Investigation
Galaxy 1 carried HBO on transponder 23 at a rate of 125 watts, with relay signals sent out at 6.385 GHz. Mother Jones magazine determined that MacDougall could have potentially taken over the signals of three additional satellites. He could have taken control of the network feed of CBS had he positioned his satellite dish at the Telstar 301 satellite, operated by AT&T, tuned at 6.065 GHz. He also could have taken over the foreign language feed of the Voice of America network by aiming his satellite dish at 72 degrees west longitude. The final theorized hijacking would have been aiming his satellite dish at 100 degrees west longitude, above the Galápagos Islands, with a frequency setting of 293.375 MHz, thereby jamming the signal of United States Navy satellite Fleetsatcom 1. The magazine also posited that an amateur hobbyist could hijack the satellites that alerted U.S. military forces to Soviet actions, creating confusion for world leaders and placing the world at risk of nuclear destruction.[14]
Although the intrusion caused minor annoyance to viewers, HBO contacted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and announced that the hijacker would face prosecution.[4] The commission's chief, Richard Smith, assembled staff in his office for an emergency meeting at the FCC headquarters eight hours after the intrusion to discuss how the culprit should be caught.[8] On April 28, the chairman of HBO, Michael J. Fuchs, wrote to the FCC saying the company had received calls threatening to place Galaxy 1 into a different orbit,[12] but the company was unable to determine whether these were credible threats or not. Fuchs's letter additionally urged the commission to use all of its resources to capture the culprit.[12] In the days after the jamming, more than 200 people called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to "confess" that they were Captain Midnight.[1]
The Department of Justice made indications of its desire to get involved, and the FBI was called in to assist the investigation. One hundred FCC field offices and monitoring stations across the U.S. were actively involved in the investigation, with no fewer than six FCC employees working on the case. Oliver Long, the head engineer of the FCC's Texas field office, oversaw the investigation,[15] and the commission assigned agent George Dillon to the case. The case first led investigators from the FCC to focus on the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex,[16] after an anonymous tip accused an amateur radio operator residing in Lewisville, Texas, of being the culprit.[17]
Later, the FCC determined which teleport uplink sites out of the 2,000 licensed transmitters in the U.S. had the capability to override the HBO signal.[8] That narrowed it down to 580 uplink sites that had sufficiently large antennas that had the capability of broadcasting the signal. The manufacturer that produced the character generator graphics model used to generate the typeface on the television screen was also identified after studying footage of the jamming.[18] Investigators from the commission obtained copies from an FCC engineer and HBO viewers, as tape machines were not running during the jamming.[19] The FCC removed stations from the list of 500 that were inoperative on April 27 or transmitting other material. This method brought the number of potential stations down to twelve.[8] After FCC investigators visited these stations, there were now three prime suspects which included MacDougall.[18] The commission later learned an accountant from Wisconsin had overheard MacDougall bragging about the jamming at a payphone in a rest area off Interstate 75 in Gainesville, Florida, and obtained a license plate number of a car owned by MacDougall.[12]
