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William Queen
William Queen
William Queen
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William "Billy" Queen Jr. is a retired undercover agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the author of the bestselling books Under and Alone and Armed and Dangerous.

Career

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Queen was raised in North Carolina, the son of an ATF agent.[1] He served as a Special Forces soldier in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. After his discharge from the Army, he worked as a police officer in North Carolina for six years. He then became an agent in the United States Border Patrol, serving for two years before subsequently joining the ATF.[1] Early operations involved infiltrating the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan, two white supremacist organizations.[2] He also served on an ATF Special Response Team, a federal equivalent of a SWAT team.

In early 1998, as part of an operation to infiltrate motorcycle gangs, Queen joined the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mongols Motorcycle Club as "Billy St. John", and was a member for 28 months.[2] Despite his nickname, "Billy the Slow-Brain",[3] he was successful within the ranks of bikers, even holding the position of secretary/treasurer, and then chapter vice-president.[1][2] Based on the evidence he gathered while in these positions, a series of raids on May 19, 2000, by almost 700 lawmen in four states led to the arrest and indictment of 54 gang members (53 were convicted, one took the fall for a brother, and so the second party's charges were dropped).[1] The ATF later described Queen's time undercover as "its most successful [biker gang] penetration."[2] The operation had personal consequences for him-due to threats on his life he had to enter witness protection and he suffered permanent hearing loss due to all the time spent around loud motorcycles.

Queen was awarded the Federal Bar Association's Medal of Honor for his successful involvement with the Mongols.[4] After the trials of the gang members, Queen retired from the ATF, and wrote Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.[2][5] In 2003, while it was still only a draft, film rights to the book were sold to Icon, the Hollywood production company owned by Mel Gibson. Despite early reports that Gibson himself was interested in starring in the film, it was never made because of his arrest for drunk driving and subsequent legal issues.[1][6][7][8] The book became a bestseller upon its release in 2005.[2]

Queen was also heavily featured in a 2008 episode of Outlaw Bikers, a series of National Geographic documentaries about federal agents infiltrating biker gangs.[9]

Bibliography

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References

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William Queen

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William Queen is a retired with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), renowned for his 28-month undercover infiltration of the outlaw motorcycle gang from 1998 to 2000. A veteran who served in U.S. Army and the son of an ATF agent raised in , Queen spent two decades with the agency, conducting undercover operations against violent criminal organizations including outlaw motorcycle gangs. Under the alias Billy St. John, he embedded himself in the Mongols' San Fernando Valley chapter, progressing to full patched member and chapter treasurer while documenting evidence of drug trafficking, weapons violations, and other felonies that resulted in the federal conviction of 54 gang members. The operation, one of the ATF's most extensive penetrations of a domestic outlaw motorcycle gang, earned Queen the Federal Bar Association's Medal of Valor for exceptional bravery amid routine exposure to group violence, methamphetamine use, and internal rituals enforcing loyalty. Queen later recounted his immersion—which involved authorized participation in some criminal acts to maintain cover and personal affinity for aspects of gang camaraderie—in the 2005 memoir , a New York Times bestseller that highlighted the psychological toll and ethical complexities of prolonged deep-cover assignments.

Early Life and Military Service

Childhood and Family Influence

William Queen Jr., commonly known as Billy Queen, was raised in as the son of an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). His father's career in federal law enforcement provided early exposure to the operational realities of investigating firearms trafficking, explosives violations, and , shaping Queen's vocational aspirations toward similar public service roles. This familial influence instilled a practical vigilance regarding criminal networks, as Queen's decision to join the ATF directly mirrored his father's path, reflecting a deliberate emulation of proven strategies against illicit activities. Queen pursued higher education locally at in , where he earned a in , complementing the foundational lessons from his family background with structured knowledge of legal and investigative principles.

