PART SEVEN: AND THEN I MET "MARK"

November 04, 2023

PART SEVEN: AND THEN I MET "MARK"

Following the Roswell sighting and the resulting national and international media attention, I was informed that while Monitoring Times appreciated the boost in subscriptions, they weren’t comfortable with the fringe elements of my reporting. They didn’t fire me, but they asked me to focus my writing strictly on the radio monitoring hobby.

In response, I began self-publishing The Intercepts Newsletter, advertising it in the classifieds of Monitoring Times, Popular Communications, and other magazines. It quickly became an underground hit. My late wife at the time, Teresa Douglass—a graphic artist at the newspaper we both worked for—was invaluable in producing the monthly four-page newsletter. I wrote the content, and she typeset it on our Macintosh Performa computer.

Phil Patton wrote in Dreamland: “Douglass and his wife Teresa, an artist and computer whiz, write and publish Intercepts—a newsletter for monitors—from their home. Douglass also runs a BBS and operates the Above Top Secret forum (under Aviation, Military) on America Online. He is also a stringer for CBS and monitors fire and police channels for the Amarillo Globe Times, where he spent six years as a news photographer.”

Intercepts became a full-time job—one of many for me, alongside freelance photography, writing, and running my news-gathering service, The Reporters Edge.

At its peak, we had about 3,000 subscribers, including some with government jobs in Langley, Virginia. I knew they were reading every issue, but I didn’t mind. Everything I reported was based on open-source information or monitoring the airwaves. You’d be surprised how much you can learn by tuning into the right frequencies.

The media and black-project watchers were abuzz with rumors of a possible hypersonic successor to the SR-71 Blackbird, known as Aurora. I felt compelled to investigate this near-mythical Mach 5+ super spy plane, and I had some success. Editors and writers from *Aviation Week and Space Technology*, including William Scott and Bill Sweetman, were actively pursuing Aurora stories, and my work had caught their attention.

Sweetman’s groundbreaking book posed striking questions: "Why did the Pentagon retire the SR-71 spyplane in 1990? What caused sonic booms over the California desert since 1991? What was the triangular craft spotted over the North Sea in 1989?" He argued that these mysteries could be traced to the secret U.S. spyplane called AURORA, whose existence—denied by officials—was allegedly hidden within classified military budgets.

Aurora remains elusive to this day. Nearly 40 years later, a new generation of aviation enthusiasts and internet writers remain fascinated by the possibility of its existence.

In 2022, Alex Hollings of Sandboxx News, drawing on Scott and Sweetman’s work, wrote:

"On two separate occasions in April 1992 (the 5th and 22nd), a journalist named Steve Douglass was monitoring military aircraft channels in Southern California when he picked up unusual radio chatter. An aircraft called 'Gaspipe' was coordinating with air traffic controllers at Edwards Air Force Base, flying at extreme altitude and speed. The controller said, 'You’re at sixty-seven thousand [feet], eighty-one miles out,' then shortly after, 'Seventy miles out, thirty-six thousand. Above glide slope.' Flying from 67,000 feet eliminated most of America’s fixed-wing assets except the SR-71 and U-2—both confirmed not flying on those days. William B. Scott analyzed Douglass’ recordings for *Smithsonian Magazine* in 2010 and believed they were authentic, suggesting either the Air Force lied about the Space Shuttle secretly landing at Edwards in 1992 or ‘Gaspipe’ was a classified high-speed aircraft."

However, the truth is—I didn’t intercept the “Gaspipe” communications. I live in Texas and have never been near Edwards Air Force Base in California. Although I was the first to report on the Gaspipe intercepts, the recordings were not mine. They were sent to me by someone named "Mark," and I passed them on to William B. Scott at *Aviation Week*

The author and William Scott in 2013

My own piece of the Aurora puzzle came from an intercepted HF phone patch in which two very senior U.S. Air Force officers were discussing how to debunk “Aurora” in the press. The interception occurred just one day after the Pentagon held a press conference unequivocally stating that Aurora did not exist.

