Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins interviewed retired ATF Agent Ignacio Esteban about his book Full Throttle: Riding with the Hells Angels, the Life of Sonny Barger.  This book is a free download until Monday, August 15, on Amazon. Ralph Sonny Barger was born October 8, 1938 and died recently on June 29, 2022. He was the original icon of an American outlaw biker. Sonny Barger was also an author of many books and an actor who was a founding member of the Oakland, California, chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in 1957. Ignacio tells us how Barger started life with an alcoholic, abusive father, and a missing mother. In 1955, as a teenager, he lied about his age to join the military. When the army discovered he was underage, they gave him an honorable discharge. He was good mechanically and liked motorcycles. He joined a small San Francisco area gang known as the Panthers, which quickly went defunct. He joined a small club known as the Oakland Hells Angels, and when the leader went to prison, Sonny Barger became president. He learned several other California motorcycle gangs claimed the name of Hells Angels, so he traveled around and convinced them to form one club, even writing rules and bylaws. An example of the little-known tidbits that Ignacio Esteban passes along in his book is the story about how Barger wrote a letter to President Lyndon Johnson during a time when the War in Vietnam was not going well. Hells Angels President Barger advised United States President Johnson that he and the entire Hells Angels gang would travel to Vietnam, and he promised they would kick the butts of the Viet Cong and win the war quickly. LBJ did not respond. Transcript SPEAKERS Ignacio Esteban, GARY JENKINS 00:00 Welcome all you Wiretappers out there. Back here in studio Gangland Wire with our now regular almost frequent contributor Ignacio Esteban, retired ATF agent. Welcome, Ignacio. 00:12 Hey, Gary thanks for having me again. I enjoy being out here. 00:15 I know you do. And you guys you need to do look him up on Amazon. He’s got a whole bunch of books out there that are easy reads and you can learn anything you want about crime, guns, anything that that you might want to find out about. He’s got a book about it on Amazon. So just look him up. You can just look at the show notes and and I’ll put links to his Arthur page on Amazon and I’ve done other shows with him. So look back at my other shows and, and you can learn more about ATF Retired agent Ignacio Esteban? 00:52 That’s the one with ATF. 00:54 Yeah. How do you? How do you do first? You first retired? Did you feel like did you like did you bother you telling people you retired? It did me. I didn’t like say that was retired? 01:07 Yeah. I mean, it kind of didn’t because I was in headquarters. I did my two years there. Yeah. And I felt good. I mean, most of my career was with doing the investigation that being proactive. But you know, I learned a lot behind the scenes or to what will help you know, things really happen behind the scenes. So I was okay with it. And I really never thought I was dabbling with my autobiography, ATF Undercover. But I never thought I was gonna be a prolific writer like this. I was gonna do this. There’s something I didn’t think about really, yeah. And it’s really taken life. And I never thought I’ll be on podcast shows and YouTube shows.