Camp Gagnon - The SECRET Occultist That Ran the Military

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Dan St. Germain joins us around the fire today to unpack the bizarre, shadowy world of modern occultism, military psychological warfare, and the life of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino. We chart the strange path from the origins of the Church of Satan to the founding of the Temple of Set, exploring how esoteric rituals and Nazi occult castles collided with Cold War intelligence and psychological operations. From the dark heights of the Satanic Panic and the Presidio controversies to the Franklin scandal and Aquino’s military career, we dive into the wild intersections of government psyops, secret societies, and demonological lore. Welcome to Camp! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors:MOD and Mars Men -Visit https://mengotomars.com and get 50% Off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, and 3 Free Gifts with Code 'CAMP' at Checkout. -Visit https://MOD.com for a free consultation, plus 10% off your first order and free shipping with promo code GAGNON. Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com Timestamps: 00:00 – Welcome to Camp04:37 – Birth of a Satanist09:08 – Aquino Goes to Vietnam12:27 – Rewriting Satan's Story16:22 – Joining Church of Satan24:06 – Creating The Temple of Set27:56 – Aquino’s Psychological Operations30:42 – Nazi’s Occult Castle39:47 – Presidio Allegations + Lilith Succubus49:07 – The Satanic Panic52:43 – Can a Satanist Serve in the Army?01:04:25 – Franklin Scandal + Occult Science01:15:02 – The Roast of Dan Aquino #satan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when one of the most controversial figures in modern Satanism isn't some underground occultist, but a high-ranking officer in the United States military? A few weeks ago, I told you about the infamous Michael Aquino. We did an entire deep dive on the Satanist who climbed the ranks inside the U.S. military, and today we're going to be having some fun with it. I brought in my friend and very funny comedian Dan St. Germain to deep dive into the bizarre story of Michael Aquino and even do a little roast. This is the real story of a U.S. Army psychological operations officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel

while simultaneously becoming one of the most influential figures in modern Satanism. We go through everything from Anton LeVay's Church of Satan, the Temple of Set, Aquino's career in psychological warfare, his writings on information and influence, and the controversies that followed him that fueled decades of speculations about where the occult ends and the military sci-ops begin.

If you're interested in this topic in a much more casual and laid-back way between me and one of my favorite comedians in New York City while you are in the right place. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, dude, and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent tour every single week. We explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time forever. Yes, that is what we do here. I consider this show like the Sports Center of Conspiracy theories.

I don't believe all of them, but I think all of them are fascinating. There's little threads of truth in each one that I want to get to the best. very bottom of, and that's what we're doing today. We have a fantastic episode before we begin. I want to say thank you to you, dude, for tuning in. Every time you click, comment, like, you interact with our content. You tell the algorithm overlords, hey, Mark and Christos, they're pretty good guys. They're doing a good job.

You keep the lights on at the tent, you need to keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Now, before it begin, I also want to say thanks to my pal, Christos. How are you? Doing great, Mark. How are you? Chris, we don't have time because we have an amazing guest today, and his name is Dan St. Germain. How are you?

Oh, my God. Dude, I'm so excited to do this podcast. Oh my goodness. I've been a fan and when you told me who we were covering I could not wait I've been obsessed with this guy

for about a decade. I am very excited that you're here. I'm pumped. You know this already, I told you this, but I've been watching your Comedy Central half hours and all your content for years since I was just a seedling

a neophyte in the comedy world. I still feel so great when all these good young comics are now starting to tell me that and I was like, well, that's awesome. Yeah, your beard was darker then, but... My beard was darker. I'm thinking about dying it, but maybe that would look terrifying.

It depends where you dye it as. You could go to like... Jet black. Yeah, yeah, dude. That can't be sick. I think you go mutton chops. You give you like a simple war vibe. Maybe you're mutton shops, yeah, because I don't feel like, I feel like it looks...

This is like a 60-year-old beer out of a 40-year-old. So I need to do something to get back in the game. And the hat is fabulous. Good. Thank you, dude. Oh, I knew I was going camping. Yeah, baby. So I wore my old guy from Jurassic Park hat.

I love it. Yeah. I love it. Now, for the guy watching, I did do an episode on Michael Aquino that is a bit more of a somber deep dive. That is not what we're doing today. Today we were doing a wild

thrashing of what did you call me? I said, well first I said if J.D. I said Michael Aquino is what would happen if J.D. Vance stayed in his goth face.

But there is, you know, Dan Soder has a joke about this called Dark Forest Gump, where he talks about like, like he does like the Forest Gump impression saying dark stuff. But there's also, another podcast that talks about Dark Forest Gump where this guy is involved in every dark thing in history or mentioned and he's just kind of there.

Yes. You know? And I think that that's like what the most fascinating thing about this guy is he's just, why is this guy and why does this guy seem to be at every psychological bottom in American history? Yeah, it's bizarre. Now, growing up, for anyone that doesn't know, my mother was a conspiracy theorist. And my mom would tell me, hey, Mark, the world is run by Satanus. And I would look at her and say, mom, you're crazy. And I would fight her on this. It's luciferians. Exactly, exactly. And I would argue with her. We go back and forth.

And then part of the reason I do the show is because I'm trying to understand my childhood and my mother. And I try to take all the things she told me through my life and kind of put them to the test. And unfortunately, this is one of those where I got to say, hey, mom, you're right. Maybe not the whole world. I don't know if that's a fact. But I do know that elements of the United States military were run by a legit Satanist. And I know people are like, oh, this is some Fox News bullshit. There's no, no, no, no.

This guy was actually on the record as Satanus, and it starts all the way back in San Francisco in 1946. Yes, Michael Aquino, according to those that know him, was born in San France, smart kid on a good academic track. 1968, when he's 22 years old, he goes into ROTC, which is the first red flag. Yeah. If you've ever met an ROTC kid, there's something special about. Yeah, it was the punishment in Sopranos.

But if you want to do it, something wrong with you. Go ahead. wrong with you go ahead but i'm going to look at you a little a little sideways and uh he goes into the army and goes into a very specific specialty psychological operations that's wild that's that's the first landing point yes and uh but this is something that that you this is also what i love about you yeah you came in with research i came in with research i came in with research i've been studying this guy for 10 years man well you know like especially um especially this dude where it's like He's mentioned.

He's not mentioned. Is he there? Is he not there? But I think the most fascinating thing is that he, you know, wrote his first big psychological warfare book with the guy, this guy named Paul Valet, or it's Valet? Either way, he's on the- A-Laley, right?

Valéli. Yeah, yeah. He's on the Turning Point USA board. Nothing weird about that. No, nothing weird about that. Oh, you don't like conserving American values? Well, it's just, how do you go from that to that? Like, they, like, you know, like, purport themselves to be this huge Christian revivalist group.