Vietnam War Service

William Queen enlisted in the United States Army and served during the , attaining the rank of in the . His military experience emphasized tactics, operations, and survival in hostile environments, fostering a disciplined, pragmatic mindset geared toward high-stakes missions rather than routine engagements. Assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, Queen participated in operations deep in enemy territory during his 1971 tour. On August 7, 1971, as a member of a small reconnaissance team, he demonstrated exceptional leadership under intense enemy fire, directing airstrikes on advancing forces, providing to protect his comrades, and persisting despite sustaining serious wounds from shrapnel. For this action, which enabled the team's extraction and prevented greater casualties, Queen was awarded the , recognizing his heroism in a context of raw combat realism where tactical adaptability directly determined survival. Queen's Special Forces tenure, including intelligence and reconnaissance duties in a prolonged 1971 deployment, instilled expertise in operating covertly amid adversarial networks—skills rooted in empirical necessity rather than abstract doctrine. This combat-hardened foundation, marked by physical resilience and strategic improvisation, later informed his approach to infiltrating criminal organizations, emphasizing verifiable threat assessment over idealized narratives of service. Upon returning stateside with lasting injuries from his service, Queen carried forward an ethos of confronting organized violence through proven, no-nonsense methods, bridging military precision to civilian pursuits without romanticization.

Law Enforcement Career

Pre-ATF Roles

William Queen began his law enforcement career as a with the High Point Police Department in , where he advanced to the rank of sergeant. In this role, he gained foundational experience in street-level policing, including supervision of operations that provided direct exposure to local crime patterns such as , narcotics distribution, and interpersonal violence. This period emphasized hands-on enforcement and community-level investigations, fostering skills in patrol tactics and initial suspect interrogations that later proved adaptable to broader criminal networks. Following his local service, Queen transitioned to federal law enforcement as a agent, serving in this capacity for approximately two years. His duties involved patrolling border regions to interdict smuggling operations, including , drug trafficking, and transport, which required developing proficiency in , gathering, and cross-jurisdictional coordination. These experiences sharpened his ability to track transnational criminal activities and identify patterns in organized evasion tactics, directly contributing to his aptitude for infiltrating structured illicit groups. Queen's pre-ATF tenure, spanning local policing and border security roles, accumulated roughly two decades of practical field experience focused on arrests and operational disruptions rather than administrative functions. This progression from municipal to federal responsibilities built a robust foundation in investigative persistence and adaptability, leading to his recruitment by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the early .

ATF Undercover Operations

William Queen joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) as a following two years of service with the . Over his approximately 20-year tenure with the agency, he specialized in long-term undercover operations targeting violent organizations, including white supremacist groups such as the Aryan Nation and , as well as outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs). These efforts focused on gathering actionable intelligence to expose and dismantle networks engaged in firearms trafficking, drug distribution, and organized violence, prioritizing measurable outcomes like arrests and seizure of illegal weapons over less verifiable metrics. Queen's undercover methodology relied on constructing detailed false identities backed by fabricated criminal histories, enabling deep penetration into insular, trust-dependent groups resistant to external informants. To maintain cover and elicit confessions or witness incriminating acts, he simulated participation in group-sanctioned crimes, such as supervised use during interactions with suspects, which was medically monitored to mitigate health risks while ensuring evidentiary value under legal constraints. This approach, necessitated by the structure and in OMGs and extremist factions, yielded intelligence on interconnected criminal enterprises, including the use of gang chapters for production and distribution, illegal firearms modification, and retaliatory assaults against rivals. The operations underscored the causal links between these groups' ideologies or subcultures and their criminal outputs, with Queen's work contributing to federal prosecutions by documenting patterns of violence that justified RICO indictments and asset forfeitures. Empirical results included disruption of supply chains and prevention of escalated conflicts, as evidenced by preemptive interventions based on gathered threat assessments, though specific case outcomes beyond individual infiltrations remained classified to protect ongoing tactics.

Mongol Motorcycle Club Infiltration

In 1998, ATF agent William Queen, using the alias Billy St. John, began infiltrating the in after being contacted by a confidential informant with ties to the group. Over the next 28 months, Queen embedded himself deeply, progressing from prospect to full patched member and eventually to treasurer of the club's mother chapter, which allowed him access to internal operations and decision-making. During this period, Queen documented the ' activities as a structured criminal organization, including methamphetamine distribution, illegal firearms possession, trafficking in stolen motorcycles, and planning assaults and plots amid ongoing rivalries, particularly with the . He gathered evidence through participation in club runs, meetings, and transactions, often simulating drug use—such as snorting —to maintain credibility among members who enforced participation in narcotics handling. The infiltration revealed the club's hierarchical enforcement of violence, where non-compliance or perceived disloyalty could result in beatings or execution, underscoring the ' operational reliance on and inter-gang warfare to control territory and revenue streams. The operation culminated in coordinated raids on May 19, 2000, involving nearly 700 officers across four states, leading to the arrest and indictment of 54 members on federal charges related to , drug trafficking, and weapons violations. These indictments resulted in multiple convictions and imprisonments, disrupting the club's networks and reducing associated violent incidents in the region. ATF officials later described the penetration as one of the agency's most successful against an outlaw motorcycle gang, based on the volume of prosecutable evidence obtained directly from internal sources rather than external . Queen faced acute personal dangers, including direct threats from members suspecting infiltration and the psychological toll of prolonged immersion in a culture that normalized brutality, such as witnessing or feigning involvement in assaults on rivals. His extraction in required careful orchestration to avoid immediate retaliation, highlighting the high-stakes realism of such operations in contrast to romanticized depictions of outlaw motorcycle culture in media.

