“We were running the operation, but we
asked Savannah Police to hit these five, Georgia
State Police to hit these five, Georgia Bureau of
Investigation to hit these five and we’d take the
rest who were considered the most dangerous,”
said Register. The results, at least for Operation
Pulaski, were precisely coordinated and
uneventful. And that’s just how Register likes it.
“If your operation goes uneventfully, you
probably planned it and executed it well,” said
Register. “But the bad guys get 51 percent of the
vote.”
On one occasion, when SRT was wrapping
up the first phase of Operation Pulaski, they got
outvoted. The takedown entailed a Confidential
Informant, Ray (not his real name) welcoming
defendants into the warehouse, before excusing
himself so that SRT could sweep in and execute.
“The poor CI was trying to get separation, saying,
‘Let me go to the bathroom,’ and this guy just
kept saying ‘I gotta go too.’” When it became clear
the defendant was spooked, SRT moved in. The
defendant ran for it. “We go to take him down and
the CI wants to jump right in there. He was in the
scuffle with us.”
The confidential informant, with no tactical
training or expertise, all five foot nothing of him,
tackled the suspect as SRT officers swarmed.
“I told him, ‘You stay out of the way next time,’
and he just says, ‘No, I helped.’”
“CHRISSER” CHRIS
BAYLESS
No one needs to tell Chris Bayless how dangerous
undercover work can be.
One of ATFs truly legendary undercover
agents, he was at ground zero when war broke
out between the Chicago chapter of the Hell’s
Angels and their rival club, The Outlaws in the
early ’90s. The Angels had merged with the Hells
Henchmen, a Rockford, Illinois based motorcycle
club, planting their flag firmly in Outlaw territory.
The Outlaws responded by detonating 100 pounds
of C4 in front of the Angels’ clubhouse, the third-
largest bomb in U.S. history behind Oklahoma
City and the World Trade Center. It only escalated
from there.
“They killed my sponsor to get into the
club, they blew up the f___ing president of the
Rockford chapter for the Hells Henchmen, killed
another henchman in Chicago, they detonated
the third largest car bomb in the country… It
was very surreal,” said Bayless. “And being in
the hypervigilant state, I was worried about the
Henchmen and the the Angels figuring out who I
was. I’d (inflitrated) the Outlaws before in Joliet,
so I’d see the guys who were actively surveilling
us and trying to kill us, and I didn’t know if the
Outlaws would suddenly tell them, ‘You have an
undercover in your group.’”
The pressures of staying undercover are already
mind-boggling. Trying to maintain cover with a
war raging around you is nearly impossible. “The
bikers do a good job of checking you out. Even
though I was backstopped, I was always concerned
about them finding out. It’s always in the back of
your mind that you gotta keep your lies straight.”
Ultimately, the war in Chicago proved too
Chris Bayless' work with ATF brought
him into the middle of a war between
The Hells Angels and the Outlaws.
dangerous. “We just couldn’t safely cover it
anymore. But we stayed in for quite a while and we
were able to get a lot of evidence.”
Of course, the next target was the Grim
Reapers, a club with close alliances to the Joliet
Outlaws, meaning Bayless was once again living
on the edge. “Every time the Outlaws would come
out to see the Grim Reapers, I’d have to make up
an excuse to get out of the clubhouse. So the walls
were kind of closing in on me at that point.”
For Bayless’ personal life, it was probably the
right time.
“I did three motorcycle club infiltrations and
when my kids were little they knew more about
bad guys and motorcycle clubs… I had the kids in
the pickup truck, I’d have to make an undercover
call or the bad guys would call me and I’d have to
star recording and tell the kids to be quiet. ‘Dad’s
using swear words, but we’re just pretending. We
don’t usually use these words,’” he said. “They
started picking up on some vernacular, which was
interesting. My six-year-old daughter’s talking
about some bikers and said, ‘Yeah, those guys are
wannabes, they don’t have a patch.’”
He’d still pick them up every Wednesday after
school while he was working undercover, letting
them do their homework in the conference room
while he worked the streets making drug deals.
“All the guys I worked with got to know them and
they’d tell my kids, ‘I always help out your dad.
If he’s in trouble I have his back.’ I think for my
daughter that sense there was somebody looking
out for me helped her.”
Talking with all of these brilliant ATF
undercover agents, you get the sense they are all
looking out for each other. As much then as now.
Now retired, they all keep in touch, sharing stories
over phone calls and beers.
“In the beginning, we thought we were young
and we got it all figured out. As we got older, the
realization of the losses we’d all taken, the battle
damage our families had taken over the years over
this stuff… I think we were unaware of the totality
of it until much later.” •
SOUTH
June | July 2019
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