews.
Luke even joked and said that Pat was asking him what size of plate carriers and stuff he would need. And Luke gave him his own size because he's thinking, hey, you guys keep spending money and stocking up because when we come kill you, we're going to take all your shit.
So there was an opening for Scott if he was willing. The murders were to take place in a week. Scott's first step in buying time was to point out that this assassination plan was half-baked.
dude, look at how thorough you are just to go put up posters. Look at this op sec. Look at all this stuff you do just to put up stickers. And I mean, who's going to jail for putting up stickers on a pole that's already got stickers on it? Unless you just don't want people to dox you because you're putting up hate stuff. And you're telling me we're getting ready to go kill somebody in about a week.
And you've never even been by the house. Why are you so haste? And he said, I'm just tired of waiting. I want to do something. And then it hit me that my legend was a site survey specialist.
That was Scott's backstory in this case, an aging white supremacist biker who lived in Texas and had a day job doing site surveys.
And I said, man. if you can give me the location that we're going to be looking at, I said, this is what I do for a living. I go, I can go in here and I can make it look like I'm looking at residential areas or mercantile areas to buy land. And I'm going to pull up the zoning laws. I'm going to start comparing neighborhoods. I'm going to look at demographics. I'm going to look at crime.
I'm going to look at schools. It may take a little bit. I said, but I can do this, have everything we need on that couple at that house.
Luke agreed it was a good idea. Scott had successfully given the Atlanta FBI team more time. Roughly a week later, Scott was back in Georgia and ready to play chauffeur. He'd be driving the base members around, checking out the couple's house and neighborhood.
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Chapter 7: How does Scott's background aid his undercover role?
A couple days later, a sick, worn-down Scott is standing in a motel bathroom. After all the prep and many practice runs with the SWAT team, the FBI were ready to begin making coordinated arrests of base members. Scott gives himself a pre-showtime pep talk in the mirror.
And, you know, it's all steamy, and I'm, like, feeling like crap. And I wipe the mirror off, and I look in there, and I said, get behind me, Satan. I said, you and all your minions can jump on my coattails all you want, but I'm finishing this damn case. We're crossing the finish line. And I'm sure I said it out loud, too, because that's me. I'm a verbal guy. But I know, right, shocker? Yeah.
Scott goes to pick up Luke Lane from his house just to take him for lunch and talk more about the upcoming assassinations. He'd made sure that Luke was going to be unarmed.
I told him the day before, you know, let's make sure as we're getting close to this murder, these murders of this family and stuff, the last thing we need to do is be driving around town and get pulled over. And even if we got the guns legally, we don't want to be on anybody's radar. And he's like, yeah, man, I agree. So when he hops in my truck, I'm like, hey, You're clean, right?
You don't have any gun on you. He said, no, no, no. I was going to pretend that something was wrong with my truck. And lo and behold, it's a sound. I don't know what happened. I didn't hit a hole, but it made a very loud noise. And I was like, did you hear that? And Luke goes, yeah. I said, if this damn truck is messed up again, I said, I swear I just paid to get this thing fixed. So we pull left.
And as we're coming to the spot, I was like, hey, you know what? I'm just going to pull over real quick. I didn't want to be suspicious, but I needed to get him close to a fence so he wouldn't be able to easily open his door and run kind of thing. So I'm kind of pulling up beside it. And while I'm around at the back of the truck, kind of acting like I'm looking at stuff, another truck pulls up.
And it's actually one of the case agents. And he pulls up and he's like, hey man, you need any help? And as I'm walking towards him, I'm like, dude, how long have you had this truck? This is a nice truck. As I'm saying all that and kind of trying to draw the attention from Luke to us, I see out of my peripheral vision that Bearcat's pretty much pulling right up on that door.
A Bearcat is an enormous armored vehicle. It's something you'd expect in war zones, not in rural Georgia.
You got a guy and the SWAT team up in the turret. Guns are all aimed in and I dive in the back of the agent's truck going, go, go, go, go, go. And he's hauling ass out of there. And all I can hear is, you know, the commands from the SWAT team screaming.
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