OPERATION BLACK BISCUIT

True Spies Episode 95: Operation Black Biscuit

NARRATOR: Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission, you’ll hear the true stories behind the world’s greatest espionage operations. You’ll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? This is True Spies.

JAY DOBYNS: They had exposed themselves to us. They were compromised. We knew too much. We were too close. And so their logical solution to that was to eliminate us. And so my reaction was: “Let me prove to you that I am who I say I am. There is a Mongol in Mexico. Let me go down there and kill him.” 

NARRATOR: That man - the man volunteering to murder someone - is Jay Dobyns, but at this moment he is known as Jay ‘Bird’ Davis. A few weeks later, a man lies face down in the sand of the Mexican desert. His wrists and ankles are bound with duct tape. He wears a black leather jacket with the sleeves torn off and a sewn-on patch across the shoulders that reads ‘Mongols’. Among the dust and dirt, blood begins to darken on the back of the man’s head, his hands, his jacket. Under an unrelenting sun, flies gather. Bird stands over the man, feeling the full force of the 100-degree heat bearing down on him. He takes a picture. 

JAY DOBYNS: Anybody, any normal, logical, reasonable person, when confronted with that story and with that evidence, would be running the opposite direction, dialing 911. The Hells Angels were the exact opposite. They embraced us like we were heroes. They took their vests off and put them on our backs and said: “Welcome, you’re Hells Angels now. Welcome to the gang.”

NARRATOR: Now, I know you’ve heard stories of deep-cover before, but how deep is too deep? When it comes to infiltrating one of the most violent and notorious outlaw motorcycle clubs in the world - the Hells Angels - is there anything that’s off-limits?

JAY DOBYNS: If I don't tell the truth, if I am not transparent about my mistakes and my failures, all the successes are counterfeit too. I have to tell the story honestly in order to have any credibility, and I failed and made mistakes along the way that I regret and that I'm ashamed of. If all I do is pat myself on the back and tell a hero story, it's incomplete.

NARRATOR: In this episode of True Spies, deception finds new depths. This is the story of one agent who would stop at almost nothing, for the chance to pull off one of the greatest cases of all time.

JAY DOBYNS: My name is Jay Dobyns. I was a federal agent for 27 years, working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the United States, which focuses on gun crime, violent crime, and explosive crime.

NARRATOR: Unlike many, Jay’s route to law enforcement didn’t start with a burning desire to serve his country or to catch the bad guys. 

JAY DOBYNS: When I was a young man, I was an athlete. I was a football player and that was my dream.

NARRATOR: But as soon as he found himself playing amongst the elite, an uncomfortable reality set in. 

JAY DOBYNS: I just wasn't a good enough player to play on the highest level. A dream that I had for my entire life - and had planned on - was not coming true. 

NARRATOR: He needed a Plan B.

JAY DOBYNS: At the time, the television show Miami Vice was very popular and I was intrigued by the sexiness of it, the glamor of it.

NARRATOR: Miami Vice - responsible for many a true spy!

JAY DOBYNS: Sonny Crockett was running around South Beach Miami in a Lamborghini. And he had guns under his arm and he was dressed in cool Hugo Boss suits. And so I ended up joining the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - ATF. The reality came true that, when I was actually operating, that life was very much different. It was really a nasty, dirty, vomit-covered scab of a life. But once I realized that the illusion that had been created for me wasn't true, I loved it. I loved every day of it.

NARRATOR: For most of us, the first week in a new job is usually intense. 

JAY DOBYNS: I got hired on a Monday and four days later on a Thursday I was taken hostage and I was shot. I got shot point-blank in the back. The bullet traveled through my lung. It narrowly missed my heart as it exited my chest. And so, after four days on the job, I was laying in the dirt and grime of a trailer park, bleeding to death. Blood was coming out of my chest like you were holding your thumb over the end of a garden hose. We get paid every two weeks. I hadn't even received a paycheque yet.

