Biker Gang Book, Redux

Bill Queen spent two years infiltrating the Mongols motorcycle club for the ATF. As a
story in this morning’s WaPo points out, bikers like publicity, even if it involves them going to jail.

While his former Mongol associates were still in prison, Queen retired from the ATF and published a book about his adventures called “Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.” It reached bestseller lists this summer.

The book describes the Mongols as the worst of the worst — beer-breathed, meth-snorting, misogynist marauders who lived by a code of fierce loyalty to their brothers — and to hell with the rest. Their motto: “Respect few, fear none.” In the book, Queen’s chief antagonist is none other than Red Dog.

Guess what? The Mongols dug the book, or at least parts of it. “I hear they were overjoyed,” Queen says. “The more violent and hard and mean you call them, the happier they are.”

In the end, biker gangs are not the menace they’re made out to be by the fear mongers in the media, and certainly not worthy of the kind of effort that the ATF put into busting them. Despite that, people are still intrigued by the mystery of the outlaw, even if the outlaw is a dirty, meth-addled, misogynist loser.

For my money, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels remains the definitive classic of the genre.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

…get your motor running…