CHAPTER 4: INTERCEPTS & INTERCEPTORS

In October of 1986 a Soviet submarine in the Atlantic caught fire. On that day I was spinning the dial on my Panasonic RF2600 looking for HF military communications on the published U.S. Navy channels. I happened upon a phone patch on 8.992 MHz,  placed through the Global High Frequency System also known as GHFS.

Now known as the High Frequency Global Communications System (HFGCS) GHFS was (and is) a network of single sideband shortwave transmitters used to communicate with military aircraft in flight, military ground stations and United States Navy surface assets around the world. If and when a U.S. Navy ship loses communications through other channels due to sun-spot activity, lack of satellite availability or because it is over the radio horizon they use HF channels otherwise known as shortwave. It is also the HF back-up for Strategic Command to send the "Go-codes" also known as Emergency Action Messages to U.S. Strategic forces such as nuke-carrying bombers and missile silos. 

Someone of high rank on a Navy ship shadowing the submarine placed a phone patch through Andrews AFB (now known as Joint Base Andrews) to a DSN extension at The Pentagon. The gist of the call was about the fire on the Soviet nuclear submarine K-219. The K-219 was on a routine patrol in the North Atlantic Ocean when a catastrophic accident took place. A nuclear missile in one of the submarine's missile tubes experienced an uncontrolled explosion, resulting in a fire that rapidly spread throughout the vessel.

The  story goes, the crew, facing a critical situation, worked desperately to contain the fire and to prevent further damage. However, their efforts were hampered by various equipment failures and the worsening conditions onboard. The submarine's nuclear reactor was shut down to prevent a potential nuclear disaster.

As the situation worsened, the crew had no choice but to abandon ship. They transferred to life rafts and awaited rescue while the submarine slowly sank into the depths of the ocean. Several crew members lost their lives during the incident.

Rescue operations were launched by nearby Soviet vessels, and in an early show of Detente, American forces also participated in the search and rescue mission. Survivors were eventually located and rescued from the life rafts.

As the events unfolded (and with each successive phone-patch I monitored) more details about the incident were communicated to The Pentagon. Keep in mind this was incident involving nuclear weapons that no one outside the Navy and certain people in the Pentagon knew about. That was about to change. I had recorded everything. 

Think about this, a nuclear submarine was on fire and it wasn't on the news. 

I called the CBS News desk in New York and asked for a reporter. The woman who answered the phone asked what the call was pertaining to. I told her that a Soviet nuclear sub in the Atlantic had caught fire and I thought it was something the national news desk might want to know. 

I could practically hear her eyes roll. I'm sure she had talked to more than her share of nut-jobs claiming to know who killed JFK or swore they saw Elvis and Bigfoot together on the subway.

She rang an extension. A young producer named Jamie answered the phone. I told him what I knew and how I knew it. I played the recording of the intercepted phone patch. There was a long pause. I could hear him writing down notes.

"And where are you located, sir?" he asked.

"In Texas I replied, northwest Texas to be exact."

I could sense the doubt in his voice, but to his credit he didn't chalk the call up to a tin-foil-hat wearing crank.

I went on to explain how shortwave radio transmissions worked and how the carom off the upper atmosphere (like billiard balls off the side rails) and eventually ended up inside my radio.

He asked a few more questions and then for my number and said he would call me back. I totally expected to never hear from him again.

An hour later he called back. 

He said I was on a speaker phone and others were listening in, a reporter and someone you may have heard of named Dan Rather. They asked for me to play the recording again. I did. They asked to clarify how I intercepted the call. Again I explained how the GHFS worked. 

I could hear them talking among themselves and Jamie said "I'll call you back."  

An hour or so later they called me back again. I heard a very familiar voice say "Hello, this is Dan Rather. Can you play the tape again so we can record it?" I said sure - just let me know when you are ready." 

After I played it Dan Rather said, "We called the Pentagon and they said they had no knowledge of any Soviet sub on fire anywhere. Is this the real deal or are you playing some kind of a prank?"

I was a little pissed-off but I contained it.  

I said "Mr. Rather - I work for a local newspaper, you can call my boss and verify who I am. I think you know when someone is lying to you and that someone is not me." 