NARRATOR: At this point, most people would have walked away, grateful to at least be able to tell the tale, but not Jay.

JAY DOBYNS: It empowered me. I looked at myself, man. I just had a bullet go through my chest. I'm invincible, I'm bullet-proof. 

NARRATOR: Perhaps it was here that Jay ‘Bird’ Davis was truly born? Fifteen years before, he started to make inroads into one of the world’s most depraved criminal gangs. Certainly, it was here that Jay breathed new life into his desire to become the best undercover agent he could be. 

JAY DOBYNS: I packed as much undercover work and experience and lessons learned as I could into that time. So I accumulated hundreds of undercover operations - everything from buying guns, buying drugs, buying gang infiltrations, home invasion group infiltrations, murder for hire cases where I played the role of a hitman... So when that opportunity came for the Hells Angels infiltration, I wouldn't say that I was prepared for it - because I'm not sure that anything prepares you for that - but I was equipped with experience, knowledge, training, and successes and failures. And all those lessons learned put me in a position to have a chance. 

NARRATOR: So how does an offer like that come about?

JAY DOBYNS: I had an established reputation in the criminal community in the area of operation that was being targeted. And then, the case agent was a long-time friend of mine, a fabulous case agent named Joe Slatalla, who approached me and asked me how I felt about taking a run at the Hells Angels. 

NARRATOR: One small problem. Jay would be cast as an expert biker in this role and - although his undercover skills were impressive - his motorcycle skills were average at best.

JAY DOBYNS: It was a trial by fire for me. I had some skills, but the skills to keep up with people who've been riding motorcycles since before they could walk, like… I wasn't there. When you're riding with the Hells Angels, there's only one way to ride and it's to keep up. And if you don't keep up, you're going to get a beating. That's their standard, man. I had this grip-it and rip-it mentality. Hold on. Roll the throttle back and try to keep up. When these guys are right around at 100 miles an hour - 12, 18 inches apart off each other's wheels - was like, man, I'm not going to die behind a bullet. In this case, I'm going to die driving my motorcycle into a telephone pole at 100 miles an hour. 

NARRATOR: Motorcycle skills or not, he was the man selected for the job. 

JAY DOBYNS: Most of the people who looked at the objective of the mission felt like it was impossible for good reason. I think that, probably, what I brought to the table, is not that I was some superhero undercover agent. What I had going for me is that I was always willing to try. Willingness was probably my best attribute. I was always willing to take cases and raise my hand for investigations that other people didn't want to take on for various reasons, whether they be too dangerous or impossible. So the Hells Angels, what made it so daunting, is that they are truly uniquely paranoid in the criminal world. And they're paranoid for good reason. That's how they stay out of prison. They don't trust outsiders. They don't want outsiders around them because they realize how compromising that is. So overcoming that built-in paranoia where every single thing about you is scrutinized - how you look, how you walk, how you talk, how you dress, the car, you drive, the motorcycle you ride… How well do you ride? Where do you live? What did your living conditions look like? Who do you associate with? What's your reputation? What's your history? All those things are looked at and broken down in the eyes of the Hells Angels to the most micro detail, all trying to see if you are who you say you are. If you're someone that can be trusted. 

NARRATOR: In late Spring of 2002, this so-called Mission Impossible was officially named Operation Black Biscuit - ice hockey fans will know that black biscuit is slang for a hockey puck. And Case Agent Joe Slatalla happened to be a big Detroit Red Wings fan.

JAY DOBYNS: To open up the objective was not to infiltrate the Hells Angels, it was to get matched to them. It was to find out who is responsible for the violence? Who's orchestrating those plans? Who's putting those events together? And then, who are the members that are actually responsible for the violent acts? There were two events that were very important. When we began, the Hells Angels had murdered an innocent woman named Cynthia Garcia. She was a mother with a bunch of kids who were in the wrong place and at the wrong time and ended up being murdered very violently - very brutally beaten - dragged into the desert where they attempted to cut her head off. It was a very wicked crime. We knew that was out there, lingering. And then, the Hells Angels had gotten into a massive riot at a casino in Laughlin, Nevada, where these two gangs - the Hells Angels and the Mongols - had clashed. It left members dead. There were dozens of victims. There were hundreds of people involved, and it was all captured on closed-circuit cameras. The Hells Angels were operating violently, with impunity, in the West. 