That's the turning point. Yes. The turning point is that, hey, we're actually going to go full saying this. Yeah. Like, Erica Kirk's eyeliner is, like, kind of leading us a little gothic. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like that's part of the path. Well, she's into J.D. Vance.

Maybe it's all kind of connected. Now, this is an unsubstantiated claim, but there is an Internet rumor that Alistair Crowley's Moonchild with Mary Desti. dest-sturge sons, which she said she didn't know until after it happened. He talked about it in a book Moonchild, which is technically the revelation of the method. So there's this theory that Michael Aquino is based on a patrilineal dynasty connected to Alistair Crowley. Michael Aquino, like it would work out. Michael Aquino was born a year before Alistair Crowley died. So the math would make sense. now his mom you know was a was an absolute savant you know she went to um stamford university at like i think 16 years old maybe she graduated then yep so clearly he had the beginnings of a moon

child upbringing yes whatever the fuck that means for anyone you know for the guy watching that doesn't know who michael o'clock or for alster crowley we did many episodes on crowley so you can check those out now michael oakeno junior's maternal grandfather's a prominent San Francisco physician named Dr. Campbell Ford. Yes. This is another claim that I can't necessarily substantially it, but there are some sources here. This one's true, for sure. Now, it says here he was not accused of trying to steal a baby, but he was arrested in

1894 for allegedly trying to abandon and dispose of a newborn infant on Rican Hill. That's the least suspicious thing in this guy's story. I'm serious because that was just like a fucking scumbag move back then where you're like... Give him like a Spartan funeral? Yeah. You're just like, here you go. And I mean, the craziest thing is you're supposed to do that at a fire station. But this guy just dropped him in the middle of the block, I guess.

Whoa. Yeah, it says like he did this to avoid revelations of an affair. Yes. Just abandon your family. Like, what happened to that? What happened to the good old fashion go get milk? Yeah, dude. I have like, it's kind of like related a couple families away.

But I knew a guy that had a family on the poor side of town and the rich side. to town. Like, you could get away with that 80 years ago. Yeah. You can't do that now. Yeah, it's such a shame. Shurvalence state, right? Surveillance state. That's my biggest issue with flock. That's my biggest issue of flock is you can't triple time and have five families all over the city. Yeah, flock cameras have made double lives impossible. Yeah. So much your Peter Thiel. So many better dads because of flock.

That's the side they need to lean into for the brand. They do. Yeah, for sure. Be like, hey, ladies, look what we're doing. Yeah, man. Keeping your man faithful. Now, basically, Michael Aquino is interested in Scyops from a very young age. And we'll get into Sionps in a second. Yeah. But you got this guy. He's a smart, buttoned up, you know, army officer.

He's getting into psychological operations from a young age. And then bang, 1969 happens. It goes over to Vietnam. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, it was, I can't imagine Michael Aquino actually in the jungle. That's what I said. Like, first they would be smelling incense or from like a mile away.

I cannot see that guy doing anything manual labor-wise. At all. No. And I don't know if he was there for that because he seems like he's much more interested in the psychological side. Right. Now. And by the way, it didn't work, guys, just in case we didn't win that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That one is, you know, maybe it's a wash, right? We'll call that one even, right? Right, Vietnam? I think Korea was even. This one wasn't. Yeah. Now, at the same time that he's doing this, he gets into like a little writing kink, you know?

He's like, you know what, I'm going to start just putting some words down. And one of his early works that he puts down is not a military report, but it is a piece of occult literature called the diabolicon. So corny. By the way, so corny. I was like, all these guys totally real themselves to be dorks when you're like, this is the BELSA Bible. You know? It's just Come on, man.

He's just kind of larping. He's just like, he's like, dude, I'm in the army, but actually I'm in the army of the city. By the way, apparently they did find he had a devil costume at his house when police did the investigation. And I hope it was one of those tight ones with like the whole like the little party city fucking war. Well, you've seen the picture of him dressed up as like Lucifer or something like with the weird like pig mask thing. Bizarre. Also, not the record show. He grew up.

Actually, I haven't seen this one. You haven't seen this one? That's fucking scary. It is very scary. That's way scarier than I thought. It's scary because it's in black and white. I don't know. If it's in color, if you were in the room, you'd be like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen.

Imagine like you're like staying over there like with another kid and it's his dad like for a sleepover. Just walk in. I mean, that is that is horrifying. Yeah, dad's doing his nighttime ritual. For sure. Now let the record also show this guy did not grow up in like, you know, the back country of Louisiana doing voodoo. He grew up in Santa Barbara, California. One of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my life.

If you're goth in Santa Barbara, grow up. Yeah. Like, dude, it's the most gorgeous place on the planet. Like, what do you have to be sad about? Well, I can't see him on a surfboard. I guess, but it's like, brother, sit on the beach, feed a seal. Yeah. What's going on?

No, I think he was feeding the seal all right with human meat. I just could imagine being on the beaches of Santa Barbara and, like, Carmel by the sea, being like, I hate my mom. It's like, dude, life is awesome. Or maybe he liked his mom too much. You never know. It goes one or the other with these guys. Yeah, that is true.

But, yeah, I just don't think he's like, he's the opposite. You look at that photo, and that's the opposite of Elvis dancing on a beach with hot checks. Is that photo. Now, Aquino falls in love with dork. Sorry. What a fucking dork this dude is. You don't like his beret? I actually like his bray in that one.

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. He looks like a villain. and in Ratatouie there is something unbelievable. He's got a little homunculus pulling his hair. Now, he falls in love with John Milton's Paradise Lost. If you don't know, that is a 17th century epic where Satan is the main character and is a little bit misunderstood.

He's a baby face. Yeah, he's a baby face. He's a white meat boy, and he's a little bit conflicted, and he's nuanced. And he kind of hears this, and he's like, you know what? I'm going to kind of, I'm going to tag this up. I'm going to write a little fanfic. and show the complexity of this Lucifer guy. And so that's kind of what this thing is.

So he wrote what they say is a short prose track. Some accounts describe it as being only 18 pages, laying out his own mythology of Satan. And the format is really weird. It's written in a series of first person's statements. Like each one supposedly spoken by a different demon. So you got like Satan and then Leviathan, Beelzebub, and they're all like talking about the creation of the world

and their gift of free will and intelligence to mankind. It's like, it's just fan fiction. Oh, of course. Yeah, they're yes and to each other. It's the worst improv troupe ever. Okay, give me a place. Give me a place. Yeah, ancient Egypt.

Okay, and give me a person, give me a person. Anabas. It's just a satanic improv, which is redundant. Yeah, it is redundant. All improv is sick. That's actually when you get to the, when you get to the final level of UCB and you meet Delclosus's ghost, he reveals the method. Oh, Delclose. That's so funny. I haven't heard that name in a minute. Now, this is kind of his demonic manifesto. He wrote it under combat conditions in Vietnam, which is also so funny. And he claimed part of the manifesto was destroyed by enemy fire at one point. See, I think the Vietnamese were on the right side.

