AWOL for the Antichrist (E305)
Was Dr. Who right when he said military intelligence is a contradiction in terms? Brad Abrahams is back (with Liv, Jake, and Travis) with the story of the “Gulf Breeze 6”, in which six military intelligence officers with top-secret clearance went AWOL from one of Europe’s largest Cold War bases in 1990. Their reason? A Ouija board told them to. Convinced they were on a divine mission to stop Armageddon, they fled to Florida, believing Jesus (piloting a UFO) would meet them for the rapture.
Even more bizarre than that last sentence was the punishment meted out to them. Were they part of an end-of-the-world cult? Did figures like Bob Dole and George Bush intervene on their behalf? This insane tale is a true mystery to this day, as the trail has gone cold since its explosion in the early ‘90s news cycle.
At the end of the episode, we’re joined by Tanner Boyle of the ‘Getting Spooked’ newsletter to dive deeper into the Gulf Breeze 6 mystery, and explore whether any parapolitical shenanigans were at play.
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Brad Abrahams: https://x.com/LoveAndSaucers / https://www.instagram.com/bradwtf/
Tanner Boyle: https://gettingspooked.com/
Editing by Corey Klotz. Writing by Brad Abrahams. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Comments (67)
Their plan to hide during the end of days and then come back out after to lead the survivors or the apocalypse sounds exactly like Charles Mason's plan lol
This kicked ass! Cherry on top was the “oh yeah I wrote Fantasy by Aldo Nova”. The fact you played it at the end was just, perfection
Pittsburgh is without a doubt the third most important city in the US.
I would absolutely kill to watch a movie where the gulf breeze 6 actually *did* end up fighting aliens and demons side by side with Space Jesus.
Toppppp episode team!!
I figured it out. what if the commissary on their base sold Ouija boards with remote control board pieces that once purchased, the controllers tapped into to see how to influence their soldiers
Random comment. But has anyone else seen thetelepahthytapes.com ? A synaesthete pal sent me it.
It really is. I am at a loss for knowing how to handle hearing it. I hope it is genuine. For the the sake of all involved! I am trying to find the balance of enough skepticism but not too much.
A few things I thought were glossed over or not mentioned this episode that might add some context to those not familiar: 1. There are two major Navy training airfields near Gulf Breeze, NAS Pensacola, and NAS Whiting field. Both are used for different types of fixed wing training from pilots to aircrew. NASP is also where the blue angles are stationed. Both of those fields are often also used for landing and testing of new/test aircraft as well. 2. Im not sure about when they went, but for a while now the Navy, and other branches, use IWTC Corry Station in Pensacola for initial training for most Intel jobs: IT, network security, and SIGINT. For the folks stationed there, they often go to Pensacola Beach in Gulf Breeze in their off time. 3. Military Intel folk usually aren't that much smarter than anyone else. They usually test higher in Math and Engineering problems on the ASVAB, but they're just as varried as any other job, and just as liable to fall into conspiracies. Also due to frequent recruitment issues, they'll often look past mental health or physical issues when admitting people in those jobs. I've known several people with (later diagnosed) bipolar disorders, and asperges that were recruited due to personnel shortages. Same thing with background checks for security clearance. You'd be surprised how many people get cleared in the military with things on and off their records.
re: your third point, I work in cybersecurity, and am frequently shocked at how many former SIGINT and MILINT people have drastically different skills and threat models to the rest of the industry, or even to each other. Not saying they're all incompetent or anything, as I know some people who have given me legit really useful job pointers based on their past sigint work, but then sometimes you run into someone who is working their first corporate job after spending years in a SCIF, and they call up the security center in a panic because they saw Russian traffic in a firewall report but then didn't click the details to show that it was, like, a ping scanner that got blocked at the firewall, or they will know things specifically related to US military objectives (opsec when it comes to photos and social media, reading trend data related to xyz thing, etc) but then lack really core basic skills (password hygiene, setting access rules for cloud drives, etc)
I like the idea that the government manufactured the whole thing and the Ouija board was essentially a mechanical turk with a spy sitting underneath spelling out apocalyptic predictions with a magnet attached to the planchette From everything I've heard the intelligence community in the 40s was basically a three stooges sketch.
Just had the same thought seems completely plausible based on 1940s espionage movies I've seen. The microchipped remote control plan shit to see how they can influence their soldiers while at the same time exploring mind control and MK Ultra is completely plausible
https://youtu.be/mRdxdFDX3W0?t=115
Holy crap, it's Céline Dion's guitarist, Aldo Nova, with his 1982 one-hit-wonder "Fantasy"! One of the earliest examples of hair metal. MONTREAL FTW.
Dude I love that song, I got hyped when the guest mentioned it 🤘🏼
I always love Brad eps
B rad is my fav guest. He always brings the heat!!
As an old Signals Intel guy, the week AWOL is not surprising. The military chain of command in those units (responsible for leave, military evaluations, etc) is different than the office chain of command. You could have a platoon of soldiers who all work in different offices, on shift work, where they all work different, rotating schedules in any week- some working nights, some 9-5. Before the internet it would have been hard to track when everyone was supposed to work, much less monitoring them. The work computers were on a different network than the military command computers. If someone missed a military event, they might think some work need got in the way. If someone missed work, they might assume military training prevented it. I can totally see this taking a week to work out, pre internet.
Yes, more jake streams!
Great episode!
Using playing DnD as evidence of anything is pretty dumb
The song at the end of the episode was my favorite as a little kid. I used to call it the “Lazer song.” What a nostalgia bomb. Never met anyone else who has heard of it before
Brad episodes go quite hard. Many thanks to the Deep Dish.
