The Gulf Breeze 6 Revisited – AWOL Soldiers on a Mission to Kill the Anti-Christ

Why did six members of the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade of the United States decide to desert from their unit in Augsburg, Germany in the early July days of 1990?

• What is the real story behind their apocalyptic mission to kill the Anti-Christ?

• How were they able to evade detection travelling from Germany to Gulf Breeze, Florida, USA?

• Did they really think they would reveal a US Government/alien UFO cover-up?

• How did they receive their mission to eliminate the ‘Anti-Christ’ and save the world’?

• Who and what was behind the strange message...”Free the Gulf Breeze Six. We have the missing files, the box of 500+ photos and plans you want back” sent to the US Army and US media in the days following their arrests?

• And why was a judgment made, following their arrests, that the ‘Gulf Breeze 6’ should not be subjected to a court martial? They were discharged with full honours.


These questions are not new. This subject has also appeared on ATS 3 years ago:

The Gulf Breeze Saga (Part II) : UFOs, the Gulf Breeze 6, and the End of the World

An excellent and captivating thread authored by our good friend Cuckooold.


There has, however, been some recent interest in the case again. A lot of scattered information has recently been collected together into a pdf file and made freely available courtesy of Jack Brewer and his UFO Trail Blog . Jack also appeared in Cuckooold’s thread to discuss this strange tale. Please visit Jack's blog for the link to download the full pdf.

I could have simply added a brief commentary to the existing thread and a few links then leave it be. But for those who love to jump on every new thread and claim “it’s already been done before”, I say doing that would probably mean it would get little attention and fade away again in a few hours. It would probably be consigned back into the bowels of ATS and that would be that.

It deserves a revisit because it really is one of those bizarre stories encapsulating UFOs, paranormal and religious beliefs, (possible) meddling by the intelligence community and some downright strange statements and decisions by the United States military. It is a real head scratcher of a story.

Finally, revisiting ‘The Gulf Breeze Six’ adventure will hopefully introduce this story to people previously unaware of it. I would guess there are still some out there!

Who Were the Gulf Breeze Six?


The Gulf Breeze Six comprised of a group of intelligence agents based at a sensitive National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping post in Augsburg, Germany during the last few months of the Cold War. The members of this group all held top secret security clearances.

They were; Kenneth G. Beason, Vance Davis , Annette Eccleston , Michael Hueckstaedt, Kris Perlock and William Setterberg. All were then between 19 and 26 years in age. Important, perhaps, to the story is that they held strong interests in UFOs and the paranormal and had been meeting together and conducting Ouija board sessions whilst in Augsburg.

The six believed they were in communication with non-human entities and religious icons. The group also interpreted some of these communications as prophecies. When certain world events transpired this further reinforced their belief and trust in these communications. Based on the ‘prophecies’ received, all six deserted their highly sensitive duties on the German base in early July 1990, and embarked on a mission back to the USA. The motives have never been entirely clear due to conflicting reports from the Pentagon, the news media and the six members of their group themselves. We’ll go over some of that later.
 

Back in the USA
The soldiers, rather surprisingly, managed to travel freely and unchecked through Europe and across the Atlantic to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was here they purchased an old VW van and then headed for Gulf Breeze, Florida.

Gulf Breeze is a few miles from Pensacola Naval Air Station. It had also become a famed hotspot for UFOs in the late 1980s thanks to the much publicised photos of one Ed Walters and multiple UFO sightings in the area. Coincidentally the MUFON UFO Symposium, was held in Florida between the 6th and 8th July 1990.

On July 16th 1990 a Gulf Breeze police patrol pulled Michael J. Hueckstaedt over for driving the newly acquired van with a broken tail light. Hueckstaedt had no drivers license or identification and apparently pleaded with the officer not run an identity check through the police computer claiming it would be “....signing my death warrant”.


The officer, naturally, ignored his protests and the computer checks confirmed he was one of the six soldiers wanted for desertion from Augsburg.

Beason, Davis, Perlock and Setterberg were later found at Anna Foster's home in Gulf Breeze. ( Note: Foster was a local psychic and owner of a New Age bookstore who in some circles is viewed as the source for the soldiers interest in conspiracy and UFO themes). Annette Eccleston was picked up from a campsite at Fort Pickens.