I later wrote on my other blog, Deep Black Horizon:

Back in the 1990s, there was widespread speculation about a secret, high-speed aircraft developed to replace the SR-71 Blackbird. Some evidence appeared to support the theory: a series of so-called “skyquakes” (in reality, sonic booms) over the western United States, along with far stranger observations—most notably the distinctive “donuts-on-a-rope” contrails, several of which I personally photographed. There were also credible sightings of a highly swept-wing, hypersonic aircraft flying in formation with other military aircraft, reported by trained aircraft identification observers such as Chris Gibson.

This elusive aircraft was soon dubbed “Aurora,” a name taken from a mysterious line item that inadvertently appeared in the 1985 U.S. budget: a $455 million allocation for “black aircraft production” in FY 1987. According to a 1986 procurement document obtained by Aviation Week, funding for the project may have reached $2.3 billion in fiscal year 1987. In his 1994 book Skunk Works, Ben Rich, former head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works, later stated that “Aurora” was merely a budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly-off that ultimately produced the B-2 Spirit.

Nevertheless, the name stuck. Although no official successor to the SR-71 was ever acknowledged, Lockheed Martin revealed in 2017 that it was developing the SR-72—often referred to as the “Son of Blackbird”—a hypersonic unmanned reconnaissance platform intended to succeed the retired SR-71. Lockheed stated that an SR-72 test vehicle could fly by 2023. Coincidentally, reports of “skyquakes” have returned, and the California coast is once again rattling.

That raises the enduring question: was there ever an Aurora?

While conducting my own research—following my personal sighting and another high-profile Aurora report that generated considerable media attention—an intercepted HF phone patch provided an especially revealing clue. The call, monitored by myself and another military radio hobbyist, captured a candid discussion between two high-ranking USAF officers about managing and dismissing the Aurora story publicly.

The transcript appeared in my Intercepts Newsletter and later in my book The Comprehensive Guide to Military Monitoring, published in 1994.

click to enlarge

At the time (the early 1990s), no one really knew who “McMann,” mentioned in the radio intercept, actually was. However, it was not a stretch to conclude that he was a person of significance—someone tasked with keeping the aviation press at bay on the subject of “Aurora.” The USAF general McMann was speaking with was Lieutenant General Walter Hogle of the U.S. Air Force, who had a highly distinguished military career. If anyone would have knowledge of a high-speed, highly classified spy-plane program, it would have been Hogle. He later acknowledged that the conversation did take place in an admission to Jane’s reporter Bill Sweetman.

Decades later, Sweetman—who never abandoned his pursuit of Aurora—uncovered the likely identity of “McMann.” A biography discovered on the website of Modern Technology Solutions pointed strongly in one direction.

It reads:

About Jesse T. (Tom) McMahan

Jesse T. (Tom) McMahan is the co-president and founder of Modern Technology Solutions, Inc. (MTSI), based in Alexandria, Virginia. MTSI operates at multiple locations nationwide, with core expertise in modeling and simulation of advanced aerospace systems, flight and ground test support, systems engineering, acquisition planning, operational concept development, and business and financial management.

McMahan has been with MTSI since its founding in 1993 and has overseen its growth to more than 200 employees. His professional focus includes advanced technologies related to aircraft survivability and weapons, as well as modeling and simulation of air defense systems.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from UMR in 1966 and subsequently worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland, until 1968, when he entered the U.S. Air Force. His 25-year Air Force career centered on science and technology programs and weapons systems acquisition. In 1972, the Air Force sent him back to UMR to earn a master’s degree in Engineering Management.

He was fortunate to be involved in the early development of stealth and counter-stealth technology programs and spent the final 15 years of his career working in that field. His last Air Force assignment was as Director of Electronic and Special Programs at the Pentagon. Tom now works approximately half-time with MTSI. He is a former member and current ad hoc advisor to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and serves on the boards of directors and strategy boards of several small companies focused on advanced aircraft survivability technologies.