NARRATOR: Jay’s - or rather ‘Bird’s - existing cover as a gun runner in Nevada - acquiring firearms for Mexican cartels, and a debt collector who collected money for people involved in casinos or mafias - meant he was in the perfect position to execute Stage One of the plan. 

JAY DOBYNS: Those two things almost naturally evolve to where suspects believed that I was a contract killer. And so, I just ran forward with that vibe. I presented that mantra. 

NARRATOR: But even with tight cover stories and hugely experienced agents, how do you set about gaining access to such an exclusive criminal gang? Presumably, you can’t just ride up and ask: “Can I join the club?”

JAY DOBYNS: There's a very much established hierarchy in the biker world of organized crime. You have the big boys. You have the Bandidos. You have the Pagans. You have the Outlaws. And at the top of that mountain, the king of the mountain, are the Hells Angels. Then below those big four biker gangs are a lot of other outlaw motorcycle gangs that typically support one of those big four groups.

NARRATOR: The task force decides to use one of Jay’s pre-existing informants who have contacts in a smaller biker gang called the Solo Angels, supporters of the Hells Angels. 

JAY DOBYNS: We got next to them and got with them solely for the purpose of wearing their gang colors, their patch so that we would have credibility in the eyes of the Hells Angels. We weren't complete outsiders in the eyes of the Hells Angels. Now we were already part of that biker world.

NARRATOR: By the summer of 2002, the plan is working and Jay and his fellow undercovers are getting closer and closer to their targets. But the closer they get, the closer their identities are scrutinized. 

JAY DOBYNS: One of the things that I was good at was setting up street theaters, putting on a play, a skit, a hoax, a bluff in the presence of our suspects. Enhance our credibility. Street theater involves inaccurate conclusions formed behind accurate observations. So I set up a series of street theaters that involved the Hells Angels in plays, skits, using other undercover agents with roles, do a drug deal, do a gun deal, get in a bar fight, throw parties, do all these things that a lot of times the people involved appeared to be other criminals. I was involved in criminal activity. I made the Hells Angels aware of it. If they had their own unwitting roles in these plays, they would see me acting like a criminal. They inaccurately concluded I was a gun runner. I was a debt collector. I was a hitman. We just basically showed them what they wanted to see.

NARRATOR: But, at this point in the early noughties, no ATF officer has ever been fully initiated into the gang that Jay refers to as.

JAY DOBYNS: The biggest, baddest, most notorious, most dangerous outlaw biker organized crime syndicate in the world.

NARRATOR: So, beyond street theater, what tradecraft did Jay have up his non-existent, leather sleeves? Tradecraft capable of convincing one of the most paranoid criminal organizations in the world, that he was a legitimate criminal?

JAY DOBYNS: I didn't walk around and try to advertise to everybody how dangerous I was. And I think that created some confusion in the eyes of the suspects. Like, this is what this guy does. This is what he says he does. This is what we know about him. But he acts pretty normal. He's not trying to scare everybody. He's not trying to intimidate everybody, so that combination was a bit intriguing. I always had money in my pocket. I think that was attractive to the suspects, that I was not some guy who was desperate. I was not broken down. And as I got closer to them and they tried to, in essence, pull me closer, I was able to actually play the prom queen and back off and say: “You know what, man? I don't know if I want to date you. I've got a lot of other options. Things are good for me right now. Convince me that I need you” And they're not used to that.

NARRATOR: An old classic. Play hard to get. 