Yeah, for sure. Just that alone. Yes, yes, for sure. Also, like, wait, what does that mean? Like, he was writing and, like, a bullet went through the manuscript and not him? Yeah. Yeah. Like, that sounds like a... murder she wrote plot. Yeah, he's acting like, he's holding the Dead Sea Scrolls. He's like, how do I put this back together? It's like, brother, it's one word. How fucking, also, like, how annoyed must you be? And I wrote that in the notes. If you're

like in his platoon and you just want to, you just want to read a playboy and whack off and you, like, pull out this Diablocon and you're like, what the fuck? I got to read this instead. Yeah. Watch, like, try to jerk off to a goat with six tits or something, whatever the fuck he's drawn in there. Let the record

show Baffement is kind of stacked. That is true. No one talks about that. If you're out in Vietnam, you haven't seen a woman in a few months. I'm not saying I would do it. I'd take it to the map. Yeah, you look at Baffamette's rack and you're like, oh, oh, oh, yeah, never mind. Yeah, you're like, oh, that reminds me that woman in Tucson.

Yeah, I've bumbled to this chick. Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Mod. Mod prescribes a once or twice daily modafinil drink that can keep you energized focused and alert throughout the entire day, and here's how it works. Energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block adenosine. This is the chemical that makes you feel tired, and it builds up, and when the caffeine wears off, you get that crash. But modafinol works differently. It engages multiple pathways in your brain, including dopamine, norapinephrine, histamine, and orexin to achieve steady energy and alertness for 10 to 12 hours.

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People like to think that Michael Aquino's occult life, like came after, like, these are like kind of separate kind of chapters. I've seen people say it. They're like, no, no, no, no, it was later on. No, no, it's like very much at the very beginning. He's fascinated by this stuff. That's his thing. And he's doing it.

So he's got these two lives, Army and Occult, that are basically starting at the same time. He enters the Army in 68. and then he walks into Anton LeVay's Church of Satan in 1969. So these two plots are running side by side for him. And Anton LeVeves is hilarious. We can also talk about him a little bit. But he basically gets into this occult order

of the Church of Satan that's also located out west. And it works pretty well because he's got kind of the... There's an institutionalism to it, right? He can kind of start. There's ranks. there's degrees, there's initiation, and my assumption is that he probably felt pretty at home. He's like, oh, this is pretty sweet.

Yeah. And his falling out with Anton LeVay is also hilarious. Yeah. We'll kind of get to that. But, yeah, basically, he starts getting into it, and he now becomes the right-hand man of Anton LeVay. But if you don't know who Anton LeVe is, he is the proprietor. He's the founder of the Church of Satan in the United States.

Yeah. Which there's something about him that I actually like more than Michael Aquino. He looks like he could do. be the dad of the bodyguard from Jerry Springer, Steve Locust. He's like if, yeah, or if Dr. Phil was evil. Yes. He looked like he could be in like an extra on like George Lopez. Yeah, but you could tell like here's the thing is like this is the guy.

There's pictures of him with like Sammy Davis Jr. And like you could tell this guy was like a fun time. That's the thing. Michael Aquino was not a fun time. Michael Aquino ruins karaoke with Monster Bash. Yeah. That's who he is. He did the mess

It's so funny to me because like Anto LeVay Despite having like the bigger title I do see him just sort of as like a showman Like by all accounts From what I can find People are coming up to him be like dude Satan's sick Right and he's like I don't really believe that

Like I'm kind of like an atheist I just kind of like the I like to annoy The religious right in America and I like to do drugs I feel like he would fit very well within the podcast Podcastscape today Yeah exactly So, like, he's a showman. He likes to walk around with, like, a leopard or, like, a jaguar to the streets of San Francisco and, like, paint a house black and, like, do all sorts of, like, wacky, pun intended, sort of, like, satanic stuff.

Yeah, that's, like, the spooky version of Dolly and the Anteater, I guess. Yeah, literally. And in walks Michael Aquino into this world. And as the story goes, LeVe handed him a business card at a screening of Rosemary's baby. That is the rumor of where they met. Yeah, it should have been the odd couple. That's what I say. Huge year for movies, by the way.

It was like Rosemary's Baby, Bullet, the odd couple, a few other ones. Which you know all, like, the haunting stories around Rosemary's Baby, right? Yeah. There's some, we did a whole episode on you guys to check it out. We just rewatch it a couple years ago. I had this briefly this horror pod yet.

And it's one of the greatest movie. It's not just greatest horror movies. It's only greatest movies of all time. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's insane. And then the fact of, like, the composer of the film died, like, shortly thereafter. And, like, people on the set.

And, of course, like, Sharon Tate and that whole saga. I mean, Sharon Tate said extra of the movie. I forgot that she was an extra in the movie. She's not listed, but she's in the background. Who's also in the movie very briefly is the guy from Holy Hell that cult. It's a cult that ends up. You can watch, like he said he was like, oh, I'm an actor.

And that's how he got people into this cult. But he was like a background Rosemary's baby. And he was also doing gay porn. No way. It's a great documentary. Holy hell. He just got all these dudes, these beautiful looking dudes like yourself with that gorgeous hair to just be like, all right.

I'm going to try this out for a second. You know, it's a great documentary, though. He basically just got all these actors and made them put on. It was like the worst community theater ever. They would put on plays and stuff on this compound. Everyone was just trying to find themselves in the 60s, you know? It was a different time. Now, they basically just become, they become two buddies.

And they, you know, Aquino basically climbs the ranks of the church. He starts editing the newsletter called the Cloven Huff. And he sat on the governing council. and, you know, was like, he was, he was, he was, he was in. It's the relationship between a podcast toast and a podcast producer. Yeah. You just explained it. All right, I'll come and do the edit.

Yeah. And then you're like, I guess you're my best friend now. Yeah. Right, Christos? Absolutely. Stop interjecting. Oh my goodness. Non-stop with the interjections.

He actually is weeping, you guys can't see here. Angrily weeping. No, Chrisos is my buddy. He's the Greek freak. Now, yeah, basically Aquino is, uh, he's like, simultaneously doing Vietnam and doing war and also doing Church of Satan. And he stayed in the army like the whole time. His most intense years of climbing the Church of Satan go from 1971 to 1975.

And they happen right after he comes back from Vietnam. And war did not change him. It did not bring him closer to Jesus Christ. I would say no, he did not. Brought him closer to like a, there's no atheist in a foxhole. There's a weird Satanist with eyewiner, but there's no, there's no atheists. Yeah. And, yeah, basically, Aquino watched LeVay start doing something that he didn't like. LeVay began essentially selling the church's priesthood degrees. Now, you can basically buy your way up the ladder.

