No Angel
Submitted by Northwest Harley Blog
There are many ways to talk about the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC); as a reporter illuminating the record, as an advocate praising their actions or as an undercover agent providing clear insight into the mind of a biker enterprise. Sure, not everyone agrees with the mission and tactics of law enforcement just like not everyone is going to praise OMG. It’s the way of the world.
Much thanks to G. Walker (Det. Retired) who provided me a preview of the book “No Angel” by Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton. I wanted to pass this along because as the preview suggests, this is going to be one “No Angel - My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels”
ATF Special Agent Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton
(Crown Publishers, 2009)
ATF Special Agent Jay Dobyns sat with his back to me. He was furiously typing on a well-used keyboard. He wore a white wife-beater t-shirt and both his exposed arms were fully “sleeved”, or covered with tattoo work. Pulled down low over his bald skull was a dirty blue knit cap. I quietly watched him as his fingers danced over the keyboard, wondering how no one else at the outlaw motorcycle gang conference I was attending hadn’t spotted this brazen infiltrator who was even now probably sending license plate numbers and other handy information to whichever 1%er club he belonged to.
It had happened before. Two full patch members of the Vagos MC had openly walked into a past OMG conference presentation, the room filled with cops and investigators. The Vagos went unnoticed for several minutes before being identified and ushered out of the hotel.
I found the conference coordinator and shared my concern about the tough-looking b*astard using the business room Internet service. “Oh,” he replied, “that’s just Jay…Jay Dobyns. He’s our ATF guest speaker on the Hells Angels.”
Well f*ck me…
Later in the conference I listened to Dobyns speak about his role in Operation Black Biscuit, a two-year ATF undercover operation against the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Arizona. Pacing back and forth in front of a table featuring some of the OMG props he and his ATF team of UC bikers, known as the “Solo Angels”, had used to gain introduction and then admittance into the inner sanctum of the HAMC, Jay’s rapid-fire account of the deepest UC thrust into the heart of the Angels’ organization came alive.
Today Jay Dobyns, in conjunction with co-author Nils Johnson-Shelton, has written the true story of both his greatest professional and near personally ruinous achievement - riding shoulder to shoulder with the Hells Angels to include the ultimate Angel himself, Ralph “Sonny” Barger. It is a book the Red & White won’t appreciate; however in all fairness, it’s also a book some in the ATF will hate with equal passion.
Whether brokering deals for illegal automatic weapons, taking on murder for hire contracts, arming up to do battle with the rival Banditos on behalf of the “81″, or riding 18″ off the rear wheel of an Angel juggernaut Jay Dobyns shoves us down the slippery steep steps that lead to the glowing red inferno that is the world of the Hells Angels.
Finely woven throughout the book is the agent’s personal decent into the madness of both the investigation and his increasing loss of identity as a human being. He writes “As I said, dark days. I turned to the only things I had left: God, friend, and family…It wasn’t my job, it wasn’t ATF, and it wasn’t the Hells Angels that had transformed me into the worst version of myself. It was I alone who had done that.”
There have been several previous books on the HAMC and Operation Black Biscuit but none comes close to the knife-edge reality and factual accuracy of Jay’s memoir. Of the Hells Angels he observes “I realized in that single moment that the brotherhood the Hells Angels claimed to be part of was nothing more than a support group for misunderstood loners held together by hate and money…I’d thought I was the one infiltrating them. I had it backwards. They were the ones who had infiltrated me.”
In mid-2003 Operation Black Biscuit was brought to closure in a series of search warrants and arrests. The case, however, was gutted by squabbles among prosecutors and the decision makers at the ATF and by 2006 “Black Biscuit” looked more like Brier Rabbit’s badass tar baby. Earlier, in 2004, the Angels put a contract on Dobyns’ head. In 2008 his home mysteriously caught on fire and while no one was injured the implications were obvious to the man once draped with the Angel’s coveted Deathhead for “killing” a rival Mongol down Mexico way, an elaborate mock murder that brought Dobyns to the goal he’d always thought he wanted - to become a fully patched Hells Angel as an undercover ATF agent.
You can advance order your copy of “No Angel” through Amazon.com. The book will be released this February. Warning! Once you’ve opened its cover and entered the world of Special Agent Jay “Bird” Dobyns there’s no putting it down. This is one 5-star weekend’s reading about the man who dared enter the innermost sanctuaries of the Hells Angels and returned with his soul singed but intact.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I agree with Mr. Walker’s well written assessment as I was also privliged to quickly review a pre-release draft of No Angel. My only challenge would be to the opinion that the HA and ATF won’t like it.
The HA are discussed for what they are - violent gang members. Do we really think that they WANT to be memorialized in book or movie as toy-toteing goodie-two-shoes? All the friendly PR they are doing is pussifying the club. Dobyns treats them straight up. As Hells Angels who don’t give a f**k and don’t care who cares. Just look at the Mongols and Bandits. They openly say we will beat your ass and are proud of it. It’ll never happen but they ought to thank him for restoring some of the damage to the once proud HA rep that they have done to themselves.
As far as ATF is concerned, they hate Dobyns but when one of their agents can draw this much positive attention to their agency how can they? The only other attention they get is when someone burns down a warehouse or something. This dude has got kids wanting to become ATF agents (although in fairness he probably has kids wanting to be Hells Angels too) and I doubt it is so they can play fireman.
I know, I know, the annomous e-bikers who e-walk the e-talk on their e-Harleys will call him names for whining about not being protected. The final word is that whether you like him or not the dude got in the middle of your biker mix and did it with a recorder duct-taped under his nuts. Step away from the claims of betrayal. His job pays him to get inside, not fall in love.
Most of the e-outlaw bloggers would sh*t their own pants just hhaving to approach an HA booth at a public run to buy the $30 t-shirt (and, note to shirt buyer, you get laughed at as you walk away).