Jake and Julian, please join Bluesky! It's like Twitter circa 2014.
Any desire to revisit Ken Klippensteins turn toward right wing grifting? You guys promoted him as an independent voice when he’s yet another captured clown pandering to contrarian morons.
What happened?
Delta Green op gone wrong
Jake brings up metal gear solid in every episode. Is that how you interpret reality?
This is why we need Jake and Jacques from seeking derangements to do a series of cognitive tests. I want to see Jake draw a clock without comparing the numbers to a Nolan movie of video game
Liv can you use the voice modulator every episode? It makes you sound demonic
Viewer from Gulf Breeze here! The fact that I’ve never heard about these guys is insane. Funnily, I have heard about the UFOs, just never the anti-Christ death squad
Wild episode! I hadn’t heard of this story, but it’s quite something. Certainly it seems that the intelligence community insulates itself from reality in its own bunker, and that’s a recipe for conspiracy fantasies,
Yea and they view themselves as a cut above mere mortals. All that access to secrets and paranoia is perfect for getting baked.
Can we please get a QAA "If the groundhog sees the two towers collapse there will be 25 years of a surveillance state" t-shirt??
I’ve been watching a lot of Spy shows and I think Travis has nailed it. That and the fact that Ouija are not to be played with!
Right? Growing up in America makes you terrified of oujia boards. They always lead to death and destruction in films and TV.
All around banger
As a former sigint person, I'm almost certain that every decision the military makes in this story can be explained by the fact that supervisors are too busy with mindless paperwork to deal with the raging autism of the average TS clearance holder. By the time it gets the attention of someone important, they usually want to resolve it quickly unless the soldiers involved did any harm in the real world.
And to be honest, SIGINTers are, like, usually good at SIGINT and maybe report writing right. Critical thinking is encouraged across the IC, but, like being good at that doesn’t make you good at analyzing satellite imagery or making combat decisions. These guys were probably trained to be good at whatever it is they did and completely susceptible to stupid conspiracy theories to do with Jesus and Aliens. Separately, the government giving them a Gen Discharge and a slap on the wrist is really, incredibly common in the U.S. military justice system. I think Nate Bethay talked to a journalist about this in the past, but the DoD mostly just wants to get rid of their problem troops and not pay for a trial. This is kind of problematic when people are given general discharges for credible accusations of sexual assault in lieu of other punishment. That a Senator intervened itself isn’t uncommon either. Every barracks lawyer fresh out of basic will tell you to talk to IG and file a Congressional when your supervisor tells you to mop the floor, and a Congressman’s constituent services office will usually start with a cursory inquiry to see what’s going on when service members (gotta support the troops) contact them with a vaguely reasonable-sounding complaint. That doesn’t necessarily mean they did anything.
I was not prepared for that intro. serious mothman vibes!
Had a neighbor that was ex military intelligence. Seemed normal at first, until he attacked another neighbor screaming "WHO SENT YOU!!??" and smashed a bunch of holes in the drywall of his unit. Ended with the swat team outside the apartment. Not my favorite neighbor.
Played with ouija board as a kid with my cousins. It told us all kinds of creepy shit, but only when we played with the same cousin who always cheated at Monopoly.
Brad ep, yay!
I love a good Brad episode. Hoping for another season of Spectral Voyagers
Hellll yeah let's go
Clearly they would cast Jennifer Jason Leigh as the female operative.
Former crypto here. I heard the beginning and went, awwww 🤣
ffs it's 'Doctor' not 'Dr.' 😤🤓
liv agar
I love when Brad joins in on episodes! I hope there will be more of The Spectral Voyager some day.
Yep, he's great.
They totally Burn After Reading'd their way into some ultra sensitive documents while larping too hard and Pappy Bush was too tickled by the idea to punish them.
Yoooo this is just like hit Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters
There’s the ouija board for demons and the walouija board is for talking to celebrities like Miss Cleo and Dionne Warwick
has jake played sulfur? he should try sulfur.
Not to state the obvious, but totally stating the obvious... How tf could they have received all this detailed information LETTER BY LETTER?!? If you have ever used an Ouija board, you *know* how arduous the process is. These guys would have been at it for weeks, not just 7 sessions. 🙄
You can always ask leading yes and no questions, but yeah, when they talked about 7 sessions my first thought was these were clearly epic 18 hour amphetamine binges.
The military intelligence Two words combined that can't make sense
This episode has it all. Liv, Jake, and crew, Space Jesus, Art Bell, Florida, cops, Atlantis, US military, Bob Dole, extraterrestrial podiatry, the Anti-Christ, UFOs, alien crotch pouches... It doesn't get any better than this! Thanks 'yall!
Space Jesus: https://lightscamerahubris.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-visitor-space-jesus.jpg
Docking half a month's pay is at least a normal punishment. 45 days extra duty and half pay is normal without a court martial
I actually have relatives in Augsburg, and I've driven past the radar array you described many times on the autobahn when we went to visit them. Really fun to hear it mentioned on the pod!
Liv Agar
I'm practically vibrating with anticipation for the inevitably forthcoming Luigi ep!!! 🤪🤪🤪
I am baffled to not have heard one by them yet considering the conspiracies are all over the place. That and the UFO stuff over NJ. America's kinda having an unhinged moment.
I actually served in the Army as a Signals Intelligence Analyst... We are some of the dumbest people in the Army
I just applied and they are in desperate need in Canada for them lmfao - I wonder why 😭🤣