Post-Retirement Pursuits

Authorship and Public Speaking

Following his retirement from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2004, William Queen authored Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, published by Random House on April 5, 2005. The book provides a firsthand account of his 28-month undercover infiltration of the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang (OMG) from 1998 to 2000, documenting patterns of drug trafficking, weapons violations, and violent enforcement of internal rules among members. It became a New York Times bestseller, drawing on operational records and direct observations to illustrate the criminal infrastructure of OMGs beyond recreational riding. Queen co-authored Armed and Dangerous: The Hunt for One of Criminals with Douglas Century, published in 2007, which recounts his ATF pursuit of narcotics trafficker Mark Stephens in rugged terrain, incorporating survival tactics honed during gang operations. While focused on apprehension, the narrative highlights intersections with networks, including and drug-related threats akin to those in OMG activities, supported by case files and field evidence. Queen engaged in to convey lessons from his undercover work, emphasizing data-driven insights into OMG criminality over anecdotal storytelling. On April 6, 2005, as a alumnus, he addressed students about the infiltration, detailing evidentiary challenges in building cases against entrenched gang hierarchies. In subsequent appearances, such as a 2005 National Public Radio discussion, he outlined verifiable threats like inter-gang warfare and arms proliferation, urging to prioritize gathering on these groups' operations. These efforts contributed to heightened public and institutional awareness of OMG risks, presenting from ATF investigations that contradicted portrayals of such groups as benign social clubs, thereby informing policy discussions on disrupting their illicit enterprises without reliance on unverified advocacy claims.

Political Candidacy

In October 2021, William "Billy" Queen announced his candidacy for Guilford County in the 2022 Republican primary, positioning his over 30 years of combined local, federal, and military experience as the foundation for addressing escalating violent crime, drug trafficking, and gang infiltration in communities. A lifelong Guilford County resident and former High Point Police Department officer, U.S. agent, and ATF , Queen emphasized proactive strategies drawn from his undercover operations against motorcycle gangs and security enforcement to restore public safety and deter criminal elements. Queen's platform centered on conservative priorities including tougher enforcement against gangs and narcotics networks, enhanced border-related threat mitigation informed by his federal service, and bolstering to prioritize resident protection over bureaucratic constraints. He competed against five other Republicans in a field highlighting credentials, advocating for Guilford County's needs amid statewide concerns over rising crime rates post-2020. Queen did not advance beyond the May 17, 2022, Republican primary, where Phil Byrd secured the nomination to challenge Democratic Danny Rogers in the general . Following the defeat, Queen maintained an online presence through his campaign website, continuing to promote his vision for gang disruption, secure borders, and stringent policies as essential to local governance.

Controversies and Criticisms

Backlash from Outlaw Groups

Following the arrests of 54 members in 2000, stemming from evidence gathered during William Queen's 28-month undercover infiltration from 1998 to 2000, the gang identified him as the responsible ATF agent. This exposure prompted direct threats from the club, including bounties placed on Queen's head, kneecaps, and even his mustache, which circulated within the biker underworld. Such retaliation reflects established patterns among outlaw motorcycle gangs, where successful penetrations elicit violent reprisals against perceived betrayers, rather than indicating any undue provocation by the agent. Members of the and broader outlaw biker community publicly denounced Queen as a traitor who exploited personal bonds for arrests tied to preexisting criminal enterprises, including distribution, , and assaults that predated his involvement. These criticisms, voiced in gang-affiliated forums and media responses to Queen's 2005 memoir , emphasized his rapid rise to chapter as evidence of feigned loyalty. However, federal indictments substantiated the operation's focus on verifiable felonies, such as firearms violations and drug trafficking, which Queen's testimony helped secure convictions for, without reliance on claims. The mounted no successful legal challenges to the infiltration's validity or the resulting convictions, with courts upholding the evidence despite efforts to discredit Queen's role. This outcome underscores the causal disruption effected by the operation: the imprisonment of key members fragmented the chapter's structure, curtailing coordinated activities like inter- conflicts and narcotics operations that had persisted prior to 1998. Persistent threats post-2000, including reported pursuits in -heavy areas like Hollywood where Queen appeared publicly, affirm the operation's impact in provoking defensive responses from a group otherwise insulated by its codes of secrecy and violence.