Because LeVay doesn't really believe this stuff. He's just, like, in it for the money, he's in it for the fun and the drugs on the parties. And Aquino, which is so funny that he joins the Church of Satan and then quickly realizes, like, wait, you guys aren't really down with the Satan stuff? he gets pissed and they have a massive falling out. Yeah. Which is just like the funniest thing ever to me that he's like, you guys aren't hardcore enough. Yeah, well, he wanted to make it also like I think he tried to, he consciously tried to get it away from Satan into set. And I realized I went to a rabbit hole and like why this would be and the difference between it. And it's that Satan is influenced by the world while set is separate from the world and can act on it.

Oh, interesting. storm god so like set in his mind has a higher place i guess in the you know uh the the demagogological i don't know how to say it but the the pantheon i guess that's so funny just to be like satan's just a bag in the wind you know yeah it's like when you say your favorite like band's radio head you're like okay all right yeah everybody else that's so funny i like slayer you know what i mean these guys are real i like fugazi i like the pixies that was the one for a while i think the pixies you're better than the Beatles. That's so funny.

Yeah. But yeah, just basically LeVay was like, Satan's sort of a symbol. He's sort of, he's emblematic. And Akeena was like, no, no, no, he's real, and we need to do some sacrifices and rituals for him. So in 1975, Michael Aquino does just that, and he leaves the church. And basically like every type of schismatic religious split. There's just one guy that's like, you guys aren't hardcore enough.

And then starts the true version. You need the Martin Luther of every religion. Exactly. Or like, what the Amish did. that came off of some guy being like dude like we gotta we gotta like shun people harder and then started his own thing in Germany and like the 1700s was like dude we're gonna go super hard

on this yeah but I mean the Amish is probably you know they had that they had that like A&E show the Amish mafia I think or whatever but for the most part they're pretty you know benign compared to a lot of the other Christian groups you know but as far as the splitting goes they split because some guy was like dude you guys aren't hardcore enough yeah you guys like

you guys are only fast in one day a week we're going to fast three. Yeah. We're going to make our lives really shitting. Exactly. Not just a little shitty, really shitty. So according to Aquino, he didn't just quit. He performed a ritual

to ask the underlying force behind Satanism to reveal itself. He wanted to find out who was there. And according to Aquino, he got an answer. He said that an intelligence responded to his ritual. And it was a real conscious entity. And it told him that Satan was a corrupt. It was a corruption.

It was a garbled name. That the true name, the original name, goes back to ancient Egypt, that the actual underlying force of the universe is not the Satan stuff. The name is Set, God of the desert and of storms and of chaos, going all the way back to ancient Egypt,

and set is the one who stands apart. There you go. I think it's like loosely related to the cold of Saturn, too. Yeah. But I always find it fascinating, dude. It's like, you know, in this country, we have Christianity, we have Judaism, we have Islam, we have some atheists and Buddhists,

I guess. All our iconography is ancient Egypt. Like you have the pyramid. You have like, we have different like statues of Anabas and stuff like that. Yeah. And you're like, okay, so somebody's worshipping this. And we don't have any like Egyptian temples we go to. So it must be a secret.

Yes, exactly. So Aquino basically says that he gets dictated a book to him. Not something that he writes. And this is something you see through like occult literature all the time where a cultist will say like, I didn't write this. It's called free writing or something. Free writing or like auto dictation, I think is another term. And the book is called The Book of Coming Fourth by Night, which he says that this is something that set basically.

He definitely came up with that title. Gotta be, right? That is like very Michael Aquino. Like the fact that sets like, I will translate this into American English. I'm like, dude, you're like an Egyptian storm god. Like, just wrap your shit. Like if it was written with like a thick Egyptian accent, then maybe I'd be like, well, maybe. If he's like, brazza, brazza, braza.

It's written like a British dude in like an Agatha Christie novel coming up with the name. Yeah. Yeah. So this is basically what he's doing. He's like, you know what? I'm going to, from this revelation, I'm going to found the temple of set. Now, the temple is not just like some loose gathering. This was a structured incorporated religious organization. It gets legal recognition and tax exempt status in California.

It has a written doctrine, a hierarchy. It is governed by the Council of Nine, which we've done many episodes on. Andresia Poharic is a researcher that basically started doing transmedium channeling with a few different mediums and was given this revelation that there was a council of nine intelligences or entities that kind of guide the spiritual consciousness of the world. And he's saying that the Temple of Set is also governed by those guys are on the board. Oh, yeah. These are our guys as well. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, you can basically kind of work your way up.

So this is the guy who spends literally all of his like early childhood get in these like institutions of hierarchy like with the U.S. Army and then basically just kind of like develops a new one for his religious framework. And yeah. So by this point, by the late 70s, he is, you know, a founder of a real religion, the high priest of set and is still serving as an officer in the United States Army. Which is crazy. Yeah. And he got the church recognized too, I think. Yeah, exactly, which is hilarious. You're just like, how was he able to do this?

He's like, yeah, well, we're going to do tax exemption as well. You know what I mean? You're not allowed to, like, somebody just got court-martialed now because they said they were like, you know, fuck Trump and they're in prison in the military. How are you able to say that you're like dancing with the devil and you're still reporting for duty? Well, in fairness, the devil never closed a straight-in-hormuz. That's true. You know, if you really look at the data, all right? Sure, you're right.

Please don't throw me into a detention camp. Now, this is where the sci-op thing, I think, should come in because the whole thing with the sci-op element here is very strange. So psychological operations are not necessarily mind control, okay? It sounds kind of like it should be, but the classic sci-op has more to do with infiltration and conversion from the inside. So basically making somebody,

instead of forcing someone to do something with mind control, you are convincing them and you are sort of manipulating them or giving them an incentive to do something. and you drop like a leaflet around the country you basically work with the guy so in Vietnam there is a big program called Chio Hoy this is open arms and the whole idea is to convince enemy fighters

to just come to the American side and this is great yeah and this is basically what Aquino's specialty is so in the 80s Aquino's commanding officer this guy Colonel Paul Vilelli asked him to write a forward thinking paper

and the army is Turning point. Yeah, exactly. He's the turning point guy. And the Army is still dealing with Vietnam. And Velae wanted fresh ideas about the future of Sciop. So he produces a paper called Syop to Mine War, the psychology of victory. Yeah, these are so ill-conceived because they're expecting you to, like, they're like, we're going to win your hearts and minds while bombing you.

Yeah, exactly. You have to pick one or the other. You know, you can't do both at the same time. Yeah, they're trying to do like a rock in a good place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bomb over there or you can go to a Jets game. Yeah, yeah, come over here. And it's just, it's never going to, and it's never going to work out, dude.

Yeah. It's just never going to work out. So he defined the paper as mind war. And the core phrase is the deliberate aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win the war. And the argument is like that the highest form of victory might be trying to win before shooting ever starts by reconditioning how the entire population perceives reality. And that is what kind of the paper is pushing towards. Now, Mind War was never like official doctrine in fairness.