I added "You heard on the recording the Navy asking the operator at Andrews to route the phone number to a certain DSN number. The Defense Service Network (DSN) is the provider of long-distance communications services for the Department of Defense (DoD). Every installation has a special DSN number and the numbers vary by location. My guess is that particular number belongs to the Navy. Call the Pentagon, ask for that number and I'll bet that whomever answers the phone will have the rank of petty officer."

Dan said " Can we play your recording for them?"

"I answered, "Be my guest - just don't tell them who the source is."

Although what I had done wasn't illegal I didn't want the FBI starting a file on me just yet. That would eventually happen later.

The next day the producer Jamie called me back. Their Pentagon correspondent had played the tape for the Navy. They went into a huddle in a Pentagon office somewhere and then a PIO (Public Information Office) came out and confirmed the whole thing because someone at the Pentagon realized that helping any ship in distress (even a Soviet submarine) was good P.R. They even provided CBS News with video footage of them rescuing the Red Navy submariners. 

That intercept and others to follow would put me on the bonified source list of many national news media organizations. My phone would ring anytime there was breaking international news that had to do with the U.S. military. It would ring off the hook on 9-11. 

In 1983 I monitored the build up to the invasion of Grenada. I even recorded a phone patch from a Congressional aid describing mass graves the military had found. As soon as he mentioned them he was told to stop talking because the line was not secure. I called NBC News about this one and they couldn't have cared any less. That's the reason I called CBS News about the Soviet sub fire in 1986 and not NBC.

Later I was contacted by the Dallas bureau of CBS news and asked if I could build them a portable radio scanning system for use by their reporters in the field. I was told it came in quite handy during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco. When I delivered it I was introduced to a young budding reporter, Scott Pelley  Later Pelley would go on to report for 60 Minutes and then anchor the CBS Nightly News succeeding Katie Couric. 

A producer for 60 Minutes, Jamie Kraft would become a good contact inside the CBS organization and I would go on to do a report with him and reporter Bob McKeown after I took a video of a possibly secret (and still unacknowledged) military aircraft flying over the White Sands Missile Range in 1993. 

Original Popular Science article by Stuart F Brown

Popular Science Magazine took interest and did a story, which lead to others including a episode on Unsolved Mysteries. See below. 

The publicity led to meeting other "Interceptors" such as author Jim Goodall and Pop Sci west coast editor, Stuart F Brown and the late great  Phil Patton who would go on to write Dreamland - travels inside the secret world of Roswell and Area 51.  I wound up being a chapter in Phil's book and I would go on to fact-check Dreamland for him. The book grew out of a Wired article called Stealth Watchers.

It would because of Phil's book that I would meet "Mark "who would be the key in unravelling Roswell. More on him later. 

By now you are probably asking yourself, what does any of this have to do with Unraveling Roswell? 

A leads to B leads to C and it's all a part of establishing provenance because without it and knowing my bona fides my story would carry no weight what-so-ever.

How many UFO videos have you seen where they can't be traced back to the source? Some will say the reason is "because they are sacred of the Feds" and that's a bullshit answer. I found  in most instances  the only reason to hide the source is because it's fake or just a misidentified flying man-made object. However, pilots don't report fake UFOs. Monitoring aircraft communications could be key to uncovering all kinds of sightings. 

Basically, pilots talk to air traffic control over radio all the time. Sometimes, during those conversations, pilots mention seeing something they can’t identify — weird lights, objects that don’t show up on radar, or things moving in unexpected ways. Those are what we now call UAPs.

Back in the day (and even now with civilian flights), a lot of aviation radio traffic is out in the open, meaning people could listen in. Every once in a while, someone would hear a pilot say things like:

• “Do you see that traffic?”

• “There’s something off our left side”

• “We’ve got an unknown target on radar”

That’s how some UAP stories originally came out — not because someone was spying, but because the radios weren’t secret.

That said, most UAP reports aren’t dramatic. A lot turn out to be:

• Balloons

• Drones

• Other planes

• Weather effects

• Glitches in sensors

So yeah — listening to aviation chatter can give hints that pilots see odd things sometimes, but it’s not some secret window into hidden UFO info. The real details usually come later from reports, investigations, or stuff that gets declassified.