The group’s possessions included several duffle bags, suitcases and briefcases, and about $4,000 in cash. The local law enforcement officers were also ordered not to ask any questions before the soldiers were transported to Fort Benning where they were held in solitary confinement awaiting their fate.

The local press reported the incident a few days later. This is when the bizarre stories surrounding their activities began to surface from the Pentagon and the media. Starting with labelling them as Christian fundamentalists wanting to attend a UFO conference! They were also accused of belonging to a group known as "The End of the World" on a search to eliminate the Anti-Christ. Such a group has never been proved to exist.

The soldiers were also reported to have told a Tennessee man that they were in the United States for the Rapture. Other reports had them searching for UFOs because they believed them to be demonic and part of a coming apocalypse. This would last several years before Jesus Christ would make his appearance in an alien spaceship for the second coming.



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Typical of such news reports were

Northwest Florida Daily News - July 20th, 1990

6 AWOL SOLDIERS SAY THEY AIMED TO KILL ANTICHRIST

Gulf Breeze - Six soldiers, reported by an unofficial military
newspaper to be on a mission to kill the Antichrist, were charged
Thursday with desertion from their intelligence unit in West
Germany, Pentagon spokesman said.

A friend also told another newspaper that one of the soldiers
arrested in this Florida Panhandle city, a hotbed for UFO sightings,
was interested in unidentified flying objects and wanted to attend a
UFO convention in nearby Pensacola.

The religious beliefs of the soldiers, described as Christian
Fundamentalists, are not part of the Army's investigation, said
Major Joe Padilla, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.

"It's pretty cut and dried. It's getting drier each day," Padilla
said. "We are not allowed to look into religious groups by statute
so we don't."

The five men and a woman, all members of the 701st Military
Intelligence Brigade at Augsburg, West Germany are being held at
Fort Benning, Ga. They were arrested Friday and Saturday after
police stopped one of them for a traffic violation.

They were charged with desertion RATHER THAN THE LESSER OFFENSE of
being absent without leave because they held top-secret security
clearances, said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams.

Padilla said it will be up to the soldier’s commanding officer to
decide whether to hold a court-martial or take lesser administrative
action.

A counter-intelligence investigation is being conducted as a matter
of routine because the six, all analysts assigned to intercepting,
Identifying and exploiting foreign communications, had handled
classified material, military spokesmen say.

"There still appears to be no independent evidence of any espionage
or security related problem here," Williams said Thursday.

A member of their unit told the newspaper "Stars and Stripes" the
six were out to FIND AND DESTROY THE ANTICHRIST, the figure the
Bible says will challenge Christ. He spoke on the condition his
name would not be disclosed.

Padilla, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, Wednesday retracted an
earlier statement that the six were members of a group known as "The
End of the World."

But "Stars and Stripes" quoted the soldier from the Augsburg unit as
saying that the cult has ADDITIONAL MEMBERS IN THE AREA.

"There are others who are upset because they didn't get invited," to
go along on the search for the AntiChrist, the newspaper quoted the
soldier as saying.

Beason (one of the group) was interested in science fiction and
UFO's and very gullible, Stan Johnson told the Pensacola News
Journal for a story published Thursday. Johnson, a Morristown
photographer, said in a telephone interview that he picked up Beason
and Hueckstaedt July 6th at the McGee-Tyson Airport in Knoxville,
Tenn.

"He was one of those people who believed anything someone would tell
him," Johnson said of Beason. "The idea that he was arrested, or
that he was hanging around with cult-like grouped didn't surprise
me. He kind of lives in a science fiction fantasy world sometimes."

Beason told Johnson he was going to Pensacola for a UFO convention.

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) held its 21st annual symposium in
Pensacola, attracted there by the numerous sightings reported in
Gulf Breeze, July 6-8, but officials of the organization said they
couldn't say whether Beason or Hueckstaedt attended.

Gulf Breeze Police Chief Jerry Brown discounted that possibility,
saying the soldiers did not arrive in the area until July 9th.

Beason told a similar story to his sister and her husband, Caroly
and Charles Reed, when he spent the night, July 7 at their home in
Talbott, Tenn., the Knoxville News-Sentinel reported Thursday.