It was never adopted like as straight up army policy. And Aquino himself later described it as just a talking paper, like a document meant to provoke debate amongst people in the psychological operations department. And Valetle mailed copies around a stirrup conversation. And it did. And then it kind of like sat in a drawer until it was resurrected years later. And Aquino also wrote a paper called Psychological Operations, the Ethical Dimension, which was an entire piece

specifically about the moral limits of this kind of work, which is hilarious. Yeah, there is no moral limit for this type of word. Yeah, it's just, I mean, this guy is just so into himself the whole time. You can just tell. Now, should we tell the guy watching about the Nazi castle? Yeah, I'm excited about this, man. These guys are always, I mean, these guys are always,

obsessed with Nazis, you know, like for their own reasons, but you'll go into it. So in SS mythology, you got all sorts of stuff, okay? There's an occult dimension to Nazi Germany. We did an episode with Eric Herlander down at Stets University, who does a fantastic job. I think it's called, his book is called Hitler's Monsters. And it is basically looking at the occult dimension of the Nazi sort of philosophy. Now, to be fair, it doesn't seem like Hitler's like super into the occult stuff. from everything I've read.

There's definitely more Himmler. Heinrich Himmler was the guy. And he was like straight up like, dude, Thor's Hammer is out there and we got to go get it. Yeah, there's all these history documentaries about like the Nazis like sending these guys out to like the Andes to try to find some, you know, Ravens Claw or something that's going to give them.

They developed an entire department. They call it the Anerbacht. And it's literally... Gazuntite. Thank you. And it's literally the... It's like a whole arm of archaeology. anthropology within the Third Reich to go out and find the true origins of man,

which are not from Mesopotamia. I would take over that. I would take that over dying in Russia. You know, like it was between looking for Bigfoot and fighting Stalin, I would look for Bigfoot. And there's all these stories where they're basically trying to go to like Indo-Persia and be like, oh, no, no, no, this is not where the Aryans are from. The true Aryans are actually from, like, Norway. And then we have the connections to the Nordics, the alien Nordics.

which is a stain on their rep if that turned out to be true. It's founded in Germany in 1935 to try to invent evidence supporting Aryan racial philosophy and there's all sorts of stuff about using like these sort of myths like, you know, Thor's Hammer

as well as like, you know, they're looking for the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny, aka the Spear of Langeness that's used to pierce the side of Christ and Heinrich Himmler's really the one that's behind it. He's into it so much that Himmler,

one has a personal mystic named Caw-Mario Willigatz, and he also buys a place slash takes it over. I don't know if the Nazi really bought anything. No, I don't think so. But this place called Veeblesburg Castle.

And Vivalsburg Castle is allegedly supposed to be like the spiritual headquarters for the SS. That's the goal that Himmler has. And it has like this very distinct triangular shape.

It's built back in the 1600s. And then in 1934, Himmler, the head of the the SS, signs a lease. And he's like, okay. Airbnb it out. Yeah. We don't have anyone there that weekend.

Exactly. And he starts pouring resources into it to basically try to make it the hub of the SS, like, spiritual cult. It's supposed to be like the Vatican City for the Nazis. Yeah. Essentially. And that is the actual sort of like, sort of element behind. He was like, we are going to be the Knights Templar.

We're going to be like a Teutonic knighthood. this is where we're going to meet and do our rituals. Yeah, Metzger always had, you know, Kurt Messkroy, I know has been on the show, always talks about it's like, you always want this to be like darker and more mysterious than this, but it always turns into fucking Harry Potter. Yeah, I mean, like, Himmler is just a keynote with more control. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, Himmler is just also another like larping, like loser that's like, dude, we're going to do our spells. Anything to get them out of hanging out with their wives. They're like

Well I mean Himmler Himmler might have been just straight up You know straight up Badin for the other team as they say Oh that's right That's what people have said But who knows And I wasn't there

There was the other gay Nazi That they killed right before After he helped with beerhole punch But then they Gay Nazis Oh really Oh yeah yeah I thought okay no

Who was the gay Nazi It's Franz It doesn't matter Franz something Franz it's you know Franz from Saturday Night Live Franz and Hans two gay Nazis.

Yeah. Franz von Liebenfeld? That's the one where they gave no, there's somebody else. He was like very out, he was very outspoken, this gay Nazi. He was so out that they hit words like, you got to kill yourself.

And he did. That is morbid but funny. Now, the North Tower of Veeblesburg Castle, there was a crypt that Himmler imagined ceremonies for the SS elite. And there was a great hall where they had the infamous place. Black Sun. This is a symbol you probably seen. And yeah, that's basically still there. And you can still

visit this place. Now, Akeeno in 1982, this is back to our man, Michael Aquino, on a NATO-related trip to Europe, he goes, hey guys, I'm going to cut out for a little bit. We're not meeting up till dinner, right? And they're like, yeah, we got nothing until dinner. So he goes over to Veevelsburg Castle. Yeah. And he goes down to the North Tower into the chamber that Himmler's SS considered the symbolic center of their spiritual world. And he performs a working. This is an occult term for a ritual. And he does this sort of bizarre ritual,

in his own words, that he sort of confesses to. He writes about it. And it's difficult to know exactly what he does, but he does a ritual in the hub of the SS spiritual layer, just on his free time. And... He must be so pissed if you're just a janitor there and you walk in and you're like,

oh my God, another guy's chanting. Yeah, I kind of get the power of fucking Hitler's mustache or something. More chicken blood. I have to wipe up. This is so annoying. So that's just a real sort of element to this. And it does affect his reputation because people are like, wait, why did you do that? What was the thing behind this?

The craziest is that he was there for NATO. You know, again, it's like, what is he doing there for NATO? Like, it's, there's always some, like, there's always some weird connection. Yeah. to the highest echelons of power with these guys. Yeah. And it's just strange. It's just bizarre.

Like, at best, it's like, oh, this guy is just like into like weirdo occult stuff. At worst, he's just like doing a ritual in a Nazi thing, like ideologically aligned. Again, I don't know if he's ideologically a Nazi, but it's just a little strange. Yeah, I don't think that he would be opposed to it. I think that wouldn't get you knocked off the dinner list for Michael Aquino. Yeah. So you have this guy, a career military intelligence officer, founder of. of the Temple of Set, a sort of a satanic subchurch,

and now has performed his own private right at the beating heart of the SS's religion. Each one of these things is verifiable. You can look all of them up, I'm not speculating here. And up until this point, everything is a little bit like, all right, this is maybe a weirdo guy that has some strange convictions. You know, he does some interesting things in his free time. Until we get to November 1986.

