The leather-jacketed, long-haired biker of the open road is an icon of American culture, but law enforcement agencies have long maintained that motorcycle clubs like the Hells Angels are criminals and menaces to society. These two films follow US federal agents’ attempts to prove this, concluding with the dramatic story of how undercover Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agent Billy Queen infiltrated the violent Mongol motorcycle gang in southern California.

The Mongols Motorcycle Club started life in the backstreets of East Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Naming themselves after Genghis Khan’s Mongol army, they soon attracted the attention of the Hells Angels, who were offended at the muchsmaller club’s claim to control California.

In 1977, this resentment manifested itself in the form of murder when two San Diego Mongols were shot dead by a Hells Angels hit squad. Four days later, the Angels planted a car bomb outside the mortuary where the bikers’ funerals were taking place. “This was for everyone to see and know that the Hells Angels had gone to war with the Mongols motorcycle gang,” recalls San Diego US Marshal Budd Johnson.

Needing money to fight the powerful, well organised Angels, the Mongols began getting serious about selling drugs. After five years, they had amassed an arsenal and were ready to fight back. In 1982, five of them set upon a Hells Angel godfather who was then shot dead by Scott ‘Junior’ Ereckson. After serving four years for voluntary manslaughter – witnesses were too scared to step forward – Junior emerged a club hero as the first Mongol to kill a Hells Angel, and was promptly made president.

Over the next decade, the Mongols expanded their rackets knowing that the cops were powerless to act without witnesses. The Federal authorities eventually decided that sending in a man undercover was the only way to bring them down, and recruited ATF agent Billy Queen to infiltrate the famously tight-knit gang.

After an ATF informant introduced Queen to members at a Mongol bar, he then had to pass muster with Donald ‘Red Dog’ Jarvis, the club’s ‘sergeant at arms’, who screened new members. Red Dog says that he had his reservations, suspecting that Queen was a cop from the outset. Fortunately, Queen managed to convince other club members that he was for real, and was eventually offered membership of the club’s San Fernando Valley chapter. While serving a number of months as a prospective member, or ‘prospect’, Queen gathered evidence of crimes that he witnessed – but the pressures of undercover life were having severe effects. “I had become completely isolated from my real life,” he says. “I was out here on my own with the Mongols. That was my life.”

Resolving to stick with the operation, Queen was stunned when the Mongols made him a full member. Incredibly, just one month after joining, Queen was then made secretary treasurer of his chapter. With access to the gang’s secret records, he was now able to gather intelligence on the entire network – and, as a full member, was regarded as beyond suspicion.

The Mongols let their guard down, never once suspecting that Queen was working to put them in prison. But after two years as a Mongol, Queen realised that these men had become his friends – and the thought that he was about to betray them left him racked with guilt. “I was that close to going over the edge,” he recalls. Concerned for their agent, the ATF decided it was time to end the operation.

In May 2000, a mammoth takedown resulted in 53 Mongols being convicted of crimes ranging from drug-trafficking to murder. But even though the operation was a resounding success, Billy Queen found it difficult adjusting to normal life. “It was worth it to the ATF and the people of California,” he concedes. “It just wasn’t worth it to me.” The Mongols, meanwhile, have bounced back – but, having been infiltrated once, are always looking over their shoulders.