Episode 58 | THE FBI'S MOST DEVASTATING UNDERCOVER AGENT (Part 2)

This is Part 2 and final part of our story about an undercover FBI agent who lived an incredibly dangerous and storied life. He put his ass on the line in a big and frightening way, infiltrating motorcycle gangs and other criminal syndicates and domestic terrorism cells all while being a husband and father. This is his unbelievable story. ★Enjoy!

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Transcript

PART 2

If you are a top agent for the FBI, your career can take one of two paths. Sometime in your thirties, you are encouraged to climb the career ladder by applying for an SSA (Supervisory Special Agent) position. There's a big pay jump, and maybe you'll get home in time for dinner. Then it's a straight shot to the boss's job. Unfortunately, the great undercover agents avoid this path because they despise careerist cops. Instead, stars like Morpheus often stay in their lane and build their brand by becoming master teachers. When he moved to domestic terrorism in 2015, Morpheus was his department's tactical instructor and taught its firearms qualification courses. He was also a tough-as-nails mentor at the Undercover School, a two-week crucible of stress and sleep deprivation that breaks some of the candidates who sign up. Some even airlifted to hospitals. Damn.

Morpheus was in Phoenix training online coverts when he ran into a compadre from Ohio. He and "Jim," a veteran cop assigned to Joint Terror, were the Hans and Franz twins of undercover: two turbo-muscled dudes with kitted out Harleys and enough tattoos to form a biker gang of their own and enough ink leftover to outfit a metal band or two. Each of them had heard rumors about the Base and wanted to take a case quickly. So one night they bought a fifth of their favorite poison and stayed up to give Morpheus an alias. They used fascist pseudonyms and turned his social media into a source of Holocaust slurs. But as hard as they tried, being banned from Facebook, or "Jewbook" as young racists like to call it, proved problematic. A screenshot of your ejection from Facebook is a very useful chip if you want instant recognition and props from terror groups.

So Morpheus took it upon himself to tag the base directly in his posts. He wrote to the web address they had posted on Gab, calling himself WhiteWarrior88. That same evening, they emailed him a questionnaire. After a few days of back and forth, a voice chat ensued with some of the members, including a man who called himself Roman Wolf. Morpheus was asked about his fighting skills and what he was willing to risk for his beliefs. The accelerationists like to boast that they are a leaderless cell and that their crypto abilities protect them from being attacked. But it had taken Morpheus only a day to reach the base online and a week to speak directly with their leader. Amateur hour folks.

So the leader Roman Wolf - real name: Rinaldo Nazzaro - was no bloodthirsty warlord whose hateful worldview stemmed from the horrors of war. Wolf graduated from a prep school in New Jersey and dropped out at Villanova, where he presented himself as an anarchist opposed to government interference. He had really nothing in common with the Base kids he urged to "finish" what Hitler had started. Those guys were loners in the rural South, while Wolf and his wife lived comfortably in Russia after leaving America in 2018. Everything about him sounded pompous and smug, from his credentials as a mercenary in the Middle East to his counterterrorism skills at an intelligence firm. There is evidence that he worked for the Department of Homeland Security from 2004 to 2006, but he did not learn much on the job. The firewall he built around his white terror operation was repeatedly breached by the media. For example, he bought land in Washington state to hold grassroots hate camps, but the location was leaked by a Vice reporter and overrun by Antifa types. The kids in his western cell quickly left the group and Wolf had to start over in the east. 

The day after his interview, he was invited to join the Base. Wolf put him in touch with the nearest cell leader — a guy in Rome, Georgia, named Luke Lane. Unaware at the time he was the guy they’d been hunting under his call name, TMB [The Militant Buddhist].

Before long, Morpheus drove to meet 20 year old Lane and Pestilence, 19. They approached Morpheus in the standard issue of young fascists: black BDUs bloused into combat boots. Lane told Morpheus to put his cell on airplane mode, then wanded him with a contraption he’d never seen. A detector that picks up waves from any recording device — lucky for him the recording device his team had fitted his truck with was fuzzed out by the power lines he’d parked under. 

He wondered How these kids could get their hands on equipment that FBI doesn't have? He asked himself that question, throughout the weekend as he saw at the arsenal of weapons they had amassed. What amazed Morpheus was all their extra gear: bulletproof vests with ceramic plates that could stop a AK bullet, and loaded combat backpacks with gas masks and magnetic clips and everything you need in a firefight. 

Morpheus says Lane lived on a farm that was not habitable. There was a house on the property surrounded by refuse, but that was somehow rented to a tenant. Lane and his father slept in the attic of the converted barn, where they shared a kitchen and bathroom with Lane's sister. The father worked construction and was gone all day, but neither his son nor Lane's best friend had a job. Pestilence - real name: Jacob Kaderli - was an unemployed teenager who somehow managed to scrape together the dough for combat gear. Helter-Skelter - real name: Michael Helterbrand - was the only member of Georgia who had a legit gig. He worked in IT. Lane, however, was the oddest of the three: an eighth-grade dropout who had left school to read Mein Kampf and trade guns all night online.