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sent you. Now let's get back to the show. The San Francisco. Yeah, this part gets a little sketchy, okay? San Francisco police, the FBI and the Army criminal investigators opened an investigation into allegations of child abuse at the Presidio Child Development Center. This is a daycare on the Army base of San Francisco. Now, the initial suspect was an employee there, this guy named Gary Hambright. And over the following months, dozens of children would eventually be identified as potential victims. Some cases included finding physical medical findings. Something was undoubtedly happening to

these children. Yeah, they got chlamydia. Like five of them got chlamydia. It was like something crazy. And they didn't test everybody either. Yeah, so the number of potential victims here is even higher than that. Now, how does this relate to Michael Aquino? Well, one of the children, a three-year-old and the daughter of an army chaplain described being abused by a guy named Mr. Gary and by two other people that she only knew as Mikey and Shambi. So. Shambi sounds like the opposite of Gumbi. It's like the dark Gumbi. Gumbi is like less fun kind of cousin.

Shambi, way less bendable. Yeah. So on August 12th, 1987, the family was at a base exchange. This is called the PX. And it's basically like an on base like Walmart. And according to the court records, a little girl saw a man and a woman and became frightened and taps the person that she's with. goes, that's Mikey and Shambi. Now, the two people that this little girl was pointing towards was none other than Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino and the woman who was his wife, Lilith.

And they do not help themselves with the interview because they're also like they're completely pale, all dressed in dark, you know, it's, you're like that you guys, like you got to stop dressing, you know, like you're in the fucking Adams family if you want us to take you seriously. Which the other element of this that's so funny, I don't know if people, I'm sure people talk about this, but like the fact that his wife, his name is Lilith. Lilith being the, depending on kind of how you go, but like in a lot of like Jewish sort of folklore,

specifically coming out of like the 1000s, kind of like medieval Judaism, there's kind of the story that goes around that Lilith is the true first wife of Adam. Have you heard this before? No, I have not heard this. This is interesting. Again, this is not mainstream Jewish theology.

This is sort of, this kind of, this kind of, This comes from the alphabet of Ben-Sara, which is sort of like, some people consider almost like a parody, kind of like Jewish, kind of like religious text, but it's now become adopted by a cultist. And basically, this story goes that Lilith is the true first wife of Adam

and that Lilith is demanding what the text says is like improper sexual behavior from Adam and is defiant to Adam and is not listening to Adam and that is ultimately a bad wife. So what does God do? Hashem in the story banishes Lilith to roam the earth as a as a spirit and becomes the first succubus and goes around as a demon basically tormenting men with her sexual impropriety and then God makes Eve. But Michael Aquino is like, sign me up.

The weird or the better. So the story is that like Lilith is the name of a famous succubus and the fact that his wife is named Lilith. She was actually sucking people on a bus. That's how we met. That's how they meant. Yeah, he's awesome. And perhaps she changed her name to Lilith. We don't really know.

But what we do know is for the importance of this story here. I mean, come on, dude. Yeah, this is like Marilyn Manson's mom. Of Aquino and Leloth, if you can roll play here, my pal Christos. It's extremely graphic in places and we can't show it. Well, can we cut the audio? Let's just see. I kind of want to see him just chat.

Pretty vile stuff. If like a tenth of what he's been accused of is true, it's pretty fucking vile. All right, let's see. But luckily, he's dead now so he can't sue us because that was mostly the end of his wife was just suing people who would talk about this. Yeah. And the two of them here are reading,

I'm assuming, like, some type of defense or some type of alibi. Her eyes look crazier there, but that's clearly just the quality of the video. Yes. Now, the child that we're talking about in this PX, in this sort of Army Exchange, leads investigators to a house on Leavenworth Street.

and the house that they lead them to is Michael Aquino's home and she describes the inside of the home again this is a young girl this is not a 17, 18 year old girl this is not a 25 year old woman that knows the inside of people's houses this is a young child that would have no reason

to know what Michael Aquino's house looks like and describes it as a room with black walls yeah which again like I wrote the notes like I can't get a fucking man cave in my house without my wife's permission I got a whole fucking like sex dungeon Yeah. You know, for, I should say sex nursery as I vomit my mouth.

Oh, God. Now, August 14th, investigators execute a search warrant on the house. They seize videotapes, photographs, negatives, and they take a bunch of evidence. Now, at this point, it seems like, okay, well, he obviously did it, right? Like, a young girl that is a victim from this identifies these two people, also identifies the house, and identifies the inside of the house without any type of foreknowledge. but Michael Kino was never criminally charged in this case I think his alibi was that he was in

was he in Austria taking a class or he was in we're going to jump to some of his his alibis here yeah okay so no no no you're totally fine in 88 the San Francisco Police Department discontinue its investigation of Akino and the reason is that there is no there's insufficient evidence so as a result there are no charges that are filed there is no trial there is no conviction

but despite what actually happened two stories start circulating on one hand people are saying the court proved that he did it and on and that's false that's not true then no court ever found him guilty on the other side people were saying that the court completely cleared him it's also not true also not true and the whole truth is that the case doesn't end there the army's criminal investigation kept Aquino's name in the title block of the report of the investigation basically that means that the army administratively spent like named him as a subject and left him named even after the police walked away

Akino spent years fighting this to get his name cleared, and then that fight ends up becoming a lawsuit called Akeeno v. Stone. And the lawsuit, to be clear, is not a retrial of the abuse allegations. It's just whether or not his name should actually be on that investigation. So nobody in the courtroom was deciding whether Akeena was guilty or not. The legal question is, you know, was the Army's refusal to erase his name arbitrary or capricious in their terms? And the court says no. The Army was allowed to keep his name on the file in the identification by the child, the partial match of the home. the judges ruled was enough of a basis

that the Army's decision was not unreasonable. So you can see what happened here, right? He's not exonerated. Now, while we're even talking about this, I'm realizing I don't know what exactly his alibi was. Could you give me a quick Google search on that, Christos? Maybe even go to Jip it and just say, like, hey, what was Aquino's alibi?

He was like an adjunct professor somewhere. It was across the pond, but he'll probably pull it up. But it's tricky, though, because how do we know the exact days that the abuse was happening? He lived in the area. Also, if there is a military connection and there is an intelligence connection, you know, he can fly back on a military plane. Nobody fucking knows.

That's a great point. You know, like, that's the, you know, and for the military, it would make sense if they were involved or if our government was involved because it's like, yeah, you make him the fall guy similar to really what's happening with Prince Andrew right now. And then all the attention's on this weird. Sataness, you know. Right. Now, we're going to D.C., okay, not across the pond, but D.C., so that's an even easier trip

to make. Yeah, so it says here, and again, this is according to Jiput, which may be wrong, it says, regarding the procedural daycare allegations, Aquino's alibi that he and his wife were living in D.C. during the period when the alleged abuse supposedly happened, he was attending a graduate level program at the National Defense University Industrial College of the Armed Forces, which is too long of a name. And he also presented testimony from workers

who were renovating and working on the Akino's apartment apparently intended to show that the alleged the alleged activity could not have occurred they're unnoticed yeah and also if your alibis i was i was working in the shadiest city in the world you know like it's like everyone knows dc from like the franklin cover-up episode you know beforehand they had yeah they had like brothels running in and out of the dc madame the the the gay whorehouse absolutely great book by our friend nick bryant great book confessions of a dc madam But yeah, and of course, Washington, D.C. is a light, you know, a shining, a shining light on a hill. There's no way someone in that city would be accused of sexual Wisconsin.