The Reeds said Beason had met a woman named Anna when he was
stationed in Pensacola, and she got him involved with a group that
believed the government was covering up alien visits to Earth. Part
of the group's mission was to reveal that cover-up.

Some of MUFON's members have accused the government of such a cover-
up but the organization has not made such a policy statement itself,
said Don Ware of Fort Walton Beach, the group's Eastern Regional
Director.

The six remained in military custody and were moved to Fort Knox with the probability of a serious punishment hanging over them. However their families brought the story to the attentions of the media and Senators Casman and Dole became involved in their case.

Then another strange twist to the case came up......

Free the Gulf Breeze Six...We have the missing plans

Around July 22nd 1990, someone sent a teletype directly to the Army. They also copied similar messages to AP, UPI, ABC, NBC, and CBS. The international/national media did not reveal this for another three weeks. However some local Florida papers did so within 24 hours. The message read:

ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, UPI U.S. Army:

Free the Gulf Breeze Six.

We have the missing plans, the box of 500+ photos and the plans you want back.

Here is proof with close-ups cut out.

Next we send the closeups and then everything unless they are released.

Answer code AUGSBB3CM

Within three weeks the soldiers were all discharged from Fort Knox with full honours. Allegedly the decision was made at a very high level. Perhaps the highest in the land. General Colin Powell apparently protested and then intervened, insisting they were deserters, and they were eventually fined half a month’s salary and demoted in rank.

By mid August of 1990 the Army had stopped talking and the press had stopped reporting on the case. Well almost. When the case was ‘declassified’, 1400 out of 1600 pages were withheld.

 

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So Why Did the Gulf Breeze Six Desert their Unit?

As outlined earlier in the thread The Gulf Breeze Six believed they were in communication with non-human entities and religious icons. They had been using a Ouija board and were convinced that the messages they were receiving were genuine communications.

Vance Davis (pictured) wrote a mind boggling book in 1995 called “Unbroken Promises”. Davis describes how he had enrolled in Silva Mind Control courses as a teenager. Courses were held in Alex Merklinger’s school in New York. Here Davis “..mastered techniques of self-hypnosis through active imagination”.

Whilst in one of his trances, he describes how he met a green-skinned alien female called Kia. Kia miraculously corrected his flat-feet in the space of a single night. Kia “...told me that she came from a planet forty-five light years away from Earth, that had been destroyed by another race. Her race, the Kiasseions, were telepaths that were enroute to Earth to assist the Alliance in protecting the human race”.

Davis also claimed that when he joined the NSA, he was “retrained in history” :

“...What I learned was why history happened, who history was, why or when history was. The dates in the book are not all that accurate. Those are accepted dates not factual dates. To give an example. The founding of this country did not occur.

The founding fathers were already meeting many years before the advent, the war against England, occurred. There was already a plan in place for the founding of new country. It was not just a spur because British soldiers shot someone or the stand-back. It was the series of events that happened over the period of 60 to 70 years. And they have been planning for the long time.”

Source : www.philipcoppens.com...

What?

Such teachings sound highly irregular for a job with the government. It sounds as if Davis was being primed long before he went AWOL if there is any truth to his words.

He also describes ancient “buildings” at White Sands which were “not ours”.

Whilst at Augsburg Davis claimed that he and the other five soldiers were in contact with an entity named ‘Safire’ (amongst others). They had been given a series of prophecies regarding upcoming global events. When some of Safire’s prophecies seemed to come true, including one stating there would be a major earthquake in Iran, it convinced the six that these messages were accurate and from a ‘real ‘source. Although with the benefit of hindsight we can see the majority of the prophecies were totally inaccurate.

For a full list of these prophecies see : Link to prophecies

Kenneth G. Beason was convinced that the US government had made an agreement with an alien race and that the evidence for this was being suppressed. It was Beason who was close to Anna Foster. Four members of the group would later be found at her home and arrested (one of them being Beason). Another oddity is that, according to another source, at least some of the Gulf Breeze Six claimed to believe the Antichrist was Ed Walters!

So sometime before July 6th 1990 ‘Safire’ was consulted and advised the group to flee the military as they were needed to help save the world from the coming apocalypse.

Conclusions?