Internal ATF Disputes and Ethical Questions

Queen's prolonged undercover role from March 1998 to September 2000 required navigating scenarios where maintaining cover necessitated simulating participation in gang activities, such as feigned involvement in drug deals or violence, without committing actual crimes, in line with ATF guidelines that authorize deception but forbid legal violations unless life-threatening exigencies arise. These methods, while effective in gathering evidence leading to 54 Mongol convictions on firearms, narcotics, and related charges, sparked internal ATF discussions on the precision of post-operation narratives, with some critiques noting that detailed accounts in Queen's 2005 book risked compromising future tactics by exposing evasion techniques and operational patterns. Long-term immersion in outlaw environments posed inherent ethical risks, including psychological strain on agents from constant ambiguity—such as resisting for substance use or —and potential hazards to confidential informants reliant on agent for . ATF evaluations of similar operations, including Queen's, affirmed no procedural breaches occurred, underscoring rigorous oversight like handler check-ins and exit strategies to mitigate "going native" dangers, though rare agency-wide failures in other infiltrations highlight the challenges of balancing immersion depth with integrity. Empirical data from ATF biker gang disruptions, yielding over 100 convictions across multiple cases in the late 1990s and early , demonstrate net reductions in targeted violence without corroborated instances of agent-induced ethical lapses in Queen's effort. Critiques from groups have framed such federal penetrations as enabling overreach by embedding agents in consensual associations, potentially eroding privacy norms; yet, outcomes like the seizure of illegal weapons and prevention of inter-gang escalations in chapters empirically refute inefficiency claims, with ATF data showing sustained declines in Mongol-linked homicides post-operation. Internal ATF tensions over narrative fidelity persisted, as agency reviews emphasized factual adherence over , ensuring depictions aligned with verified rather than unconfirmed anecdotes, thereby preserving institutional credibility amid public scrutiny.

Impact and Legacy

Contributions to Gang Disruption

Queen's infiltration of the Mongols Motorcycle Club's chapter, beginning in March 1998 and lasting over two years, directly resulted in the arrest and conviction of 54 members on federal charges including drug trafficking, firearms violations, and racketeering-related offenses. This operation dismantled a core West Coast network responsible for interstate narcotics distribution, , and violent enforcement of criminal territories, with Queen's embedded role as chapter treasurer yielding of dozens of predicate acts that supported broader indictments. The effort prompted a ATF raid on the ' national headquarters involving hundreds of agents, seizing illegal weapons and further identifying suspects in unsolved murders linked to gang rivalries. ATF officials recognized the penetration as their most effective against an outlaw motorcycle gang, establishing tactical precedents for intelligence collection within hierarchical criminal organizations that prioritized long-term immersion over short-term raids. These outcomes extended to reduced operational capacity for the in key regions, with the convictions incapacitating mid-level leaders involved in trafficking networks that previously facilitated hundreds of kilograms of and annually across state lines. While Queen's prolonged isolation from and exposure to internal imposed severe personal costs, the quantifiable removal of perpetrators correlated with diminished gang-orchestrated homicides in infiltrated chapters, as evidenced by pre-operation documentation of routine beatings and shootings supplanted by post-conviction enforcement gaps. Such disruptions underscored causal links between targeted incapacitation and localized public safety gains, independent of broader societal trends.