Yeah, he's not coming from fucking Branson, dude, he's coming from D.C. Yeah. Now, a lot of the people that are sort of prosecuting Aquino in the Court of Public Opinion was say, look at all the evidence, look at how there was kind of some type of cover up here, and the fact that this guy wasn't ever convicted of anything, he wasn't ever even like, there was no trial even. it seems like a massive miscarriage of justice. Now, defenders will say, in an interest of being operating in good faith, that this was at the height of satanic panic. Now, for the guy that's watching that doesn't know a satanic panic is basically an era, really at like the late 80s into the 90s, where all of America, you could say,

specifically like the religious right, you know, the evangelical sort of substrate of Americans, was terrified by Satanists infiltrating their lives. It kind of became like a red scare, almost like Cold War kind of level paranoia about Satanism. And there were all sorts of high profile cases from Damien Nichols to others where basically there were these atrocious things that happened typically murders, sometimes ritual murders, and they would be pinned unfairly on these Satanists. And some of them maybe were unfair.

Some of them were a little bit less unfair. Yeah, I think that that, you know, because it seems as though, and people will argue with me on this, but the McMartin preschool thing was bullshit. And there wasn't, you know, there may have been. some sexual impropriety, but there wasn't like witches flying around in the air and all that shit. It doesn't even, and there's, I don't think there's even strong enough evidence to say there was sexual impropriety. But Presidio Daycare, you know, the kids did get chlamydia. So, but because McMartin becomes the most famous one, that's everything becomes McMartin.

Or they, like, promote the Paradise Lost Kids, so everything becomes that. Right. And I wrote the notes, you know, yes, there was a satanic panic in the country. But Michael O'Kino is evidence of satanic keep panicking. You know, like, it's, the panic is not over. So at this point, the American public is looking at this guy. He's now sort of in the headlines. People are familiar with him within like the, if you know, you know circle.

But then this kind of brings him more into the spotlight. And Americans and politicians and the congressmen are looking and they're going, wait, we have a Satanist in the, like as a colonel in the army? What? And so this guy, Jesse Helms, there's a senator who gets involved. And I'm assuming that. That's a guy, actually. I don't know. Jesse Helms is a guy. Okay.

That was a close one. I almost was super sexist. He has his own like real problematic past with racism. Well, Jesse Helms gets involved and objects to Aquino's continued presence in the military specifically because of his satanic beliefs. And eventually Aquino was pushed out of the Army Reserve through an administrative board process. Not because of a convicted crime, but because of his associations. They looked at his eyebrows. That was the process.

They took a good look at those eyebrows and they're like, you're out. Which is crazy to me that if you, in order to be like a Marine, you got to like shave your head, shave your beard, all this stuff. But you don't have to take out the horned eyebrows. Like if this guy can have horned eyebrows, I think a Navy SEAL can have a mustache or whatever. I would agree. They do in a lot of some of the movies. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

They didn't make Chuck Norris cut his beard for Delta Force. That's a great point. Now again, I don't know all the facial hair recommendations. There's some military guy watching being like, dude, they don't even understand. You're allowed to have it two inches. whatever. I don't know. But his... If you haven't seen Delta before,

it's amazing because what's his name? The guy, he was from Jackie Brown. He's nominated for an Oscar. He was in Breaking Bad, but he plays like a... He plays like a Lebanese guy and they just do the Charlton Heston thing where they, like, give him bronzer.

You know, it's amazing, those movies. Now, Akeeno was pushed out of the Army Reserve, and basically his occult identity kind of becomes a death sentence. Now, in the event that Akeno is completely innocent, and he never had anything to do with any type of improper sexual conduct, which, according to the official court case, is the fact that he was never criminally convicted for this,

was he pushed out because of a religious prejudice against him? That is the question that many people have brought up where they're like, well, can you be a Satanist in the army? Is that against the rules of this free country? It becomes an interesting question where I'm like, ah, dang. You know, I would just go for the kids had chlamydia. You don't even have to get this. You know, like that would be my move.

But let's say he's innocent of that. Let's say he's innocent of that. Yeah. Do we let a Satanist and be a colonel in army? It's like, I see, I don't know how it is, I don't know what it is as far as like once you have a job and instead of, are you as conscripted anymore? Are you working for the army?

I guess sound off in the comments, but, yeah, I don't know the answer to that. It does seem like it would be a violation of his constitutional rights. Yeah. So that's where I'm going to say. Unfortunately, I'm going to side of the Satanus a little bit. If you want to be a Satanist and you're not doing any type of abuse or sacrifice to children, then technically you can still be in the Army. And if Michael Aquino is perfectly innocent, then sorry that you got pushed out.

Also, I think Satanists get a bad rap because they're more of the Milton kind of Luciferians are the ones that are causing all the problems. Right. Maybe it's just a semantic thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, look, I get that part. Okay, I understand. It's a little unfair, right? He's like, dude, I just like to do my little rich.

rituals, which also for the United States military, I almost think that certain rules we might need Satanus. If we're thinking about the U.S. military. You know what I mean? You got some terrible coup. You're trying to overthrow some guy and kill his whole family? You're going to send a Christian in there? No.

I mean, definitely, no. I mean, and also it's like this whole thing about ritual. Have you ever been to a Catholic man? The whole fucking thing is ritual. You know, everything is ritual. It's just you don't like the way he's... Yeah, but our rituals are sick, dude. We bring people closer to Jesus.

We got blood and wine. Not like this slutty dungeon and dragon shit. Yeah, those rituals are dastardly. I mean, he's dressed like a pig. It's all sorts of creatures. Yeah, it is a little weird. But our rituals, I mean, you know, you get a nice little, you get the body of Christ after where.

That's pretty nice. Get some grape juice or wine depending on. I was Presbyterian, so it was grape juice. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. You guys had the symbol of Jesus. Whereas us Catholics, we had the real deal. Yeah, you guys had, you guys were much more,

more hardcore than Presbyterian. Yeah, I remember talking my mom about it. I was like, what is the priest holding up? And she's like, it's the body of Christ. And I was like, well, it kind of looks like bread. And she's like, it used to be bread. And then he said a prayer and now it's the body of Christ. And I was like, a spell?

Are you trying to get me to eat people, mom? I was like, is that a spell? And she's like, look, and this is her point. She says that Luciferians, occultists, Satanists, they are taking the truth of the Catholic Mass and the sort of ritual nature of our relationship of God and distorting it into a ritual nature of Satan. And so we're both doing spells, but ours are the good ones.

