In late 2008, as Barack Obama’s rise to the White House seemed increasingly certain, members of the Ku Klux Klan plotted to assassinate the man who would become America’s first black president.
That’s according to the newly published memoirs of Joe Moore, the undercover FBI agent who arrested them.
Moore infiltrated the Wayward, Florida, chapter of the KKK in 2007, impressing his fellow Klan members with an exaggerated military record as an honorably discharged Army veteran.
Once he successfully integrated himself into the group, he witnessed the planning process to assassinate Obama just days before he was elected president.
They identified the day, time and location of the murder; they obsessed over the timing of the then-Illinois senator’s motorcade; they obtained .50-caliber rifles and planned to destroy the killer’s vehicles once the crime was complete. The New York Post reported.
A Florida chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was planning to kill Barack Obama shortly before Election Day in 2008. Joe Moore, right, was able to thwart the assassination attempt by infiltrating the organization as an FBI informant.
Moore’s fellow Ku Klux Klan members selected him as the one to shoot and kill Obama, completely unaware that he was betraying them.
Moore, who showed off his expert marksmanship as a former Army sniper, was selected as the man who fired the fatal shot at Obama.
“I had to follow (my orders) and do whatever was necessary to prevent the assassination of Barack Obama,” Moore wrote in his new book, ‘White Robes and Broken Badges.’
“Because I was the only one who could.”
This was the first time the FBI had mounted a covert operation to target America’s oldest hate group, and the stakes could not have been higher.
Moore would eventually feed misinformation to his Klan “brothers,” potentially saving Obama’s life.
In a recent NPR InterviewHe said he made up a story about the Secret Service having drones to scare them away from killing Obama.
Moore describes his undercover operations with the Ku Klux Klan in his recently published memoir, White Robes and Broken Badges.
Pictured: Barack and Michelle Obama appear at the 2024 Democratic National Convention
‘I said, “Hey, what are you guys going to do with drones?” And they looked at me like, “Oh, that’s what you’re doing.” And they looked at each other and looked at themselves and said, “Drones? What drones?”
He continued: “I said, ‘Now that Obama is the nominee, he has a heightened level of Secret Service protection, and at this level, that includes drones. I didn’t know that, but neither did they.'”
But before he could be in a position to thwart their plans, he was forced to attend cross burnings, watch and tolerate savage acts of violence, and participate in twisted rituals, all while concealing a recording device on his person.
After years of pretending to be friends with racists, Moore discovered that there were police officers, prison guards, and sheriff’s deputies across the state of Florida who were active members of the KKK.
One Ku Klux Klan member showed him arsenals full of firearms and tactical gear. Another showed him a backyard incinerator he called “my personal crematorium.”
Moore was forced to attend cross burnings, watch and tolerate savage acts of violence, and participate in twisted rituals, all while concealing a recording device on his person.
Moore discovered that there were police officers, prison guards, and sheriff’s deputies throughout the state of Florida who were active members of the KKK.
He said living this double life took its toll on him, however, and wrote that he often resorted to method acting techniques to cheer himself up before going undercover again.
One of his favorite ways to get into character was to listen to a downbeat version of Guns N’ Roses’ “Ain’t It Fun” while wearing a cap with the American flag embroidered on it.
“The more involved I became in the Klan, the harder it was to leave it all behind when I returned home to my wife and son,” Moore wrote.
“All I could visualize was members breaking down the door to come and find me after learning my true purpose.”
His fears did not stop him from re-immersing himself in covert activity with the KKK in Bronson, Florida, in 2013.
Bronson’s chapter was located 100 miles from the Klan chapter in Wayward, from which authorities had prematurely removed him four years earlier because of the risk of exposure.
Moore’s experience was needed more than ever at that time.
Obama’s rise to the presidency and the backlash associated with the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, right, by police in Ferguson, Missouri, caused enrollment numbers in white supremacist groups across the country to take a startling leap.
A member of the Confederate White Knights speaks during a rally at the Antietam National Battlefield on September 7, 2013 near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Obama’s rise to the presidency and the backlash associated with the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, in Ferguson, Missouri, sent membership numbers in white supremacist groups across the country into a startling leap.
Moore implicated four prominent Ku Klux Klan members who were determined to murder a black man named Warren Williams out of a personal grudge.
That led to a SWAT team detaining the would-be perpetrators outside a Home Depot in Alachua, Florida.
Unfortunately, this good deed forced Moore and his family to take on new lives and abandon their old identities forever.
“I lay awake at night thinking that my revenge for the most successful infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in FBI history was the loss of my home, most of my possessions, my friends and, by all indications, my future,” Moore wrote.
The four Klan members were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison in 2017.
Moore wrote that after the Klan members were convicted, KKK membership plummeted. Many of them defected to groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Prosecutors allege that the people circled in a photograph taken on January 6, 2021, were members of the Oath Keepers who were present during the Capitol riot.
Moore issued a dire warning, writing that he, more than anyone, understands how fractured things are in the United States, and identified former President Donald Trump as an instigator of this division. He believes there is a dividing line between white supremacists and January 6, pictured above.
The KKK’s numerous chapters were frightened by the verdict, leading many of them to leave the group altogether.
Some joined far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
“I am proud to have dealt a devastating, almost fatal blow to a hate-filled organization,” writes Moore, who now lives with his family at an undisclosed location. “Yet the movement as a whole was far from dead or even in decline.”
Moore issued a dire warning, writing that he, more than anyone, understands how fractured things are in the United States and identified former President Donald Trump as an instigator of this division.
Connects the KKK to modern white nationalist groups and the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
“The Klan and the related groups it has produced have learned to balance bullets with bluster and guns with paper, two methods that have the potential to do far more irreparable damage to the state of our democracy than the former,” he wrote.
“With the 2024 elections approaching and democracy itself at stake… we should be very afraid.”
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