At night, after hours of training maneuvers and honing their Sieg Heil poses, the Base boys would sit beneath an awning by the barn, drinking Jägermeister and trading tin-foil theories. Talking about the Earth being concave, or that Hitler’s living in Middle Earth, along with a race of giants.’” 

For the next three months, Morpheus (renamed PaleHorse) traveled to Georgia twice a month and met with his support team at an off-site location. In a decommissioned schoolhouse, the Feds wired him up to record for two days straight (They also had a plane fly overhead, filming the group's movements from four miles up.) For 48 hours, his backups overheard the base boys burning Bibles and U.S. flags, cutting themselves to bleed on Norse runes, and railing against Jesus. What the Feds didn’t catch were the names and dates of the targets; the Georgia cell took pains to speak vaguely. Morpheus sensed they were hatching something, but he couldn’t get them to say it. In the meantime, his case was growing bigger by the day.

Sometime in August, three more dudes turned up; one became a fixture on the farm. He had a scrawny beard and was evasive about his origins, but his Manitoba twang made it obvious. Patrik Mathews was a Canadian Reserve private trained in explosives who had fled Canada after being outed as a neo-Nazi by a reporter. Half the FBI was looking for this piece of work, who had sneaked across the border weeks earlier. Members of the Georgia cell were impressed with his skills and commitment to the cause. Lane's father let him stay at his farm, where Mathews slept in a horse barn for two months.

Then there were the other two who’d come down with him. Can’t-Go-Back — real name: Brian Lemley — was an Army vet and truck driver who’d met Mathews near the border and gave him a safe house for a while in Virginia. Eisen - real name: William Bilbrough - was another middle-earther nutjob and self-taught ninja whose fight skills weren't worth a damn. These three wanted to start a race war ASAP. Mathews, who called himself PunishSnake, had the self-awareness of a psychotic. He was, as he put it, "invisible," the perfect killing machine because, as far as anyone knew, he was dead. Whether drunk or sober, he seethed with rage. That fall, establishing their own cell in Delaware, Mathews and Lemley built a ghost gun, hatched plans to kill cops for their weapons, and plotted a gun rally on the steps of the Virginia Capitol.

Meanwhile, Morpheus was under high pressure to bust the Georgia cell. It’s insanely expensive to run a multi-state operation against a terrorist group that keeps growing. By October, the FBI had targeted dozens of members, and bureaus from New York to L.A. were opening cases against suspects in their region. Morpheus would answer the phone once a week at 10 a.m. and update the other teams on his progress. Sometimes, upwards of a hundred people on the line, eager to be brought up to speed. 

That Halloween weekend, Lane and Pestilence shared plans with Morpheus. As they sat around the campfire after everyone else had left, they told him to put his phone on ice. They spoke of “developed goals" to pursue. Lane didn’t name names, but wanted to know if Morpheus was ready for anything. "Brothers, you know I am" Morpheus said. "Just tell me when and where - and give me a few days to get the cards straight."

Just before Thanksgiving, Morpheus was briefed on Wire through a channel used only by the Base cell. Lane told him to be back there in mid-December, and bring all your gear "for a family-friendly camping trip." Morpheus drove there on the appointed day, making sure to arrive before the others. "Whatcha got?" he asked Lane when the two were at the barn. We're gonna go whack an Antifa couple who live an hour away. “Damn, That isn't nothin' I want to take my personal truck to.” Morpheus grilled Lane: who lives in the house with them? Are there children and pets present? How close is their bedroom to the neighbors?

 Lane admitted he knew none of those things; he agreed to delay the hit to do recon. Morpheus said he’d get the intel himself. Afterall his cover job — site surveying — gave him credentials to pull deeds and housing floor plans. He slow-walked that “research” and took a stealth trip up North, training with teh Canadian reservist nutjob Mathews and Army vet Lemley in Delaware. Mathews let him in on their plot.

There was a Second Amendment rally in Virginia coming up that was fixin to be a powder keg. Democrats had just taken power in the state and were planning strict gun control measures. While tens of thousands of people cavorted on the steps of the Capitol, they would set up a hundred yards back and pick off cops and troopers. A circular firing squad would be triggered: the cops would shoot the gun nuts, the gun nuts would shoot Antifa, and the bystanders would be gunned down in the middle. A beautiful hot mess. Meanwhile a wall camera the FBI had installed while the two men were at work, recorded everything Mathews spoke of his plans.

Morpheus had gotten enough to bag the Delaware cell. But he needed a little luck now to take out those devils down in Georgia. It's not enough to film people talking about murder - they have to actually do something to advance that conspiracy in order for charges to be brought. It was January 2020, and the window of opportunity was closing fast. If Morpheus didn't act before the rally in nine days, the Georgia cell would disperse as soon as Mathews was busted.

