In the summer of 2008, Joe Moore, a former Army sniper, insinuated himself right into a senior Ku Klux Klan chapter in Gainesville, Florida, while also serving as an undercover FBI informant. Then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama was running for president, and Moore’s KKK brothers had infiltrated a plot to assassinate the favored Democrat who desired to turn out to be the country’s first black president.

Obama was scheduled to come back to nearby Kissimmee in October and, as Moore told NPR In an interview with host Tonya Mosley this week, “they revealed to me that they have a plan that involves multiple members, vehicles, two anti-tank rifles, several law enforcement officers who will be involved to some degree” in a plan to “provide him with very substantial firepower” through the Obama motorcade and rally.

The Klan was getting inside details about Obama’s visit from police sources and other help from contacts on the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles who could help obtain false license plate numbers at a neighborhood junkyard, Moore said. He had earned the trust of KKK leaders as the proper man for the job due to his military experience as a sniper and intelligence gatherer, so he was well-positioned to step in and thwart their plot through the next planning meeting.

“And then a light bulb went off in my head,” he told Mosley. “And I said, ‘Hey, what are you guys going to do about the drones?’ And then they looked at me in shock, looked at each other, turned around and said, ‘Drones? What drones?’ I said, ‘Well, the Secret Service, you know, now that Obama is the candidate, they have heightened Secret Service protection, and at that level, that includes drones.’ I didn’t know that, but they didn’t know either. … Naturally, I came up with a solution on the spot that stopped it.”

Moore’s moving story of how he foiled an assassination attempt on Obama, in addition to two other plots in Florida that led to the convictions of three Ku Klux Klan members, is included in his latest book“White Robes and Broken Badges: Infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan and Exposing the Evil in Our Midst,” the story of the years he spent from 2007 to 2017 living a double life as an FBI informant.

In the book, he also describes witnessing first-hand the growing threat from white supremacist extremist groups and his concern about how their hateful ethos contributed to recent incidents of racial violence and domestic terrorism, including those in Charlottesville, Virginia; Ferguson, Missouri; and Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

In the book, Moore describes the Obama presidency as lighting the fuse and Ferguson because the powder keg for that fuse, resulting in the explosion of far-right extremism in America. He told NPR that the killing of Michael Brown and the next riots and protests across the country in 2014 further mobilized the KKK, partially because considered one of the Klan’s national leaders, Frank Ancona Jr., “lived near St. Louis and had been in contact with business owners in the area to ask them if they wanted the Klan to come in and provide protection.”

“And the (Klan) membership during the Obama years and the Ferguson riots also brought out people who already had similar views,” he said. “So those people who maybe had some white supremacist leanings were looking for people to join a group with. That accelerated the inquiries about the Klan recruitment process.”

Moore said the leaflets the KKK handed out during protests in Ferguson and St. Louis, criticizing protesters for disrupting town and warning that they’d not tolerate threats against law enforcement officials, were evidence of “an evolution in their propaganda skills.” Far-right extremist groups “cultivate fear, and then attract people who are afraid of that, and then continue to fuel that fiery hatred within the organization,” he said.

In its annual report on hate and extremism published in June Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented 595 hate groups in 2023, a 72 percent increase from 2022. That included only 10 lively Ku Klux Klan groups, but there was a 50 percent increase in white supremacist hate groups in 2023, which rose to 166 from 109 the previous 12 months.

“What we’re seeing now should be a wake-up call for all of us,” Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC, said during a call with reporters including Missouri Independent“Our 2023 report documents more hate and anti-government extremist groups than ever before. With historic elections just months away, these groups are multiplying, mobilizing, and creating, and in some cases already implementing, plans to overthrow democracy.”

Florida has long been a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan and white nationalists, and Moore learned firsthand how dangerous their members may be — especially with the assistance of local law enforcement.

During his second stint as an FBI informant from 2013 to 2017, Moore infiltrated the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in north-central Florida, rising to the rank of Grand Knight for the Georgia-Florida area.

This role made him the highest-ranking Ku Klux Klan security officer within the region and the one that may very well be called upon to make use of violence if obligatory, in response to ABC Newswho collaborated with the AP to provide a documentary about Moore’s dangerous work as an informant during this era.

The FBI in Florida had been intercepting threats from domestic terrorist groups since 2006, and Moore said his mission was to “go inside the Ku Klux Klan to identify those involved and alert the FBI to any illegal activities.”

He soon learned of a plot to murder a black man named Warren Williams, a former prisoner who had gotten right into a fight in a jail hospital with a Florida corrections officer named Thomas Driver, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Williams bit Driver through the fight, and Driver was especially offended because he needed to undergo tests for infectious diseases reminiscent of HIV and hepatitis C.

In December 2014, during a cross-burning in rural north Florida, three Ku Klux Klan members, all Florida corrections officers, approached Moore and asked him to murder Williams. Moore reported this to his FBI superiors, who ordered him to wear a wire for the following several months to collect evidence of the conspiracy.

He did so, and all three men were found guilty in 2017 of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

The documentary includes compelling audio clips from a few of his undercover recordings, including a conversation while Moore was driving with two KKK hitmen who were searching Williams’ home, considered one of whom was an lively law enforcement officer, the opposite retired from a protracted profession in law enforcement.

They discussed a plan to grab Williams off the sidewalk, inject him with a lethal dose of insulin, and throw him into the river. The Ku Klux Klan got spooked that day when considered one of the officers spotted an unmarked police automotive tailing them, but Moore gathered enough evidence to convict them.

The Florida Department of Corrections later denied in an email to the AP claims of broader ties to white supremacist groups or a systemic problem beyond “the isolated actions of three individuals who committed heinous and illegal acts.”

Moore said that in his time as an informant, he discovered dozens of law enforcement officials, corrections officers, sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement officials who were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist organizations.

IN investigative series In 2021, AP reporter Jason Dearen documented that Florida prisons were filled with guards and other staff who “openly publicized their ties to white supremacist groups in order to intimidate inmates and Black colleagues, a persistent practice that often goes unpunished.”

“The KKK has always wanted to take over law enforcement because it’s a power mechanism that if they can control, they can increase their power,” Moore said. “I don’t think people realize how dangerous it is to have one KKK member in the organization because then you recruit and eventually you spread and attract other people who you can maybe convince.”

Although membership within the Ku Klux Klan has declined precipitously over the past century, Moore said the organization is making up for the loss by skillfully utilizing people in high positions.

“What I learned… in what I could do for the FBI, the truth was so hidden from the public,” Moore said. “It wasn’t that the KKK was becoming less and less human. I mean, to some extent it was. The bigger problem was that the KKK was becoming more insidious, more involved in the art of the trade, more involved in how to be effective and less noisy.”

He said he was concerned concerning the messages former President Donald Trump has sent to far-right extremists since emerging on the national political scene in 2016, including on issues reminiscent of immigration.

“A lot of the things Donald Trump has said are consistent with white supremacist ideology and other like-minded movements,” Moore said. “But what I’ve learned in my investigations is that it’s not just what I see that should concern me. It’s often what I don’t see that I need to be able to recognize.”