JAY DOBYNS: They weren't used to that. It caught them off guard a little bit.

NARRATOR: So some of the Hells Angels have been seduced by the cover story. Enough sources corroborate that Jay is who he says he is - or rather ‘Bird’ is who he says he is - but when you’re running with these guys, you’re expected to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. 

JAY DOBYNS: Oftentimes, the violence was very spontaneous. It wasn't something that you had a long time to plan for. There are violent events that we were able to strategize about. How were we going to react to this? But sometimes they happen. They just pop off right in your presence. So now, what do I do? Like: “I'm stuck here.” And you can't turn your back to it and you can't run away. You have to engage. You have to do something about it. 

NARRATOR: Basically, if you’re saying you're a tough guy, you have to act like a tough guy. 

JAY DOBYNS: That is where training, experience, lessons learned, and past successes and past failures all come into play. But when you learn those lessons and develop the tradecraft you need, that gives you a chance to survive. This case became something for me that was much more than winning or losing, succeeding or failing. It turned into surviving. I was trying to survive it. Were there fights? Were there beatings? That's part of that lifestyle. My resolution to that - whether it be a good or bad one - was that I would fight my way to the middle of the fight. I would get to the victim. I would try to headlock the victim and actually throw legitimate punches on the victim. And in the eyes of the Hells Angels, I was participating in the beating. My plan was that if I could control this person's head and keep them from being kicked in the face or kicked in the head with a steel-toed boot and just control it to the point where it would settle down... I could save this person. I could help this person. Is that a good resolution or not? I mean, I think that's up to anybody who might be hearing this from the outside to decide. But I could protect my role that way and avoid someone being killed in my presence. 

NARRATOR: It’s not just sporadic violence that you need to be prepared for when you’re trying to impress the Hells Angels though - they will also go out of their way to test your legitimacy, something known as ‘mud checks’. 

JAY DOBYNS: An extreme example is that I was told by the Hells Angels - I was given an assignment - to go murder members of a rival biker gang of The Bandidos. The Bandidos were going to be in Las Vegas. They were going to be there without approval or without authority in an area that the Hells Angels felt like they owned. That was their territory. I was told by the Hells Angels: “You're going to kill these Bandidos when they arrive at A.” There was a location that was established when they arrived. “You are going to kill them. We are going to be watching from a distance. If you don't take care of business and kill them before they even get their kickstands down, we are going to kill you.” That's pretty extreme bloodshed, but that was also one that gave us a little bit of breathing room. And so, while en route to this assassination assignment, I was able to contact Joe Slatalla, who then orchestrated a traffic stop on The Bandidos and made sure that they never arrived. So, I go to this location where the violence is intended to occur, the Hells Angels are watching and they see me there ready to handle business for them, ready to take care of the assignment that they had given me. And the suspects never show up. In the eyes of the Hells Angels, I was ready, willing, and able, capable of handling that assignment. What they didn't know is that had I had orchestrated behind the scenes that the targets of the violence were never going to get there.

NARRATOR: Danger averted for now. But Operation Black Biscuit was only just beginning. 

JAY DOBYNS: The plan was to get next to the gang and try to determine who was responsible for the violence. We did such a good job of being next to them that they wanted us to be a part of them. I was very much enthusiastic about that because I felt like we were getting in under the wire to do that. Joe Slatalla wanted us to stay separate because he understood that, by staying separate, we would maintain control over our lives if we stayed independent, if we were on the outside looking in. 

NARRATOR: As you will have already gathered, respect is the most valuable commodity you can possess in this dangerous underworld, and Bird had earned the respect of some pretty important Hells Angels. Before he knew it, he was being invited to prospect for the gang. 

