Jay Dobyns, alias Jaybird, is an ATF undercover agent who infiltrated the Hells Angels motorcycle club from 2001 to 2003. He was offered membership into the gang after faking the murder of a rival Mongols Motorcycle Club member and providing ‘evidence’ of the staged murder to Hells Angels leaders. Dobyns and his partners worked undercover for 21 months leading to Federal arrests and search warrants on July 8, 2003.

He’s written a book about his experiences, No Angel (read Simon A’s review, and there’s competition to win signed copies too), and we talked to him about his reasons for writing the book and what he feels about  the Hells Angels now.

We always like to ask – are you a bookgeek?

Yes, I am – a geek that is. I love to read, although finding the time of late has been difficult.

One of my favorite books is I Am Third, by Gale Sayers. He is a legendary American football player and was a childhood hero of mine. His book was used to make the movie Brian’s Song based on his relationship with teammate Brian Piccilo who was stricken with cancer during their time together as athletes.

The theme of the book is God is first, my family and friends are second, and I am third. I have tried to live my life by that.

When you were writing No Angel, did you have an audience in mind? Your wife, perhaps, or colleagues in law enforcement?

My mission in writing was not so much to target a given audience but rather to accomplish some other objectives.

First, the investigation I participated in failed in its prosecution. After two years of risk and sacrifice, in my eyes, we lost. The public was wrongly led to believe that the prosecution failed behind corruption of the undercover agents. No one from the government ever showed an interest in setting that record straight or defending the work of me and my partners.

We were offered up as convenient scapegoats, as an excuse for the internal government/prosecution/attorney bickering that led to a less than fully successful prosecution. Others wrongly covered for their errors behind me. I wanted to tell the world that we did our jobs well and properly and to the very best of our abilities everyday.

We made mistakes, more specifically I made mistakes but, in No Angel, I did not attempt to avoid or disguise those. I discussed my errors but also hoped to show that our task force did our jobs with all of our passions to serve our country and handle Americas business by enforcing the country’s violent crime laws.

Second, after my portion of the investigation was complete, the undercover phase, my true identity was revealed and I began to receive death and violence threats. Those threats included plans to kill me, locate and torture my daughter and video tape the gang rape of my wife. In August 2008 my home was burned down in an arson attack and we lost all of our possessions.

No one from the government ever bothered to investigate the threats, confront the suspects or attempt to apprehend the criminals. I was left on my own to defend myself and my family from an international crime syndicate. I have attempted to do that, in part, by drawing attention to my plight, by discussing what was, and was not done. Doing this in an honest and accurate way I have hoped to create some pause in those intending harm to us with the knowledge that my story is known to all and also on an international scale.

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given?

In my case, be honest, be accurate, don’t embellish or fabricate. The book reading public is a very intelligent audience and they will ‘read between the lines’ and see through bluffs. I held to that and in doing so, No Angel is not an ‘I Love Me’ book. I did not set out to create a monument to myself. I was no one’s ‘Knight in Shining Armor’. I told the truth and believed that even if people do not like me or my story they would at least respect my respect for them as book buyers and readers.

Where do you do most of your writing?

At my laptop, in the mornings when I am fresh and in the evenings when the day’s events have built into a rage.

You worked with Nils Johnson-Shelton to write No Angel. Tell us a little bit about the process.

Nils was a wonderful partner. He is young and gritty. He is much more intelligent than I am. He instantly had a great sense of the story and how to organize it. We would bounce sections back and forth to each other via email, Nils in New York, me in Los Angeles, and work a sentence, or a paragraph or a chapter until we were satisfied and then move on. We did this over and over, many drafts of a manuscript, until we were satisfied that our product was the very best it could be.

Was No Angel a book that you needed to write after your experience with the Hells Angels and the strain it put on your life and your marriage?

Yes. It was very therapeutic for me. The battle damage that I put on my wife and kids was and is shameful. I take no pride in that. It is a humiliating statement to make and even more so to write down for the public to read. But, if I was going to write an honest book then I could not very well only tell the glory stories and leave out the devastating ones and put No Angel forward as an honest account of what happened. I had to tell all, the good and the bad.

After all your experiences, summarise for us your lasting feeling about the Hells Angels?

Respect. Respect not for what they do or stand for, but what they are capable of. As a member of society and further as a law enforcement officer, I (we) cannot respect murder, rape, drug dealing, gun running, extortion, etc. But, I do respect what they are capable of and how violent they can be. The HA’s are the masters of intimidation and I do not take lightly how they handle their business.

What’s been the reaction of the law enforcement community in the US to the book?

An overwhelming amount has been positive, encouraging and inspired. Some, as in any venture, take issue and find problems. Most of the detractors hold the common denominator of being insecure and/or jealous. Nothing breeds those unattractive personality and character traits in some and allows them to surface faster or stronger than the success of others.

What’s next after No Angel? It’s not uncommon for non-fiction writers to branch out in to fiction set in the world they know best – can you ever see yourself doing that?

I do not see myself as a fiction writer. As a consumer I am most intrigued by non-fiction. I love real stories about real people or events.

In a perfect world, I would love to land a position on the faculty of a university and use my experience and expertise to educate and inspire young people into the field of law enforcement. In addition to being an educator I will pursue my love of writing in other books and I have a growing interest in writing screenplays.

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