How the KKK's secret plot to assassinate Barack Obama days before the presidential election was foiled by an undercover FBI agent

As Barack Obama's rise to the White House looked more and more certain in late 2008, members of the Ku Klux Klan plotted to assassinate the man who would become America's first black president.

That's according to the newly released memoir of Joe Moore, the undercover FBI agent who stopped them. 

Moore infiltrated the Wayward, Florida, chapter of the KKK in 2007, impressing his fellow Klansmen with an exaggerated military record as an honorably discharged army veteran.

Once he was successfully embedded in the group, he witnessed the planning process to kill Obama just days before he would be elected president. 

They identified the day, time and location of the hit; obsessed over the then-Illinois senator's motorcade schedule; obtained .50-caliber rifles; and planned to destroy the assassin's vehicles once the deed was done, the New York Post reported.

Moore, who played up his expert marksmanship as a former army sniper, was selected as the man who fire the killing shot at Obama.

'I had to follow [my orders] and do whatever it took to prevent the assassination of Barack Obama,' Moore wrote in his new book, 'White Robes and Broken Badges'. 

'Because I was the only one who could.'

This marked the first time the FBI mounted an undercover operation to target America's oldest hate group, and the stakes couldn't have been higher. 

Moore would ultimately feed misinformation to his 'brothers' in the Klan, which potentially saved Obama's life.

In a recent NPR interview, he said he concocted a story about the Secret Service having drones to scare them out of killing Obama.

'I said, "Hey. What are y'all going to do about the drones?" And then they looked at me with a shocked face, and they looked at each other and looked back and said, "Drones? What drones?"' 

He continued: 'I said, "...Now that Obama is the candidate, he has an elevated level of Secret Service protection, and at this level, that includes drones. I didn't know it did, but they didn't either.' 

But before he could be in the position to thwart their plans, he was forced to attend cross burnings, stand by and tolerate savage acts of violence and participate in twisted rituals - all while stashing a recording device on his person.

After years of pretending to be chummy with racists, Moore discovered there were police officers, prison guards and sheriff's deputies across the state of Florida who were active members of the KKK. 

One Klan member showed him arsenals filled with firearms and tactical gear. Another showed off a backyard incinerator he called 'my own personal crematorium.'

He said living this double life took its toll though, writing that he'd often do method-acting techniques to psych himself up before going back undercover. 

One of his favorite things to do to get into character was listen to Guns N Roses' pessimistic cover of 'Ain't It Fun' while wearing an American flag-embroidered cap.

'The deeper I became entrenched in the Klan, the more of a challenge it became to leave all that at the door when I went home to my wife and son,' Moore wrote. 

'All I could visualize were members kicking in the door to come get me after learning my true purpose.'

His fears didn't stop him from diving right back into an undercover stint with the KKK in Bronson, Florida, in 2013.

The Bronson chapter was located 100 miles away from the Klan chapter in Wayward, where authorities pulled him out prematurely four years earlier due to a risk of getting exposed.

Moore's expertise was needed more than ever at the time.

Obama's ascension to the presidency and the backlash associated with the 2014 police killing of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, saw enrollment numbers in white supremacist groups across the country make a startling jump.

Moore implicated four prominent Klansmen who were set to murder a black man named Warren Williams over a personal grudge.

That led to a SWAT team apprehending the would-be perps outside of a Home Depot in Alachua, Florida.

This good deed unfortunately forced Moore and his family to assume new lives and shed their old identities for good.

'I'd lie awake nights thinking that my payback for the most successful infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in FBI history was losing my house, almost all my possessions, my friends, and by all accounts, my future,' Moore wrote.

All four Klan members were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison in 2017.

The KKK's many chapters got spooked by the verdict, leading many of them to abandon the group altogether.

Some joined alt-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

'I take great pride in dealing a hateful organization a devastating near deathblow,' writes Moore, who now lives with his family in an undisclosed location. 'The overall movement in general, though, was far, far from dead or even in decline.' 

Moore issued a grave warning, writing that he, more than anyone, understands how fractured America, identifying former President Donald Trump as a instigator of this division.

He connects the KKK to modern white nationalist groups and the January 6 riot on the Capitol.

'The Klan and the like-minded groups it has produced have learned to balance bullets with bluster and pistols with paper, both of which have the potential to do far more irrevocable damage on the state of our democracy than the former,' he wrote.

'With the 2024 election looming, and democracy itself on the ballot ... we should be very afraid.'