JAY DOBYNS: Just like there's a hierarchy amongst the clubs, there's a hierarchy within the clubs. The very bottom level is an Associate, who is someone that supports the club - wears support shirts, buys the support paraphernalia, T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers, things like that. Goes to runs. From there are Hang-arounds, which is a club title and it is exactly what it says it is. You're someone who's hanging around the gang. When you elevate from the hang-around status, you become a Prospect, which is a prospective member, which is you are a member without their full patch and you're under a 24-hour test drive. You're constantly being challenged and those gang members are deciding if you are someone that is worthy of wearing their patch, being a Full Member. 

NARRATOR: The more and more Jay becomes embroiled in this violent world, the more he realizes just how much he has to learn. 

JAY DOBYNS: Well, they like to portray themselves as these fun-loving rascals who have this common brotherhood of wanting to ride motorcycles, of loving life on a motorcycle, on the road. They don't want to live by the laws that society puts on all of us. But the reality of it is, once you get inside their gang, there are actually more rules and laws that are self-imposed than there are to us as common citizens. Everything from how your patch is formatted. The top rocker needs to be x inches from your collar. The bottom rocker of your vest needs to be sewn on X inches from your bottom seam. There's how you ride, where you ride in the pack, what kind of motorcycle you have, how you introduce yourself.

NARRATOR: Not only are these outlaws apparently sticklers for the rules, they are also hugely possessive. The club owns everything, even if you get yourself a death-head tattoo. It might be inked on your skin but it belongs to them.

JAY DOBYNS: If you exit the gang in good standing, they might just have that tattoo blocked over, blocked out, disguised, inked over, and they'll put ‘out good’ next to it, which means you've exited the gang in good standing, if you exit the gang in ‘bad standing’. There are instances of tattoos being carved off, people cut off, people removed with Belt Sanders. They're going to take their property one way or another. I got things wrong all the time and made mistakes all the time. You learn when you're getting punched in the face that you are making mistakes. I was actually being taught and groomed to be a Hells Angel by the Hells Angels.

NARRATOR: It would seem that, at this point, the mission is going better than anyone expected. If you were Jay, you’d be expecting a substantial pat on the back, right? Wrong. It’s at this point that cracks begin to appear within the task force. As a prospective member, Jay is now at the Hells Angels’ mercy - a highly dangerous prospect. One day you could be ordered to wash motorcycles at the clubhouse. The next, you could be sent out on a murder mission. The more unpredictable things get, the harder it is to keep Jay and his fellow undercovers safe. Remember, membership was never the original objective. But Jay feels that with greater risk, comes greater reward. 

JAY DOBYNS: I was diverting from the original plan, much to the resistance of Joe Slatalla. He wanted us to remain independent and to be quite honest. I started making selfish decisions. I wanted to get inside. I wanted to for me, not for the good of the operation, not for the good of the mission. I wanted to own that achievement. And I started making decisions and conducting myself toward that direction - to the resistance of the task force. I did it for selfish reasons.

NARRATOR: What the team can see but Jay is blind to, is the toll this double life is taking on him. 

JAY DOBYNS: What made it very difficult as a law enforcement officer is that you had to live that Hells Angels day from beginning to end, from morning to night, whenever that is. As a law enforcement officer, you have added responsibilities. You had to start your day before the Hells Angels started, and you had to get with your team and brief your team and try to give them a feel for what you felt that day was going to hold as part of the investigation. Then, when your Hells Angels day ended, now you have to debrief and write reports and log evidence. And so, those days as a Hells Angel were massively long and dangerous and stressful and perilous. And so it was mentally and emotionally and spiritually and physically consuming. I was barely existing by the time we got done.

NARRATOR: All is not well at home either. Yes, Jay does still visit his family, in amongst Hells Angels business.

JAY DOBYNS: I had been gone for an extended period of time and I came home and I was no longer separating those two lives. I was just in that undercover role. And my wife told me: “When you come to this house, you cannot walk in here after being gone and treat us like we're people on the street.” And then, in my self-defense, I was like: “I cannot turn this on and off. I cannot treat this as a hobby. I'm not a light switch. People who try to turn this on and off end up dead.” And then her reaction was: “When you come around me and our kids, that light switch, you better install a dimmer and dial down that attitude. And if you can't do that, don't come back.” That was, that was hard to hear. 

NARRATOR: It’s one thing to be at home with your family, but can you risk being seen out with them?

JAY DOBYNS: As odd as this might seem, my kids - from when they were babies - were trained on how to react to those situations. We had codes. If I said: "Hey, this is a red light." We used a traffic signal as our code. Our red light means just stop. "Stop what you're doing?" And: "I will handle this." A yellow light means: "Be cautious. This could be dangerous. Follow my lead." And then a green light was: "You go. You run as far away and as fast as you can get away from here and don't come back until I come and find you." And if you have not prepared for that, and if you have not prepared your family for that situation, as rare or as unlikely as it might be when you're in the middle of it, it's too late. 

NARRATOR: And sure enough, one Sunday, while out shopping with his daughter for her first guitar, the situation that every father would surely dread is upon them. 

JAY DOBYNS: Sowe crossed paths with this Hells Angel. I see him come in and I grabbed my daughter's hand and I squeeze her hand. And I'm saying this is a yellow light, right?

NARRATOR: But how quickly does a yellow light turn green? It’s early summer 2003, and Jay stands in a guitar shop facing the door. His daughter stands next to him, hugging a new guitar to her chest. Standing between them and the door is Robert ‘Mac’ McKay, a Hells Angel that the task force has been investigating. What would you do?

JAY DOBYNS: He's in a dialogue with my daughter. And so you can imagine how uncomfortable that is when your real life is crossing paths with your fake-persona life and trying to meld those together. No, I'd always told the Hells Angels that I had a family, that I was estranged from my family. I had an ex-wife, I had kids. I was trying to plan ahead to some rare event where those two worlds could collide. And then they did.

NARRATOR: They make it out of the store with their cover intact. But that was close. Really close. 

JAY DOBYNS: There were eight or 10 people, suspects that I had been involved within this case that had all been killed or murdered at this point. We were neck-deep in it. We were living amidst a real-time gang war between the Hells Angels and the Mongols. We were deceiving and lying to and selling some of the most violent people on the planet. A big, gigantic lie. So all those things together at any point, one mistake, one false move… The Hells Angels, when they find out that you've been lying to them for years, are not the kind of people that are going to say: “Hey, we really learned who you are and you're not welcome to come around here anymore.” That's not the style. They're going to drag a straight razor across your throat, or they're going to pitch you on the back of the head with a ball bat. And so the treachery that we were living amidst was so extreme that it took its toll.

‍NARRATOR: And it wasn’t just Jay that it was affecting.

‍JAY DOBYNS: Well, for years, my son - who was young at the time, five, six, seven years old - and every time I'd leave the house, my son would run out in the yard. And he would bring me a little rock out of the yard. And for years, I had accumulated these good luck charms and I kept them with me. I always had one in my pocket. I'd handed them out to my partners saying: “I do not know or understand the blessing that Jackie is putting on these rocks, but they work. We're living and thriving amidst all kinds of violence. So take this rock and you keep it with you.” So, I'm leaving the house and my son, as he had done many times before, came running up and said: “Dad, don't leave yet.” And he gave me this rock. And he's like: “I've been saving this one for you. It's special, dad. It's shaped like a heart.” And so, I was 40-plus years old, and I'm trying to comfort my son, and I told him: “Kid, all these rocks, all these good luck charms you've given me over the years, they work. I've kept all of them. They work so well that I've given them to even my partners. Thank you.” And this little boy standing on my driveway - it was summer, no shirt, no shoes - and tears started running down his cheeks and he's like: “Dad, those aren't for good luck. And they were only for you. You should have never given them to anyone else.” And I didn't know how to react to that. For years, I believed he'd been giving me these good luck charms. And he's like: “That's for you to put in your pocket. And every time you think someone's going to hurt you, you can put your hand in there and touch it. And it's like me being there with you to help fight back.” And I realized what I had done to my little boy, that he was so worried about his dad that the only way he could impact that was by giving me these rocks. And that was a really hard time where I realized in the midst of all this success how badly I was failing. 

NARRATOR: But as Jay said, Bird was up to his neck in it. If he was going to get these violent men, their weapons, and their drugs off the street and behind bars, he needed to push on. With the stakes soaring, could you hold your nerve?

JAY DOBYNS: At some point, I had internally accepted that I was not going to make it through this. I didn't know how or what or why that might come about. But I had almost come to believe that this was an unsurvivable assignment and I had grown - I think it'd be unfair to say that I had grown comfortable with it - but I had accepted that that was probably going to end in a very bad way.

NARRATOR: Just as tensions within the task force are also ramping up, their worst fears start to become a reality. Remember how Bird had originally persuaded the Solo Angels into letting him ride with them, the group that would get them closer to the Hells Angels? Well, they were back, and they were pissed off. 

JAY DOBYNS: The Solo Angels, like with any relationship, felt like we neglected that relationship with the Solo Angels, and they became hurt by it. Once I got what I wanted from them, I ignored them. I turn them off. That was a mistake. So in their anger, they came to the Hells Angels and said: “These dudes you're running with their counterfeit, it's like they got with us and then we never see or hear from them again. They have not lived out their promises to us.” So I was confronted with that by members of the Hells Angels and said: “Hey, man like we're being told that you're not who you say you are.” So I had to recover from that real-time. 

NARRATOR: Jay had to think on his feet. The hatred between the Hells Angels and their arch-rivals - the Mongols - was at an all-time high. Bird had asked once before: What was he expected to do if he ever crossed paths with a Mongol?

JAY DOBYNS: And their answer was very quick, and it was very confident. “It's your job to kill them.” So, fast-forward to my cover stories falling apart. I'm being confronted in real-time, surrounded by members of the Hells Angels, which was really - in hindsight, in essence - we were probably being set up for a hit. They had exposed themselves to us. They were compromised. We knew too much. We were too close. And so their logical solution to that was to eliminate us. And so my reaction was: “Let me prove to you that I am who I say I am.” There is a Mongol in Mexico. I have contacts in Mexico, through my gun-running associations. Let me go down there and murder him.” And so, this was a test that I had volunteered myself into that they were receptive to. They provided me with the weapon to do the murder with. They had given me instructions on how they suggested I do the murder. 

NARRATOR: Murder? Had Jay gone so deep undercover that he had actually become the criminal he was pretending to be?

JAY DOBYNS: So we found this Mongol and we beat him with a baseball bat. We dug a shallow grave in the desert. We duct-taped his ankles. We duct-taped his feet. We drag him into the grave. Shot him in the head with the Hells Angels pistol. Carved the Mongols vest that he was wearing off his back took some pictures of the murder and then took it back to the Hells Angels and said: “Now, I don't know how to prove myself to you other than I just went to Mexico and killed your rival. And here's evidence of it with the pictures with the bloody Mongol vest.” They embraced us like we were heroes. They took their vests off and put them on our backs and said: “Welcome. You are Hells Angels now. Welcome to the gang.” What they didn't know was that it was the most elaborate, well-thought, orchestrated street theater of all time. It was entirely fabricated. 

NARRATOR: And the body? A willing detective by the name of Shawn Wood. The blood and viscera? Sacrificed by a lamb. The all-important Mongol vest? A genuine cut was seized as evidence from a previous case. It was the perfect hoax. And now, Bird was in. The ATF had a man on the inside, a man with all the access and privileges of a patched Hells Angel. 

JAY DOBYNS: I felt like I had finally put myself in a position where I could really do the most damage - and the rug got pulled out from underneath us. 

NARRATOR: How else could Jay share his story with us now? A call came down from above. Things had gone too far. Operation Black Biscuit was being shut down. 

JAY DOBYNS: In hindsight, now looking at it with clearer eyes, I realized that the people that were running the investigation - the executives - also realized that it was likely unsurvivable to continue. I was blind to that. To say that I was upset is a mild characterization of how I felt. It had been years of risk and blood and sweat and tears and sacrifice to get to that point.

NARRATOR: And the disappointment didn’t end there. Ultimately, Operation Black Biscuit is regarded as a failure. 

JAY DOBYNS: When it was shut down, we indicted, I think, 55 Hells Angels. Sixteen of those were on RICO charges, racketeering charges, which is like a giant massive, powerful gang statute. A couple of the Hells Angels were indicted on murder charges, first-degree murder, death penalty, murder cases for the murder and beheading of Cynthia Garcia. So when you run an investigation, the objective is to gain evidence, show facts, present those, present your case into a courtroom in front of a jury, in front of a judge, and then someone else decides the guilt or innocence and the punishment attached to those. In most of those cases, we never made it that far, and it was because of government infighting. When the case was done, when it was completed, government attorneys started arguing with the case. Agents started arguing with Joe and the agency on how the case should be presented. And when the internal arguments escalated, the case blew up and started to self disintegrate internally on the good guys' side. So charges were dismissed. Charges were reduced and none of the people that were responsible for that wanted to own the failure of the case, the failure of the prosecution. When I say ‘the case failed, the prosecution failed, the prosecution of the case failed’, the case today is every bit as winnable based on evidence testimony. We just never got that chance. Much of the facts and evidence was never presented in a courtroom. 

NARRATOR: But of course, that’s not the worst of it for Jay and his family. Through the legal process, Bird’s true identity was revealed and Jay was now a target. 

JAY DOBYNS: The tiger is not going to change his stripes. You're dealing with violent, wicked people. There were threats to murder me. There were threats to inject me with the AIDS virus. There were threats to kidnap and gang-rape my wife. There were threats to kidnap my kids from school. Those were validated. Credible threats. My agency failed to react to protect or defend us from those threats, which was super frustrating. I complained about it. I complained about their failure to respond in a way to help settle that situation or investigate it. And my agency doubled down on me. Not only did they fail to respond to the threats, they removed all my backstopping. They removed all my cover. So now not only was my true identity revealed but all my personal information was made open-source, public-source available. Three months after the location of my home was disclosed, my home was burned to the ground by arsonists.

NARRATOR: Worse still, Jay claims that the Agency framed him for the arson of his own house, which resulted in a lawsuit, years of litigation, and ultimately a three-week trial. At the trial, Jay was found innocent and all claims were dropped.

JAY DOBYNS: I was abandoned and betrayed by my agency, an agency that I had given my life to, my career too. And then I reflected on it very honestly, and I believe I had it coming. And I believe that it was the karma I had created because I had abandoned and betrayed my own family.

NARRATOR: It takes a certain kind of mental strength to make peace with that conclusion. Particularly when it meant that Jay had to leave the job he loved, a job that had almost come above all else, and very nearly cost him much more than a salary could ever cover. Could you do it?

JAY DOBYNS: I think, like with anyone, time heals. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I am not resentful. I'm not bitter. I actually love ATF. I love the men and women out there who, their alarm clock goes off in the morning and they put their feet on the ground and they kiss their wives and their kids goodbye and they go do a job the best they can do it. I have immense respect and admiration for them. I am not bitter toward the people that set out to harm me. I'm not looking for payback. My best payback? I mean - in the best payback for any of us - for someone that wants to see you sad or wants to see you hurt is to just live a good life, live a happy life. That's super frustrating to them. The people that tried to damage us, I'm not burning for them. I don't have any ill will toward them. I've forgiven all that and moved on.

NARRATOR: Certainly, not everyone could be so philosophical about the situation, but then not everyone has run so close to the Hells Angels and lived to tell the tale. I’m Vanessa Kirby.