CHAPTER 14: MORE SECRETS AND THE BEGINNING OF THE UNRAVELING OF ROSWELL.

By Steve Douglass

My secret liaisons with Mark had unexpected benefits—at least, I think they did. The more I wrote about the black world, the more doors seemed to open. I published material that should have raised eyebrows in certain three-letter agency circles, yet as far as I know, there were no repercussions. In fact, quite the opposite.

I have never been refused entry to an Air Force base. I was the first journalist invited to fly on a V-22 Osprey. I’ve flown multiple times in aerial refueling tankers. I've flown in F-111s over the mountains of New Mexico, been invited to watch fighters and bombers practice on the nearby Melrose Bombing Range, and I remain the only journalist—and commercial drone pilot—not only asked, but formally granted permission, to fly and photograph the Pantex Plant using a drone.

If you don’t know what Pantex is, here’s why that matters. Located just twelve miles east of Amarillo, it is one of the most heavily protected pieces of real estate on the planet. Pantex is where all U.S. nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled. I didn’t just fly a drone there with permission—I’ve also been inside.

I can’t tell you much about what goes on inside Pantex—except for this.

They have an extraordinary secret museum.

It isn’t flashy. It isn’t promotional. And it certainly isn’t the sanitized version of history most people are familiar with. It’s a place that presents the real history of atomic weapons, stripped of mythology and bravado.

What makes it remarkable isn’t just the artifacts—though those alone would be enough—but the way the story is told. It doesn’t glorify. It doesn’t excuse. It simply documents. Decisions, consequences, dead ends, moments of brilliance, moments of hubris. The long arc of a technology that reshaped geopolitics, science, and the human relationship with existential risk.

You walk through it with the quiet understanding that this history isn’t abstract. These weren’t just ideas or diagrams. These were real devices, built by real people, under real pressures, with stakes that were—and still are—absolute.

Strangely, that museum feels like the purest expression of the black world I ever encountered. Not secrecy for secrecy’s sake, but discretion born of gravity. Some things aren’t hidden because they’re clever or powerful. They’re hidden because they’re heavy.

That’s all I can say about Pantex, for now.

One of the most unexpected—and honestly, coolest—things that ever happened to me can only be attributed to Mark.

The house I was living in at the time was, apparently, designated as a practice bombing target for F-117s out of Holloman Air Force Base.

I didn’t know that at first, of course. I figured it out the only way I ever figured anything out back then: by listening.

On certain Thursdays, over a span of a few years, I could monitor F-117 traffic on my radio as they came in on approach to an aimpoint in South Amarillo. At first, it was just interesting, then patterns started to emerge. Same time-windows. Same routes. Same clipped, professional voices.

Eventually, I memorized their callsigns.

Once I knew what to listen for, it became almost mechanical. I’d hear them coming in from the southwest, track their approach, and wait. And every time—without fail—I’d hear them say “shack” precisely when they were directly over my house. I had a large white satellite dish in my backyard, and I'm sure it was the aimpoint.
For a while, nobody believed me.

I’d tell people, and they’d smile politely, the way you do when someone is clearly enthusiastic about something you don’t quite buy. So one night, I invited a few of them over. I set up the radio. I explained what to listen for. Then we waited.

Right on schedule, the callsigns came up. The approach to the I.P. began. And then I hear —shack—as they right over my house.

The looks on their faces were priceless.

After that, there was no doubt. The flights were as predictable as the sun coming up. Same days. Same pattern. Same invisible aircraft sliding silently through the sky toward a point that just happened to be my home.

I loved it.

One of the people who witnessed it firsthand was the writer Phil Patton.

Phil came out to do a story on me for Wired magazine, and somewhere along the way, professional curiosity turned into a genuine friendship. We spent a lot of time together after that—many forays out into the desert, long conversations framed by empty horizons and strange signals in the air.

He was there one of those nights when the pattern revealed itself. He heard the callsigns. He watched the clock. And he heard the word “shack” land exactly when it was supposed to—right over my house. Seeing it through his eyes was almost as satisfying as experiencing it myself, because Phil understood what it meant. Not just the technical side, but the cultural one.