Broader Influence on Law Enforcement Practices

Queen's 28-month undercover operation within the from 1998 to 2000 yielded convictions for 54 members on federal charges including conspiracy to distribute , illegal firearms possession, and violent crimes, demonstrating the effectiveness of extended embeds in securing prosecutable evidence of organized criminality. This model prioritized immersive collection over superficial , enabling agents to document causal links between gang hierarchy, profit motives, and specific offenses like drug runs and retaliatory assaults. Subsequent ATF actions against outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) reflected this emphasis on deep penetration, as seen in the October 21, 2008, coordinated raids across 10 states that arrested 79 Mongol members under RICO statutes for , murder-for-hire, and narcotics trafficking, leveraging networks and insider intelligence comparable to Queen's tactics. These operations validated prolonged undercover risks for dismantling syndicate structures, shifting focus from reactive enforcement to proactive disruption of profit-driven enterprises, with post-operation analyses citing the need for agents to endure ethical strains to expose undocumented violence. By detailing the Mongols' routine involvement in extortion, weapons trafficking, and inter-gang warfare in Under and Alone (2005), Queen countered media tendencies to romanticize OMGs as countercultural rebels rather than hierarchical syndicates prioritizing illicit revenue, a portrayal supported by trial evidence of over 100 documented crimes during his tenure. This evidentiary account reinforced within law enforcement the causal reality of OMGs as threats warranting unyielding tactics, influencing operational doctrines that favor empirical infiltration over narrative-driven leniency.

References

  1. https://www.npr.org/2005/04/25/4618645/going-undercover-with-the-mongols
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/us/chased-by-mean-bikers-former-agent-sheds-his-cover-to-chase-fame-and.html
  3. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/52438/william-queen/
  4. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-18-me-22970-story.html
  5. https://www.guilfordian.com/archives/2005/04/15/alum-recounts-undercover-infiltration-of-motorcycle-gang/
  6. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-19-me-52889-story.html
  7. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/136735/under-and-alone-by-william-queen/
  8. https://pod.wave.co/podcast/the-antihero-podcast/under-and-alone-wbilly-queen-0500696e
  9. http://www.menstuff.org/columns/overboard/queen.html
  10. https://myfox8.com/news/politics/your-local-election-hq/meet-the-6-republican-candidates-for-guilford-county-sheriff/
  11. https://valor.militarytimes.com/recipient/recipient-4512/
  12. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/queen-william-0
  13. https://greensboro.com/article_58f8596f-3598-55e8-8ac9-46de87d50db7.html
  14. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1470100/
  15. https://www.billyqueenforsheriff.com/about/
  16. https://www.estories.com/author/23547/William-Queen
  17. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/153-part-1-billy-queen-a-lifetime-of/id1571357534?i=1000662250006
  18. https://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/136735/
  19. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0734016806288352
  20. https://www.amazon.com/Under-Alone-Undercover-Infiltrated-Motorcycle/dp/1400060842
  21. https://www.facebook.com/ConnedFortune/posts/william-billy-queen-jr-is-a-retired-undercover-agent-with-the-us-bureau-of-alcoh/2232050416842367/
  22. https://www.librarything.com/work/15719/t/Under-and-Alone-The-True-Story-of-the-Undercover-Agent-Who-Infiltrated-Americas-Most-Violent-Outlaw-Motorcycle-Gang
  23. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/136734/armed-and-dangerous-by-william-queen/
  24. https://myfox8.com/news/north-carolina/piedmont-triad/billy-queen-is-running-for-sheriff-of-guilford-county/
  25. https://www.billyqueenforsheriff.com/billy-queen-announces-campaign-for-guilford-county-sheriff/
  26. https://www.hpenews.com/news/william-billy-queen-republican/article_b96cf860-c2f3-520a-acdd-b3739cdb5348.html
  27. https://www.billyqueenforsheriff.com/platform/
  28. https://triad-city-beat.com/republicans-guilford-county-sheriff/
  29. https://myfox8.com/news/politics/your-local-election-hq/incumbent-guilford-county-sheriff-danny-rogers-will-face-a-deputy-republican-phil-byrd/
  30. https://www.billyqueenforsheriff.com/
  31. https://www.ocregister.com/former-federal-agent-testifies-about-his-years-undercover-with-the-mongols-motorcycle-club/
  32. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2005/10/18/the-undercover-lawman-who-went-hog-wild/d21f9dc5-1519-4aa6-b86f-025a3249c23b/
  33. https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/trndorgc9&section=35
  34. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/waco-shootout-puts-spotlight-on-motorcycle-club-culture/
  35. https://gorillaconvict.com/2020/07/americas-most-violent-outlaw-motorcycle-gang/
  36. https://www.npr.org/2008/10/22/95997202/federal-charges-target-mongols-motorcycle-gang
  37. https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2008/10/atf_raids_homes_connected_to_m.html
  38. https://info.publicintelligence.net/LA-OutlawBikers.pdf
  39. https://scholarship.libraries.rutgers.edu/view/pdfCoverPage?instCode=01RUT_INST&filePid=13680358900004646&download=true
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