INFILTRATING THE KU KLUX KLAN
A Throwback Thursday Story of how I Became a Fleet Street Journalist
My big break in journalism came in 1979 when I infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan.
It began with a tip that the Grand Dragon of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, desired to establish a “klavern” (Klan-speak for branch) in Britain.
Posing as a wannabe Klansman, I phoned Robert E. Scoggin (the Grand Dragon who doubled as Imperial Wizard) and we had a long chat during which he determined that I should be his main facilitator. He then proceeded to recite to me the names and phone numbers of prospective Klan members from all around Britain.
I took what I had to the Sunday People.
Two men—Investigations Editor Laurie Manifold and his deputy, Alan Ridout—each week produced a full page of investigative stories (sometimes just one big one) under the banner Man of The People Investigates. They worked five days a week (Tuesday through Saturday) beavering away at four to five stories at any given time in an office insulated from the rest of the newsroom to protect their sources and stories, which were never shared with anyone other than the newspaper’s editor—and supported by an odd assortment of freelancers “doing shifts.” (In Britain, newsrooms were understaffed and, thus, freelance was a perfectly acceptable way to practice journalism, unlike in the USA where “freelance” is thought to be a euphemism for “unemployed.”)
The Sunday People investigative page exposed villains and conmen, sex scoundrels and scammers. In its heyday, this high-circulation tabloid some of the most dangerous gangsters in London’s East End.
The Sunday People bought my KKK story for a good chunk of change and put me to work for them.
Guided by the pros, I made contact with all the names on Scoggin’s list and invited them to a hotel room near King’s Cross, one of London’s main train stations, for a meeting. The room was wired with microphones, add a photographer up the road with a telephoto lens who clicked away as our targets—about a dozen—came and went, including a thuggish family (father and two sons) who claimed they owned an arsenal of illegal guns. They talked of abducting inter-racial couples to tar-and-feather them, along with other very ugly schemes they seemed determined ro execute.
We had our story in the bag—a good one.
But then it got even better: Grand Dragon Scoggin invited me to visit him in Spartanburg, South Carolina for the purpose of being “naturalized” into the KKK.
Naturalized?
“You can’t run a branch of the Klan,” he drawled, “until you’re initiated in a ceremony.”
The editor of The Sunday People agreed, so off we went—me and Alan Ridout and Angus Mayer, a freelancer who was brought in to assist.
First thing, in the back of a van, Klansmen hit us up for $20 each for “dues.”
Arriving in front of Scoggin’s ranch house—pickup trucks sprawled everywhere—we were escorted into a dark garage and pointed up a narrow, creaky stairway.
At the top, a door opened and the Imperial Wizard stood before us decked in a gold satin robe and cone-shaped hat; around him, posters glorifying the KKK were illuminated with ultraviolet “black” light.
In the center of the room: An altar with a Holy Bible opened to Corinthians 12.
The room soon filled with about two dozen Klansmen (and women) wearing white robes, fully hooded. They formed a semicircle around us and the 30-minute ceremony began.
Scoggin anointed us with “holy water” and tapped our shoulders with the flat side of a sword—rendering us knighted into the secret fraternity of haters.
At one point, the Imperial Wizard pointed to a snakeskin nailed to the wall and said, “That’s what happens to traitors!”
The lights came on, hoods came off, donuts and coffee served. And out came a tape measure.
Why a tape measure?
Because bespoke robes and hoods were to be hastily tailored for us. Not normal white ones, mind you, but red satin robes, which identified us as “Kleagles” (Klan-speak for “officers”), who would return to London and run the UK Klavern.
Or so they believed.
Because that’s not what happened, of course.
No, what happened was this: Two successive front-page, center-spread stories “splashed” (Fleet Street lingo) over two Sundays exposing names and photographs of those who would bring hate to Britain.
It blew the UK KKK out of the water.
Literally. That was the end of the KKK in Blighty.
And, tipped off (by me), Special Branch (police) raided the home of thuggish father and two sons, found their arsenal of guns under a bed—and confiscated them.
One anecdote of that experience stands out above all others:
On our final day in town, the Imperial Wizard took our trio on a tour of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which led that evening to a “Tri-State” KKK rally across the border into North Carolina, to a field reached only by a single lane gravel road.
Sitting bumper-to-bumper in a long stream of vehicles, I noticed a state police roadblock up ahead—and could see that the state trooper was asking each driver for ID.
Problem: The only ID I had was my UK driving license—in my real name, not the alias I was using for Bob Scoggin, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to me.
We drew slowly up until it was my turn.
The trooper leaned in and drawled, “Driver’s license and car papers.”
I opened the glove compartment and handed him the car rental agreement.
“I said driver’s license,” he repeated.
“It’s in the trunk,” I said.
“Well,” he drawled. “Go get it.”
I got out and walked around the car, followed by the state trooper. And then, uh-oh, Scoggin got out too and met me around the other side. I rifled through my duffel bag, mind racing about an escape ramp if Scoggin discovered I wasn’t who I said I was. But there was no escaping. And I remembered the snakeskin nailed to the wall: That’s what happens to traitors!
Just as I put my hand on my license, Scoggin extended his right arm in from of me and offered to shake hands with the trooper. “Hi, I’m Bob Scoggin, Imperial Wizard for South Carolina.”
The trooper smiled, shook Scoggin’s hand and drawled, “Well, why didn’t you say so? You boys go right on through!”
A golden moment for me; a low point for North Carolina law enforcement.
Our newly tailored red robes and hoods awaited us at the rally.
Over the next few years I infiltrated violent anarchist cells and neo-Nazi organizations for The Sunday People and News of the World, another high-circulation British Sunday newspaper.
This became my specialty: Infiltrating hate groups and, operating undercover, reporting on their activities from the inside.
This kind of undercover journalism was an accepted practice in Britain, but only as a last resort for getting the story on evil-doers, based on the principle that if a particular organization was presumed to be up to no good and no one within would talk about it to an outsider, it was ethical to penetrate them to get at the truth.