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For all its new-found finesse, the bikers' club did not abandon tradition, notably gang warfare. The 1977 murders that led to five convictions were one round of a raging dispute with a rival biker gang, the Mongols. Eaton and four other Angels ambushed two Mongol bikers on a San Diego freeway and machine-gunned them down. At the slain Mongols' funeral, a bouquet of red-and-white carnations (the Angel colors) and a dynamite-loaded Rambler were dropped off. The car exploded, injuring three mourners. The Mongols retaliated by gunning down Hell's Angel "Godfather" Raymond Piltz in 1982 at a biker bar in Lemon Grove, Calif.
Sonny Barger, 45, the famed former national president of the Hell's Angels, dismisses the FBI's charge that his club has become a wheeling and dealing version of the Mafia. "The Government is waging a smear campaign against us," says the biker turned bourgeois. "It is a Hollywood image and a Government image, but it is not the truth." Barger insists the gang cannot control what each member does. "A lot of Hell's Angels have gone to prison for individual things," he says, "just like policemen."