Legends, Hoaxes and the Big Lie: Anti-Christ Season

On 9 July 1990, six soldiers of the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade, a unit that works in conjunction with the National Security Agency, suddenly vanished from their station in Augsburg, Germany. Because Privates Michael Hueckstaedt, Kris Perlock, William Setterberg, Specialists Kenneth Beason, Vance Davis, and Sergeant Annette Eccleston all required top-secret clearance for their work with the NSA, one could easily see why this was a major problem. If Soviet (note the year) intelligence captured them, and compelled them to talk under mind control, US national security could have suffered considerable damage. Any one of these people could have given substantial information about the status and methodology of American signals intelligence (SIGINT), so you’d reckon Uncle Sam would spare no effort and expense in retrieving them, alive if possible.

Five days after their disappearance, the Army finally learned of the soldiers’ whereabouts. Were they captured by the Soviets, and held for ransom? Were they liberated in a daring rescue mission deep inside the USSR? Did the Army finally round them up after a five-day drinking binge in some German beer hall?

As it turns out, a Gulf Breeze, Florida policeman, Don Stevens, hauled in Pvt. Hueckstaedt after stopping him for driving with a busted tail light. Despite Hueckstaedt’s insistence that a computer check on him would result in his death, Officer Stevens ran his license anyway, and found him listed as AWOL from the Army. Ed Walters’ nemesis, Police Chief Jerry Brown, alerted the Pentagon, who told him not to question anyone in the group. Special Agents and case officers from the local FBI and CIA field offices needed only a day to track down and round up the remaining five. Four of them were staying in the house of a local woman named Anna Foster. They found Sgt. Eccleston camping out at a site in nearby Ft. Pickens. After taking them into custody, the Bureau turned them over to Army intelligence, who then held them in custody at Ft. Benning, home of the infamous School of the Americas, before shipping them off to Ft. Knox (KY). At this point, Pvt. Hueckstaedt’s fears became justified.  These soldiers could conceivably get the death penalty for their near-week in the States, because the Army decided not to charge them with the lesser crime of being Absent Without Leave (AWOL).  Instead, the soldiers faced the far more serious charge of desertion.

Local Florida papers covering the event unfolded a story that explained the motive behind the soldiers’ disappearance. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, they were on a mission from Gad.

The Gulf Breeze Six, as the press dubbed them, apparently belonged to a cult called The End of the World. They believed that the Apocalypse, as described in the New Testament, would begin any day with a war in the Middle East.* That meant that they had to prepare for it. Among other things, they would first have to kill the Antichrist, who supposedly lived in the Sunshine State. Most important, they believed that Christ would return in a spaceship. The End of the World seemed to have made serious inroads into US Intel, especially at the 701st MIB. The 20 July 1990 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News reported:

...‘Stars and Stripes’ quoted [another] 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.

Spec. Beason aided this perception in a sworn statement made to 713th Intelligence Headquarters, writing:

Since an early age, about 5 years old, I have had a belief in the paranormal and psychic phenomenon [sic]....I have also had various dreams about armageddon [sic] since about age 9. These dreams have depicted the end of the world in various ways. Earlier in my life, I tried to dismiss the dreams as not having any significance. However, I know now that my dreams were sent to me as visions by God....My friend, and co-worker, Vance Davis, and I decided to take out [my] Ouija board to disprove that it would work....One particular spirit named Saphire [sic] established a bond with me and asked why I stopped believing in my dreams....My recurring messages from the spirits and disciples included [sic] that the world would end soon, and that I needed to leave Germany to flee to the wilderness and learn to survive on the land.

Figure 1.  Spec. Beason's statement 

The sincerity exhibited by group members, in particular by Spec. Beason, seemed to make this an open-and-shut case of religious nuts getting out of hand. After all, if you’re looking for spaceships, you might as well go to UFO central, which in 1990 was Gulf Breeze, Florida. MUFON itself descended on the town to hold its convention a few days earlier (the weekend of July 6). But here’s something else: all six were, at one time or another, assigned to an installation located in nearby Pensacola. So they knew about the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings all too well. Moreover, they had already become acquainted with Ms. Foster, a medium with whom Beason had consulted earlier.

Beason somehow managed to convince five fellow soldiers to help him fight the anti-Christ. He went on to say that they flew directly from Augsberg to Atlanta (with he and Hueckstaedt making an additional trip to Knoxville, TN to visit his sister). A couple of days later, they reunited with their comrades at Gulf Breeze, where they could have furthered their plans to save the world had the meddling Officer Stevens not pulled over Pvt. Hueckstaedt.

Yup, the desertion of six military spies to save the planet from its most evil inhabitant and help the world prepare for its end sounds really crazy, all right. But if you think that’s bizarre, then what followed would prove that you don’t know what bizarre is.

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*In case you’re wondering, Saddam Hussein precipitated the Gulf War by invading Kuwait on 2 August 1990, less than a month after the defection of the GB6.