Michelle Shephard

Scott Payne

When Scott Payne was growing up, an ‘80s kid with a big attitude and a taste for sleeveless shirts, he could never have envisioned where he’d find himself on Halloween night 2019. Having transformed into “Pale Horse” and infiltrated the nation’s most dangerous, fastest-growing white supremacy group, The Base, he was huddled with a cell of neo-Nazis in the backwoods of Georgia as they slaughtered a goat and drank its blood in a ritual sacrifice.

A decorated agent dubbed the “Hillbilly Donnie Brasco,” Payne takes readers along with him on some of the most terrifying and riskiest assignments in FBI history. He went deep undercover with the lethal Outlaw Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts; to the front lines of the opioid epidemic in Tennessee; and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Through it all, he stayed married to the love of his life, raised two girls, and spent his Sundays at church, sustained by family and faith.

Timely and unputdownable, Code Name: Pale Horse is a hard look at some of the most pressing threats facing America today. Honest and inspiring, it’s the story of a hero determined to take down a hateful army—before the unthinkable could come to pass.

How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis

Code Name: Pale Horse

Decade of Fear is a darkly entertaining journey through the complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11. On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched the remains of New York’s World Trade Center fall from the sky, wondering what much of the world was asking: “Why?” So began a ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times. Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews worldwide, and with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves together stories of warlords, presidents, spies, grieving widows and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where often the West’s “solutions” for terrorism only served to exacerbate the problem. She cruises with former CIA bosses, runs alongside protestors in the streets of Sanaa to escape fire from Yemen’s security services during experience the Arab Spring, meets victims of terrorism who leave her devastated, and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card for a free latte. Gripping, heartbreaking and infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a decade that was all too often described through panicked rhetoric.

Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone

Decade of Fear

A prize-winning journalist tells the troubling story of Canadian Omar Khadr, who has spent a quarter of his life growing up in Guantanamo Bay. Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in July 2002 at the age of 15. Accused by the Pentagon of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, Khadr faces charges of conspiracy and murder. His case is set to be the first war crimes trial since World War II. In Guantanamo's Child, veteran reporter Michelle Shephard traces Khadr's roots in Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan, growing up surrounded by al Qaeda's elite. She examines how his despised family, dubbed "Canada's First Family of Terrorism," has overshadowed his trial and left him alone behind bars for more than five years. Khadr's story goes to the heart of what's wrong with the U.S. administration's post-9/11 policies and why Canada is guilty by association. His story explains how the lack of due process can create victims and lead to retribution, and instead of justice, fuel terrorism. Michelle Shephard is a national security reporter for the Toronto Star and the recipient of Canada's top two journalism awards. "You will be shocked, saddened and in the end angry at the story this page turner of a book exposes. I read it straight through and Omar Khadr's plight is one you cannot forget." —Michael Ratner, New York, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights "Michelle Shephard's richly reported, well written account of Omar Khadr's trajectory from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the cells of Guantanamo is a microcosm of the larger "war on terror" in which the teenaged Khadr either played the role of a jihadist murderer or tragic pawn or, perhaps, both roles." —Peter Bergen, author of Holy war, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I know

Michelle Shephard

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