There aren’t many definite conclusions at all. The thread was written to pique interest in the case for those who have never heard of it before or to remind those who are familiar with it to take another look.

After a quarter of a century has passed since this strange tale of military desertion some conclusions by others are:

Jacques Vallée In his book Revelations (p.172 print & 190 pdf) had this to say.

This brings us back to the alleged psychic messages supposedly received by Vance Davis. Is it plausible that six smart soldiers—they may have been deluded, but they certainly demonstrated that they were not stupid—would have taken such a radical step as desertion purely on the basis of telepathic impressions? Is it not more likely that the messages about Armageddon and the salvation by UFOs came to them through the same secure channel they were using in their work, a channel which, by definition, would be above suspicion of tampering? Should we conclude that U.S. military communications channels may have been compromised by one or more cults with extreme beliefs and with the willingness to exploit the naiveté of the ufologists to further their own goals? ......

If the reader follows my line of reasoning to this point, then he is led to a final question: who could have the bizarre motivation and the highly compartmented knowledge to access an encrypted network and to target these six soldiers to send them on such an absurd mission? Was it an exercise of the same genre as Pontoise and Bentwaters, a project that played games with the gullibility of the believers in order to test the feasibility of deception within a vital element of the armed forces? And is the American public the ultimate target of that deception?

After their release, three of the soldiers went straight back to Gulf Breeze. In a relaxed, casual interview they told a television reporter that they had never been interested in the rapture or the Antichrist. Everything was just a big misunderstanding.

See : Jacques Vallée - Revelations as above

In Jack Brewer’s blog of 2011 he made an interesting observation that the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade received an award the following year.

.....By all interpretations, the circumstance was a personnel catastrophe and security compromise of extreme proportion. However, the following year, 1991, the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade was awarded the prestigious Director of the National Security Agency's Travis Trophy. The unit was recognized as having made the most significant contribution in signals intelligence in the entire nation, second to none!

Source : UFO Trail - Jack Brewer

Phil Coppen’s summed up by saying:

..., I would suggest.... that this group was singled out and became the victim of an experiment, which their pre-joining interests made them predisposed towards, and which “someone” carefully remoulded to see to test out a hypothesis. If this is true, then the scenario was successful, and when the test was concluded, they were rounded up, brought in… and allowed to tell their story, so that the public disclosure of their story would serve part of the exercise as well.

Source : www.philipcoppens.com...

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All seems plausible. Three of the Gulf Breeze Six were interviewed for the Fox TV show “Sightings” in 1993. Vance Davis has since appeared on radio shows like Coast to Coast and other ‘paranormal’ talk shows. But other than Davis it seems the other members of the group have got on with their lives and left this strange episode behind them.

However we are still left with questions about what really went on? Especially what the messages sent to the army and news media were all about. Was the message about missing files and photos just a hoax? Or did the group really have some clandestine help along the way?

Did someone know a lot more than has ever been made public and this resulted in the Gulf Breeze Six being dealt with very leniently and avoiding court martial?

The prophecies fed to the GB6 were mainly false and failed to predict a number of global catastrophes that occurred in the years that followed. Perhaps there is something to be gleaned there too?

One explanation is that they were just a bunch of young, highly gullible soldiers who let their fantasies seep too deeply into their sense of reality and lost the plot. But there is more than enough to suggest that the Gulf Breeze Six episode was some kind of experiment in manipulating human behaviour and someone else was pulling the strings.

Jack Brewer has a number of FOIA requests pending regarding this case. If he spots this thread then maybe he can keep us updated with how they are progressing?




Further Research:

The UFO Trail - Revisiting the Gulf Breeze Six

The Gulf Breeze Saga (Part II) : UFOs, the Gulf Breeze 6, and the End of the World

Phil Coppens – The Gulf Breeze Six

Eternal Gateways

A great read I was on the ATS of old for once

It's weird for sure. But this snip from Jacques Vallee's Revelations book is the most worrisome implication:

If the reader follows my line of reasoning to this point, then he is led to a final question: who could have the bizarre motivation and the highly compartmented knowledge to access an encrypted network and to target these six soldiers to send them on such an absurd mission? Was it an exercise of the same genre as Pontoise and Bentwaters, a project that played games with the gullibility of the believers in order to test the feasibility of deception within a vital element of the armed forces? And is the American public the ultimate target of that deception?

In my mind at least.

Wow, awesome. Thank you for the great read, I was unfamiliar with this story, your intention was served, Im highly intrigued!

a reply to: mirageman

Thank you for that!
I like to think they have found some sort of answer. Maybe it was an imprisoned telepathic alien/human held in a laboratory calling out to them to end his/her misery?

a reply to: kosmicjack

It is worrisome.

Notably Vallee mentioned Bentwaters (10 years prior to this case) which has become more like a soap opera with all the plot revisions and various characters who come and go and change their stories and allegiances as the years pass.

I do believe some discovery or new technology eventually led to the end of the Cold War in the 1980s. Something that we have never really been fully made aware of. Three decades later I would guess that this 'technology' is much easier to conceal and control.

a reply to: mirageman

This is the first i've heard of this story. Fascinating, thanks for bringing it back.

I hope one of them comes out with the real story. It would make a great movie. They were NSA analysts, so i would say that they uncovered something top secret and possibly paranormal, alien, or new technology and had to see it for themselves.

Then, they had the files and photos as their 'get out of jail free' card' if they got caught. Which they used to get an honorable discharge.

I am hoping this 1994 interview with Vance Davis may provide more information.



But I haven't listened to it yet. Maybe it will provide some more clues?

Thank you for bringing this back. Sounds very much like Project Stargate I read a book with that title about 20 years ago.

Thank you, I have somehow it would seem never come across this unlike many on ATS..

Well lets see, intel officers with crypto training and TOP secret clearance would not be stupid people, also to gather six who where all friends and "into" the same stuff just seems very odd. Two people going AWOL I can imagine but 3+ people would be hard to accept esp from the same department.

My guess would be they where being "tested" for further deployment to god knows where?, tell them information that seems "out of this world" and to keep their mouths shut to see if they really could or would they just run blabbing and then the military can simply discredit them and move on, I have read from a number of sources this technique is used for recruitment into certain areas..

I would also find it surprising if the military did not pick up on these "social quirks" during what I imagine is a very thorough vetting program, I can also only guess that the exit to the US was made easy due to the far easier methods that could be deployed to track people/s on US soil rather than someone jumping into little know European countries to then disappear into the shadows.

There must be a flight manifest somewhere showing their departure of mainland Europe and their landing back in the US??...



I will look further into this for sure,


RA

a reply to: mirageman

A great read Op! I'm surprised I wasn't aware of this incident. I knew about the Gulf Breeze sightings but this is really strange and very weird. You peaked my interests so I will be reading the Jacques Vallée book Revelations when I have the time. Star & Flag, great thread!

a reply to: slider1982

Thank you for bringing this back. Sounds very much like Project Stargate I read a book with that title about 20 years ago.

Strange you should mention that as:

The command of MG Stubblebine (of Stargate Project) formerly included responsibility for the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade, which was the unit of the Gulf Breeze Six. Vance Davis claimed during a Coast to Coast interview to have directly spoken with Stubblebine on multiple occasions prior to Davis going AWOL. The two were apparently acquainted, at the least.

Source : UFO Trail

a reply to: mirageman
Well now, that says a lot. Are you familiar with the program and the purported channeling that to place, I think, in England where the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, participated. It is believed he got story ideas from this participation.

a reply to: liveandlearn

I know the general details. But Roddenberry's involvement over here I was not aware of?

Do you have a link to further information on that?

a reply to: mirageman

Great thread! You just gave me some inspiration

BTW how do you format the picture and text side by side like that?

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Probably this thread : A Guide to BBCode on ATS is a good starting point to understanding how to format your threads.

But as regards wrapping the text around the images then my own formula is to create the image (gif or png) with a small transparent border to give some space between the pic and the text.

Once you've uploaded it to ATS then you need to use the direct URL of image link.

Wrap that URL in-between the following tags [imgl ]...URL here.....[ /img] for a left sided picture

Or [imgr ].....URL here.....[ /img] for a right sided picture.

a reply to: mirageman

Is that picture behind the claims of 500 pics and demands for release the actual pic of the proof. If so where is that.