Code Name: Pale Horse

How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis

Scott Payne, Michelle Shephard

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781668032923
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

New York Times bestseller • The thrilling true story of one man who risked his life to infiltrate the most dangerous neo-Nazi group in the United States, an “urgent and exciting look into the life of an FBI undercover agent” (Joseph D. Pistone, New York Times bestselling author) by “one of the top undercover agents in the Bureau” (Joaquin “Jack” Garcia, retired FBI agent and New York Times bestselling author).

When Scott Payne was growing up, an ‘80s kid with a big attitude and a taste for sleeveless shirts, he could never have envisioned where he’d find himself on Halloween night 2019. Having transformed into “Pale Horse” and infiltrated the nation’s most dangerous, fastest-growing white supremacy group, The Base, he was huddled with a cell of neo-Nazis in the backwoods of Georgia as they slaughtered a goat and drank its blood in a ritual sacrifice.

A decorated agent dubbed the “Hillbilly Donnie Brasco,” Payne takes readers along with him on some of the most terrifying and riskiest assignments in FBI history. He went deep undercover with the lethal Outlaw Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts; to the front lines of the opioid epidemic in Tennessee; and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Through it all, he stayed married to the love of his life, raised two girls, and spent his Sundays at church, sustained by family and faith.

Timely and unputdownable, Code Name: Pale Horse is a hard look at some of the most pressing threats facing America today. Honest and inspiring, it’s the story of a hero determined to take down a hateful army—before the unthinkable could come to pass.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: High School Confidential
• Chapter 2: The Badge
• Chapter 3: Operation Roadkill
• Chapter 4: Running on Empty
• Chapter 5: The Basement
• Chapter 6: The Crash
• Chapter 7: Marlboro Man
• Chapter 8: Pill Sick
• Chapter 9: I Reckon I Got a Little Bit of Hatred
• Chapter 10: The Klan Band
• Chapter 11: I Know a Guy
• Chapter 12: Save Your Race, Join the Base
• Chapter 13: Hate Camps
• Chapter 14: The Wild Hunt
• Chapter 15: The Camping Trip
• Chapter 16: The Boogaloo
• Chapter 17: Fade to Black
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• A Note on Sources
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright