Behind the scenes of the Ku Klux Klan's assassination of Barack Obama

In September 2008, members of a Ku Klux Klan affiliate in Wayward, Florida, hatched an elaborate plan to kill Barack Obama days before he was elected president.

They planned every detail: They determined the day, time and place of the attack, followed the formation of the senator's motorcade, obtained .50-caliber rifles for the attack and made arrangements to ensure that the assassins' vehicles would be destroyed afterwards.

There was only one scenario they had not considered: that one of them would ruin their complicated plan.

Joe Moore had been inducted into the so-called Invisible Empire the year before and had impressed his Ku Klux Klan comrades with his embellished military service and his excellent marksmanship.

Of course, the honorably discharged Army veteran was slated to pull the trigger to take out Obama.

Little did his “brothers” know that he had infiltrated America’s oldest hate group as a counterterrorism informant.

“I had to follow [my orders] and did whatever it took to prevent the assassination of Barack Obama,” Moore writes in his new memoir, “White Robes and Broken Badges” (Harper, out now). “Because I was the only one who could.”

Driven by fervent patriotism and deep contempt for tyrants, Moore led the FBI's first undercover operation against the Ku Klux Klan.

He attended cross burnings, witnessed gruesome acts of violence and took part in sinister rituals – all while carrying a recording device.

Moore identified several police officers and government officials who had pledged allegiance to bigotry.

And by feeding misinformation to his Klan relatives, he may have saved the life of the man who would become America's first black president.

The Jacksonville native describes in stark detail his years of dealing with diehard racists.

A Klan member showed him bunkers full of firearms and tactical equipment.

Another led a tour of a backyard incineration facility that he called “my personal crematorium.”

However, the double life took its toll.

Moore used method acting techniques to get into character, such as listening to a disillusioned cover of Guns N' Roses' “Ain't It Fun” or wearing a particular cap embroidered with the American flag.

He still found it difficult to clearly distinguish between the two realities.

“The deeper I barricaded myself in the Klan, the harder it became to leave it all at the door when I went home to my wife and son,” writes Moore, who used breathing techniques he learned in the military to regulate himself. “All I could imagine was that members would kick down the door to get me after they learned my true purpose.”

But that paranoia didn't stop Moore from launching a second espionage campaign in 2013. This time, he infiltrated a hooded and robed collective based 100 miles away in Bronson, Florida.

His first attempt ended four years earlier after he was withdrawn from the race prematurely due to the high risk of infection.

It turns out that Obama's rise to prominence – and the political backlash following the 2014 police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri – caused interest in and membership in the KKK and other white supremacist groups to soar.

But all that collapsed after Moore accused four prominent members of a conspiracy to murder a black man named Warren Williams because of a personal grudge.

But no good deed goes unpunished. After a dramatic, armed arrest of the perpetrators by a SWAT team outside a Home Depot in Alachua, Florida, in 2015, Moore and his family were forced to embrace a new life and give up their old identities.

“I lay awake at night thinking that for the most successful infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in FBI history, I was going to lose my house, most of my belongings, my friends and, to all appearances, my future,” Moore recalls.

In 2017, justice was finally served when all four accused Klan members were sentenced to prison.

The verdict sent shockwaves through the Ku Klux Klan's numerous local chapters and fueled fears among members that there were similar moles across the country.

The result was a rapid decline in Klan membership numbers and many former members joined alt-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

“I am very proud to have dealt a devastating, almost fatal blow to a hate-filled organization,” writes Moore, who now lives with his family in an undisclosed location. “But the movement in general was anything but dead or in decline.”

Moore warns that his time as an insider showed him how divided America had become and that he identified former President Donald Trump as the broker of that division.

He draws a line from the Ku Klux Klan through modern white nationalist groups to the January 6 insurrection – a connection that is also emphasized by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who wrote the foreword to the book.

“The Klan and the like-minded groups it spawned have learned to associate bullets with noise and guns with paper, and both have the potential to do far more irreparable damage to the state of our democracy than the former,” Moore writes. “With the 2024 election looming and democracy itself on the ballot… we should very worried.”