How to Get Arrested by an FBI SWAT Team After Infiltrating the KKK ‹ CrimeReads

ALACHUA, FLORIDA
APRIL 1, 2015

Article continues after advertisement

“That’s our guy,” the FBI SWAT team commander said, gesturing at me to the hundred camouflage-clad officers in front of him. “He is one of us. Don’t shoot him.”

We gathered in the Alachua Police Department parking lot at 4:00 a.m., the early morning darkness broken only by pole-mounted floodlights shining down on us. A large oak tree cast shadows across the scene that seemed to engulf pockets of the assembled troops, moving with the whims of the wind. A natural earth barrier blocked cars passing on State Road 441 from seeing the group.

The SWAT commander turned to me. “Show us how to hold your hands naturally.”

I let them dangle at my sides.

“Okay, cross your hands, left over right, just above your belt.”

I place my hands in the low compression position as instructed.

“This is the signal for the shutdown. As soon as we see it, we will move in and prepare for the attack,” the commander said.

When I arrived at 3:30 a.m., he had told me that they had almost used the FBI's elite HRT, the Hostage and Rescue Team, to take down Charles Newcomb because of his proven violent tendencies.

Newcomb was a former patrolman and prison guard who currently works as a recovery agent or repossession specialist, a fancy term for a repo man. He was strong and very muscular, with a broad frame and piercing blue eyes. He claimed that as a police officer in Tennessee he killed four people, allegedly in the line of duty. Most recently, he had helped orchestrate the Ku Klux Klan's murder of a former inmate who had run afoul of prison guards who were members of the Klavern, in which Newcomb served as the Jubilant Cyclops, effectively the chapter's mayor.

“What stopped you?” I asked the SWAT commander.

“We chose you instead,” he told me with a slight smile.

Five hours after the meeting ended, at 9:00 a.m., I was sitting in my Kia Sportage in a Home Depot parking lot almost directly across from the police station. I was there to meet Charles Newcomb under the pretense that the national leadership of the KKK wanted me to build a bomb and we needed to buy the ingredients for it.

As Grand Knighthawk for all the clan groups in Florida and Georgia, and with my background as an Army sniper, such a task was well within my purview, and Newcomb had no reason to believe that I was telling him anything other than the truth.

“Subject is leaving home,” a voice from the surveillance plane flying twenty thousand feet over Newcomb’s neighborhood announced through my earpiece. “Stand by.”

This plane was equipped with cameras that could read a license plate from four miles up. It would now be following Newcomb in his pickup truck all the way to our scheduled meeting.

“The subject is turning onto Highway 20 West,” the same voice reported.

At this point, FBI agents were already stationed at Home Depot and were preparing to cordon off the area for security reasons. Once Newcomb approached the parking lot, no one was allowed to leave the store or enter the parking lot, there was a risk of Newcomb resisting arrest, and gunfire ensued.

I had infiltrated this particular branch of the Ku Klux Klan two years ago as a confidential human source for the FBI as part of an operation conducted jointly with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. This was the second time I had invaded a Klavern, and the first time, which ended six years earlier, had almost cost me my life.

The best I could hope for today was to get out alive. “The person is turning onto State Road 441,” the voice crackled in my earpiece. “Stand by.”

Charles Newcomb was not the only target of this operation. I had provided clear evidence of four Klan members, including Florida and Georgia leader-designate Jamie Ward and two law enforcement members, Thomas Driver and David Moran. The charge against Newcomb, Driver and Moran was conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. For Ward, it was a federal firearms charge. The four-step plan was to arrest them all at the same time so that none of the four could warn the others in advance.

As I sat in my car waiting for Charles Newcomb to arrive, I knew that a group of SWAT team members, drawn from both the FBI and numerous local police departments, were approaching the Florida State Prison, commonly known as Raiford Lake Butler, thirty minutes approaching from my position, where two of the targets, Thomas Driver and David Moran, were working as guards. Their plan was to make the arrests there during a shift change, when Driver came out and Moran came in, the perfect moment to catch them without a shootout. Another team would march full force on Jamie Ward's house, while the largest force of all was already stationed unseen in the Home Depot parking lot, as Newcomb was considered the most dangerous of all

“Subject is still traveling north on State Road 441,” the voice in my ear reported from the sky. “Almost parking lot.”

“Secure the building,” followed the voice of the FBI SWAT team commander. “Secure the building.”

I looked at my watch. It was 9:25 am. Newcomb should be here any minute.

“The subject turned onto the highway,” the crackling voice reported.

“Approaching destination.”

I used these last moments to calm down. I took a deep breath and then set the 4-7-8 breathing ratio I learned in my Army sniper training. It was the regimen I had practiced before taking a shot on the field, an experience comparable to the one I now had in front of me. As I breathed, I focused on my wife and two children. Do everything by the numbers and I would soon be home with you. If I do anything in Newcomb that deviates from my norm and arouses suspicion, I might not come home at all.

“The subject enters the parking lot. Repeat the process: The subject's truck pulls into the site's parking lot. Start the lockdown now.”

At that moment, the access road to Home Depot would be closed in both directions to prevent potential customers from entering the parking lot. Because shootings were a very real, if not likely, possibility, the FBI had to minimize the risk to civilians at all costs.

I realized that Newcomb's truck pulled up and then took a long, leisurely lap around the property to make sure there were no surprises waiting for him – although in this case all the surprises were out of sight, namely in staging vehicles and on the side of the building. A few moments later,

Newcomb pulled his pickup alongside my Sportage. I got out the same moment he did.

“Kigy, brother,” he greeted. “KIGY” is short for Klansman, I salute you.

“Kigy, brother,” I said back.

We shook hands and half-hugged, with me ready to act should Newcomb sense the wire I carried. I noticed that he wore latex plasters on his fingertips to avoid leaving fingerprints on the bomb-making materials we were supposed to be buying. After we parted, I watched as Newcomb casually removed his gun and stored it under his driver's seat. I still had to assume he was carrying a backup weapon and keep that distinct possibility in mind. This wasn't just protocol, it was common sense. We made our way to the entrance to Home Depot, 150 feet away. The FBI van was parked halfway away, at the point where Newcomb's destruction would take place.

“This is a big task, Brother Joe,” he said when we were almost there.

“I'm ready for this, sir. I am ready to serve the Brotherhood with the calling I was taught.”

He smiled. “Just as long as it doesn’t take you away from us.”

Halfway to the entrance, just before the van, I placed my hands in the deeply clasped position I had demonstrated hours before at the staging session, the signal that we were ready to get started. A moment later, a loud explosion shook the air, coming from a spot far to our left, just beyond the edge of the parking lot, where there was a natural depression used for drainage.

“What the hell was that, Charles?” I said, feigning shock.

The distraction had the desired effect by turning Newcomb in the direction I was already facing.

“There's a cloud of smoke rising,” he noted, pointing to the thick black smoke rising from the depression.

Our attention was still firmly fixed in that direction when we heard, “LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!”

I raised my hands in the air while Newcomb kept his at his side. We turned together and I was standing in front of an M4 assault rifle, six inches from my face, and the FBI SWAT team member in full body armor's finger began to curl over the trigger.

___________________________________

Excerpted from “White Robes and Broken Badges: Infiltrating the KKK and Exposed the Evil Among Us” by Joe Moore. Copyright 2024. Published by Harper Books. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.