On January 12, Morpheus drove back to Rome: Lane announced that the attack was set in stone.. His pulse raced when he heard what they had acquired. They had collection bags for their arms - bags that attach to the ejection ports of the rifles and catch the spent cartridges as they discharge. They had drilled a silencer for a pistol and would buy frog tape to tape up their pant legs so no flakes of skin would be left at the scene. Bit extreme but hey they are extremists after all!!  (They also planned to don adult diapers, ‘cause they'd heard people shit themselves the first time they kill someone). For his part, Morpheus produced some pictures of the house, but couldn't get his hands on a list of current tenants. To which Helter-Skelter chimed in "If there are kids there, we should kill ‘em. I have no problem killing communist kids.."

The original plan was for Helter to drive and the other three to just barge in guns a blazin’. But Helter wanted to “pop his cherry" - it would be his first kill. Waiting in the truck would be lame. Otherwise, the plan remained the same. They would rent a single room in a dive motel, shower there, scrub off their dead skin, and put on their disposable murder outfits.Don’t forget the diapers, you nimrods! Morpheus would steal a truck with out-of-state plates and someone would bring accelerants to burn the joint down. They'd be in and out in minutes, murdering anything that moved and leaving an inferno for the cops.

It was January 15, Morpheus invited Lane out to lunch. As they left the farm on the dirt road Morpheus feigned he’d heard a strange noise coming from his pickup truck. "Shit!" he said to Lane as he pulled over. "If this piece of crap messes up again…"

As he got out and walked to the back of the truck another pickup passed him on the road. The driver stopped and asked Morpheus if he needed help. While they were talking, an armored BearCat came over the hill, a gunner in the turret with an M-4. Morpheus and the other driver jumped in that truck and took off like bats outta hell. The SWAT team in the armored vehicle quickly surrounded Lane with guns drawn and that was that. 1 down, many more to go.

A few hours later, south of Atlanta a team arrested Pestilence at his parent's home. His folks proclaimed their innocence about their son's intentions, but Morpheus claims otherwise stating that Pestilence said he would show his dad videos of their training sessions.

At five in the afternoon, authorities arrested Helter-Skelter as he was leaving his IT job in Georgia. The three cell members were held without bail and charged with a number of crimes: conspiracy to commit murder, arson, trespassing, and - finally - animal cruelty to that poor goat. The next day, January 16, SWAT teams in two towns arrested Mathews, Lemley and Bilbrough. BigSiege - real name: Yousef Barasneh - was arrested together with a second member for defacing places of worship. Lanzer - real name: Richard Tobin - was charged with conspiracy in these crimes: he was the one who planned a nationwide attack on churches and temples. Months later, police nabbed ZoomGnat - real name: Duncan Trimmell - the deranged kid that traveled all the way from Texas to participate in the Halloween carnage. They picked up Dima too - real name: Brandon Ashley. Both were charged with the beheading of that poor goat.

In all, the FBI nabbed 11 members, dismantling the group. The evidence Morpheus gathered against them was so compelling that they all took pleas and prison time. As for Nazzaro, the leader of the Base, who denies any involvement in their plans, well he sits all comfy in his fortress in Russia, far beyond the reach of law enforcement. From there he works on recruiting his next group of racists, protected by the U.S. Constitution and Russia. What irony. Since he is still an American citizen, he has the First Amendment right to polemicize against the slaughter of civilians. Does he wish for the overthrow of government and the extermination of blacks and Jews, or are these just the rantings of a middle-aged troll from the dark side of the moon?

That antifa couple in Georgia the Base planned to murder? Well, it turns out they were neither Antifa nor a couple. And they didn’t even live together! They were total strangers photographed standing near each other at a rally. Guess that's what happens when you recruit child soldiers who can’t read a photo caption. Sowing the grounds for a war in which everyone is the enemy, and the killers we have to fear most are our own kids.

When Morpheus retired, his town had a big bash for him. The mayor and lieutenant governor read statements of honor, the domestic terrorism chiefs flew in from Washington, and one of their senior analysts gave a toast to his exploits saying "No one in this room, has any idea how many lives this guy has saved in the last five years." She congratulated Morpheus on his retirement and presented him with a bottle of aged bourbon. On the back of the bottle was a ghost engraving: the original G-Man wearing a fedora and holding a submachine gun.

There’s a guilt Morpheus has for not being there to see his kids grow up. He mourns the missed birthdays and the marital dust-ups, the calls from his sobbing wife while he was halfway across the country, way overcommitted to a case. He says. “The shit I saw, I’m never gonna unsee.”

And so, the time came to pack ‘er up. Morpheus just stopped cold turkey. Like a funeral of sorts, he tossed his work phones, and unsubscribed from all the platforms: a funeral for all his fake selves. There’s only so much evil you can will yourself to swallow before it turns to poison in your throat. Now he enjoys the freedom of his Harley and the twisties way up in the Appalachians. Far away from all the baddies that he sent to the clink but still close to all the disturbing memories.