When you listen to military aviation chatter, the unencrypted stuff, you’re not getting explanations or stories. What you get are little cracks where something unexpected leaks through. A pilot suddenly sounds more serious. Someone asks about traffic that clearly isn’t supposed to be there. No one explains it, but you can tell the situation just changed.

That’s where it gets interesting. It’s not about hearing details, it’s about noticing the shift. The radios go from routine to tense or careful, and everyone gets very deliberate with their words. If you know how normal comms usually sound, those moments stand out.

So yeah, it’s not dramatic and it’s not a smoking gun, but it can absolutely be revealing. You’re basically hearing the moment where something doesn’t fit the plan — and then watching it get pushed off the radio and into reports later.

I would soon find out I wasn’t the only one monitoring the civil and military airwaves. What felt at first like this quiet, almost secret thing turned out to be surprisingly normal. There were forums, message boards, and casual online chats full of people doing the exact same thing—aviation nerds, former pilots, radio geeks, and just curious listeners killing time. Some were in it for the technical side, some liked tracking flights, and others just enjoyed the rhythm of real-world conversations unfolding live.

It wasn’t conspiracy-driven or dramatic like I’d imagined. It was a hobby, plain and simple, no different from trainspotting or weather watching. People compared notes, shared odd moments they’d heard, and shrugged off most of it as routine aviation weirdness. Every now and then something unusual would pop up, spark a short discussion, and then everyone would move on. That’s when it clicked: listening wasn’t about uncovering secrets, it was about paying attention. You weren’t hunting for answers so much as learning how the system sounds when everything’s normal—and noticing when it isn’t.

I began messaging and interacting with like-minded monitors, and that’s when it really opened up. What I thought was a solo pastime turned into this loose, scattered community of people who were all listening in their own corners of the world. We talked constantly, sharing observations, patterns we’d noticed, familiar call signs, and general knowledge—not in a secretive way, just the way hobbyists always do when they find their people.

Somewhere along the line, the term “Interceptors” started floating around. I honestly don’t know who coined it, but it fit. It sounded half-serious, half-joking, and it stuck fast, especially with the hardcore monitors who were always listening, always cross-checking, always awake at odd hours. They treated it like a craft. Not obsession—more like discipline.

What surprised me most was how close some of these people became. Voices I’d never heard, names I might never know, but over time they turned into trusted sources of information and, eventually, real friends. There was a shared understanding there: no hype, no wild claims, just patience and attention. We weren’t chasing drama. We were listening to the world move in real time, and occasionally, sharing that quiet moment when something didn’t quite line up.

We kind of worked like a civilian intelligence agency, at least in spirit — but without the secrecy or authority. It was informal, scattered, and totally voluntary. No one was in charge. There was no master plan. Just a bunch of people paying attention at the same time and comparing notes.

Someone would hear something odd and message the group. Someone else, halfway across the country, might’ve caught the same call sign an hour earlier. Another person would recognize a pattern or say, “That unit’s been active all week,” or “That frequency usually goes quiet unless something’s up.” Piece by piece, a clearer picture would form, not because anyone had special access, but because we were pooling perspectives.

It wasn’t about spying or uncovering secrets. It felt more like crowdsourced awareness. Everyone knew their niche — certain regions, certain aircraft, certain habits. Over time, you learned who was reliable, who had sharp ears, who remembered details. That’s where the trust came from.

I would intercept amazing things over the decades. Here's one I captured just a few years ago on a strange encounter in the sky. 

Looking back, the comparison to a intelligence agency fits fits because of how methodical it became. Not dramatic, not paranoid — just patient, collaborative, and observant. A bunch of civilians, listening to the same sky, realizing that when you connect small fragments, you sometimes see more than you ever could alone.

NOTE: Before he passed, Phil Paton  was the only one I talked about Unraveling Roswell with. He asked me to promise him I'd finish it and publish it. This blog is dedicated to Phil and "Mark" who together helped me find the meaning of Roswell. 

UP NEXT - PART 5: BLACK SOUL - BLACK TRIANGLES - AND WHITE SANDS