So does this mean that Aurora existed? Perhaps not under that name, but this discovery—though decades late—does illuminate a long-shadowed corner of 1990s conceptual military technology.

And maybe the SR-72 really is the great-grandson of the SR-71 Blackbird.

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One year, through my Intercepts newsletter, I casually invited some of the more dedicated Interceptors to meet up in Roswell during a Roving Sands exercise. That year, we decided to do it right. As I mentioned earlier, a close local friend of mine—an amateur radio operator—graciously offered the use of his 40-foot Bounder RV. We packed it wall-to-wall with radio gear and set up camp not far from where my father-in-law, Elwood, and I had our strange sighting that later appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Radioheads, stealth-chasers, and skywatchers from around the world converged on Roswell, with the Bounder serving as our rallying point.

“Mark” contacted me to say he’d be there. I was eager to meet him—his radio intercepts were exceptionally good. I had a sense he was based in California, judging by the nature of his intercepts, but he told me he was already in New Mexico and asked where we could meet.

We had established our camp at a dry reservoir just east of Roswell—remote, quiet, and ideal for scanning and watching the skies.

By “we,” I mean the core Interceptors, including a few who went by nom de plumes such as The Great One, The Minister of Words, and The Swiss Mountain Bat. We were also joined by some newer recruits who hadn’t yet earned suitably cool—or nerdy—code names, including Michelle Peterson and several others from the East Coast.

During the second week, another Discovery Channel crew caught up with us, and various Area 51 Interceptors dropped in for a day or two, got a taste of the action, and moved on. Among them were the notorious Psychospy (Glenn Campbell) and Peter Merlin, well known in Interceptor circles as a “black world” archaeologist and historian. Merlin specialized in locating crash sites and documenting the history of Area 51. After years of research, he wrote Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51, widely regarded as the definitive account of the most secret CONUS black-project air base

. fact, if you clicked on any of the linked noms above, you’d see who they really are—and none of them could reasonably be called underachievers.

The local (Amarillo) Interceptors were also in attendance, using their real names: Ken Hanson, Michael Dunlap (along with his brother Travis), and Frank Murphy. We even set up a GMRS radio call-in net, which we used instead of cell phones, knowing that back in the analog days calls were far too easy to intercept. That was something we understood well, since on any given day we were listening to USAF and Navy personnel making cell phone calls that provided us with a surprising amount of information about the Roving Sands exercise itself.

Over the two weeks of the exercise, roughly twenty Interceptors came and went. It was a great deal of fun and a real pleasure to finally meet many people I had previously known only through emails and letters.

We brought plenty of toys with us—dozens of scanning radios sweeping the military bands, all hunting for that one nugget of information that would put us in the right place at the right time to see something civilians weren’t supposed to know about. We also had night-vision gear, video and still cameras, and recorders tied into the scanners. This loose-knit group of tech-savvy radio nerds functioned like a miniature COMINT unit. There was very little flying over south-central New Mexico that we didn’t know about.

On day two, “Mark” joined us. He called in on the radio channel and set up camp right next to ours. We watched the skies together, went out to dinner, and generally just hung out. Although no one knew who Mark really was—aside from what I knew—he fit in perfectly. He was a good listener, funny, full of great stories, asked a lot of questions, and bought more than his share of beer. He was easily 25 years older than the rest of us (I guessed early to mid-60s), but still fit enough to keep pace as we hiked mountains and trails to peer into the White Sands Missile Range.

One day we decided to hike up Rose Peak to see if we could observe aircraft bombing the Red Rio range on the north side of White Sands. It was a strenuous climb, even for some of the younger guys, but the view was incredible. Along the trail were “Stations of the Cross”—small shrines adorned with intricate silver and turquoise crosses left by the Penitentes who lived and worshipped in the area.

Although it was tempting to take one of the crosses as a souvenir, none of us did. Out of respect—and knowing that they hike this mountain every year at Easter to literally crucify one of their own—we left them untouched.