Phil had a unique way of writing about secret worlds.

When he wrote about classified aircraft, black programs, or the people orbiting those spaces, he didn’t pontificate. He didn’t grandstand. He never tried to position himself as the smartest person in the room. Instead, his writing was immersive—almost poetic. He pulled you into the texture of the black world: the habits, the silences, the unspoken rules, the strange mix of banality and awe.

He understood that secrecy wasn’t just about information. It was about culture.

Phil didn’t explain everything because he knew that explaining too much would miss the point. He let ambiguity breathe. He trusted the reader to sit with unanswered questions, the same way those of us on the inside edges had learned to do.

That’s why his work resonated. He captured the feeling of that world—the way it hums quietly in the background, rarely announcing itself, yet occasionally brushing up against ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. 

Looking back, it feels right that Phil was there to witness it. He was one of the few people who could observe something like that—notebook closed, antenna up—and recognize it not as spectacle, but as a small, perfect expression of how the black world really works.

There was something deeply satisfying about knowing—without ever seeing them—that the most secretive aircraft in the world were practicing over my head. No spectacle. No noise. Just radio discipline, timing, and trust in systems that worked exactly as designed.

I never asked Mark about Phil, how he found me. I didn’t need to. Phil was a  kindred spirit, obsessed with the shape of things and not just the thing itself. If Mark taught me to listen, Phil taught me how to see.

By then, I understood how these things worked. Mark never gave gifts outright. He arranged circumstances. He nudged probabilities. And sometimes, if you were paying attention, you found yourself living inside something extraordinary without ever being officially told.

That house was just another reminder: the black world didn’t always feel dark. Sometimes it was exhilarating. Sometimes it was playful.

And sometimes, it flew right over your roof on a Thursday night, right on time.. 

Phil and I made many trips out into the desert, and in particular to Roswell.

It wasn’t just because of the lore surrounding the city. It wasn’t even because my in-laws lived there, though that certainly made it convenient. We went because we were both deeply interested in the history of the black world—and Roswell is quite literally where the black world begins.

Long before the mythology took over, Roswell was about secrecy, classification, and the sudden realization that some things were too consequential to be handled in public. It marked a shift in how information was controlled, how narratives were shaped, and how silence became an operational tool. Whatever you believe about what happened there, the response to Roswell is undeniable. That response set the template.

For Phil, Roswell wasn’t a punchline or a curiosity. It was a case study. A place where the culture of secrecy crystallized, where the modern relationship between the public and classified power took its first unmistakable form.

We’d drive the long, empty roads, talk for hours, stop where it felt right, and let the desert do what it always does—strip things down to essentials. In that landscape, Roswell made sense. Wide skies. Sparse towns. Distance from scrutiny. Perfect conditions for things that weren’t meant to be seen or discussed.

Those trips weren’t about chasing myths. They were about understanding origins. And in the history of the black world, Roswell isn’t just a chapter—it’s the opening paragraph

In July 1947, near Roswell, New Mexico, debris from a mysterious crash was recovered by personnel from the nearby Army Air Field. An initial press release from the base famously described the wreckage as a “flying disc,” a statement that was quickly retracted and replaced with the explanation that it was a weather balloon. The abrupt reversal, coupled with the secrecy surrounding the recovery, fueled decades of speculation and made the Roswell incident the most famous UFO "crash" in history. 

In later years, the U.S. government stated that the debris likely came from Project Mogul, a classified program that used high-altitude balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Regardless of the explanation, Roswell became a turning point in how secrecy, classification, and information control were handled in the early Cold War era.

Roswell’s importance was not accidental. Roswell Army Air Field—later Walker Air Force Base—was home to the 509th Bomb Group, the only military unit in the world equipped to deliver atomic weapons at the time. This made Roswell the first true nuclear air base and a cornerstone of America’s early nuclear deterrent. The combination of nuclear capability, cutting-edge technology, and extreme secrecy placed Roswell at the very beginning of what would become known as the modern “black world.”

Whether viewed through the lens of Cold War history or cultural mythology, Roswell marks the point where nuclear power, secrecy, and unexplained phenomena permanently intersected.

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