Anthony Tait

Anthony John Tait (born May 27, 1954) is an American man who served as an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) within the Hells Angels. Tait has been described as the "most damaging informant in the history of the Hell's Angels" whose testimony led to the conviction of the Hells Angels leader Sonny Barger on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Early life Tait's father, Samuel Gordon Tait, was a Scotsman who served as an intelligence officer in the British Army during World War II and was later posted to Haifa during the British occupation of Mandatory Palestine. The Tait family immigrated to Alaska in 1960. Tait enlisted in the United States Army on June 15, 1971. After receiving an "undesirable discharge" from the army in March 1974, Tait began working as a bouncer and doorman at a number of bars in downtown Anchorage.

Informer Tait was born and grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. Tait worked as a bouncer in a series of strip clubs in Anchorage and became friends with members of the Anchorage chapter of the Hells Angels while also working as a part-time informer for the Anchorage Police Department. On a dare with two policemen, Tait joined the Anchorage chapter in 1983. He rose up to become the sergeant-at-arms. The Anchorage police had little experience with running informers and passed Tait onto the FBI.

Operation Cacus Tim McKinley, the FBI agent who had been the anti-Hells Angels specialist in the bureau told the Canadian journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden in a 2006 interview: "What he wanted to do was just give us a bunch of information and we do wiretaps, and everybody would go to jail. He was kind of shocked to find out just how complicated it was". McKinley used Tait as "a walking electronics platform" to record everything that the Hells Angels said and did. McKinley stated: "What he was tasked to do was to identify the upper-level leadership of the Hells Angels, identify the criminal structure of the organization, track the money, track the dope". McKinley wanted Tait to provide the evidence to convict Sonny Barger, whom he described as a wily and formidable opponent. McKinley said of Barger: "Balls—the guy certainly has balls".

McKinley formed a partnership with Ted Baltas of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to handle the case. Both Baltas and McKinley stated that past efforts against Barger had failed because of bureaucratic infighting between different branches of the U.S. government. Baltas said: "In the early days, each agency wanted to control its own investigation—the DEA doing drugs, the FBI doing their things, the AFT guns and bombs. The whole idea of collaborating and sharing wasn't there. We didn't have the resources, the knowledge, the manpower—or we weren't smart enough to do it". The partnership between Baltas and McKinley surprised many in the U.S. government as Baltas stated: "The fact that the ATF and the FBI worked together so closely left a lot of people speechless". Past investigations into the Hells Angels had also failed because of corruption within the U.S. government as McKinley stated officials of the government routinely sold information to the Angels. McKinley stated that the way the Hells Angels knew far too much about FBI investigations and were always able to take measures to avoid being arrested could only be explained by corruption. McKinley used as example how in the early 1980s the Hells Angels always moved their methamphetamine labs once the FBI put them under surveillance, which he argued could only be explained by corruption within the FBI. To prevent more corruption, the team handling Tait was kept very small with eight FBI and two ATF agents handling him. Tait only used pagers and pay phones to communicate with his handlers. The operation was codenamed Cacus, after the centaur in the Inferno who rules the Circle of Hell reserved for the souls of thieves. McKinley had wanted to name the operation Charon after the boatman of Greek mythology who carried the souls of the dead across the river Styx to symbolize his intention to send away the Hells Angels forever, but found that the name Charon had been used for a prior operation. McKinley praised Tait as an informer as he stated: "He's got an ego the size of Montana, but he is perfectly willing to follow instructions and report accurately".

Tait's swagger, aggression and apparent success as a drug dealer allowed him to become the Hells Angels point man for the entire West Coast. He met Barger numerous times. Barger later wrote: "Judging by the way he threw money around, I figured he dealt drugs or something". Tait usually wore two wires for his meetings in case the batteries failed on one of his wires, and also had a bug in his pager. Tait visited nearly every Hells Angels chapter in the world. Tait was paid $4,000 per month by the FBI. On the basis of the evidence provided by Tait, Barger was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder on 10 November 1987. At the trial, Tait testified for six weeks as the star witness for the U.S. government. Tait's ex-wife, Brenda Lee Fowler, testified for the defense. She testified that Tait was "a liar, a scumbag and a cheater" who engaged in substance abuse, beat her, and talked to the ashes of his dead father. The trial ended with Barger being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, for which he served 59 months in prison. Over a series of trials in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than 500 people were convicted on the basis of the evidence collected by Tait, making him in terms of convictions registered the most effective informer for the U.S. government in history. Tait now lives in self-imposed exile somewhere in Europe under an assumed name.

Books