It is a little weird, though, just dissecting the Catholic thing for a second. And I grew up in a lot of Catholic Mass because my whole side of the family is Catholic. But, you know, like, fucking Jesus' whole thing was being against, like, the old gods and human sacrifice. And then you're eating his body. It seems like that's not what he would want, right? Yeah, yeah. He was like, it's done after me. It's done after me.

I'm the last guy. It's like Nancy Pelosi, like, banning stock trading now. Exactly. She's benefited from it for 30 years. Exactly. Exactly. Now, Aquino spends the rest of his life insisting that he is innocent. Again, never convicted in the interest of not getting sued. And he even took it a step further. He insisted that the entire case was a hoax and that it was just the whole thing was a satanic witch hunt. And that even Gary Hambright, one of the first people to be sort of looked at as a suspect in this whole thing, that he had also done nothing. Which that is a little bit of a red flag. I mean, I just said it, you know, like you can't fake, you know, how else were those kids getting those VDs? So like, yeah, there was definitely abuse happening.

Now, was it satanic in nature? We can't say. But the fact that he's saying that nothing happened is a little bit like, hold on a second. Now, Hambright, for anyone that doesn't remember, was a daycare worker at this exact daycare. And he was a guy that was the first suspect. He was a civilian employee at the center. And he was also a former Southern Baptist minister in late 9. 1987, he got indicted.

Those guys get freaky, though, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, he got indicted on a dozen counts, around a dozen counts of abusing children at that daycare. But here's what happened here. The whole case collapses. And it collapses for the same reason that much of the presidio investigation did that the alleged victims were so young that a judge ruled that they couldn't testify and that the indictments

were thrown out as too vague. That was also the whole false memory fad where people. would say that you can implant memories, and there's like some debate now whether or not that's even real. Yes. Now, Hambright ended up a neverstanding trial, died years later in the 90s, and he died of an AIDS-related illness, and whatever the truth is of this is gone with him. And Aquino went to bat for him. And this is the guy that Aquino was like, all right, he gave interviews, he continued to run the Temple of Set, and he kept the faith of set until the very end. Now, in 94, he officially retired from the Army as a

lieutenant colonel and he actually retired with a meritorious service medal maybe he did some good stuff. It seems like a participation award you know it doesn't like you know it doesn't seem that. Now impressive he also like he said he

stepped down from the church of step but then I heard that he like gave it to Anabas which is like that's like Putin giving it to a president you're like it's still fucking poo yeah yeah that's he basically moves away in like a public sense.

And the religion continued on without him as a private, deliberate kind of low profile organization that still kind of exists to this day. And then Aquino just sort of disappeared. He kind of just went off the map. And in September of 2019, at 72 years old, he passes away. He did do some podcasts, but they're, try to get through one of them because it is,

his personality is like, oh, God. You know, like, you're just like, It's like three hours of him, like, talk. I've only ever seen clips. I've never listened to the whole thing. Dude, you can't. You can't. He's not, he's like, there's a reason LeVeigh had celebrities and he didn't, you know?

Well, LeVey's kind of a rock star. One guy had the ghost of Mitch Heber going to him. You saw him? Oh, yeah, that guy's down in Texas, right? Yeah, he's doing the same fucking thing. Which, the thing that's funny about him is that the jokes are actually good. The jokes are funny. I haven't seen it.

I find the jokes funny. It's just the style is the exact same. And so I'm like, dude, if you just switched up the style, you would be doing great. When I started, I was like a headberg rip off. I had like classes and I would do one-liners and shit. Which that always happens where you have to like step into somebody else's outfit to. Yeah, this guy. Like, yeah, what's his name, Kegan?

Yeah, like that's the thing. I actually don't, I like, I like the joke. So I'm like, dude, just switch up the style. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think it's a little weird, you know. But I like some Elvis impersonators. So what's the difference? Yeah.

The other element here? I don't know. The guy's filling more rooms than me right now. though check me out online check me out on tour when we were both started doing open mics I was doing kind of a similar thing

I was doing kind of like a head I was doing one-liners I love Stephen Wright I love Jeslnick I love Demitre Martin I was doing kind of that thing and if someone filmed me and posts online in my early days

they'd be like oh this guy's Biden these other guys well now it's like people were putting out specials two years in and I mean it is interesting whoever the hot comic is like if you see now like comics hold the mic like that

which is Shane yeah like that was never a thing before this. Or maybe it was and I just don't remember it, but... No, but... And I kind of sometimes lean like burr, you know, like there's certain things that you just do unconsciously. I mean, for like a decade, everyone in New York was doing a tell.

Yeah. Right? I mean, and he's like, and he's the greatest ever. Like, there's times where I write a joke. I have right... I wrote one joke that I love that I'm like, this is a tell cadence. A hundred percent. Yeah.

There's no way. It's not. And I think we all do that, to an extent, as artists. Like, there's a, you know, you are so, like, these things. sort of kind of imbue you. They possess you. They possess you. And the flavors of them come out, which I kind of like actually. There's, I always point out, if you listen to Malaney's early specials. Yeah. There's a lot of Barbigli in there. Well, that's, yeah, because he started opening for him, I think, right? I, you know, maybe on the first one, I didn't really notice it much on,

what was the second one, the fun part or? The top part. Top part was the first one. And then, No, that was the first one. And then Newtown was the second. New in town is where he definitely, that's for sure just John Mullaney. One of my favorite specials of all time. Yeah, I mean, he's pretty fucking brilliant. And he's like 29. Yeah, he gave me a compliment once and I still hold on to that.

You know. That's hyperate. That's very nice. Yeah, he's very good. So just to kind of conclude here, this is kind of, maybe not the totality, but it's sort of the top sort of brief overview. of Aquino's life, that it's difficult to really understand everything. But there's a real guy who was in the U.S. military, who worked in Sciops, who was the real right-hand man to the Church of Satan, left because it wasn't satanic enough, starts his own cult, performs his

own occult ritual in a Nazi castle, has a, I would say a fairly severe allegation made against him regarding child abuse and doesn't ever get convicted and dies kind of quietly on his own accord. He does kind of quietly. Yeah, he does an occasional interview here and there, but for the most part, he's not, he's not going on fucking Geraldo anymore, which I watch that whole Geraldo special. But, you know, there's a, I think that this is like way more, I guess, I guess it's way more debatable, but May, May Russell talks about this. Carita was like looking into, she was investigating it. She said that she was, that would have been job of Creed is a pseudonym. She was

kidnapped, taken to a car, and then they played her the chance and the kids crying and said, don't fucking say a word. Which, you know, I think five years ago, we'd be like, okay, likely story, but now what we see with all these UFO scientists going missing, and

I personally know people in that space who are going through it right now. So like there's like... What do you mean by that? Well, you know the whole missing you... Did you ever do anything about that? Absolutely. Neil Castlein. Yeah, yeah. Well, we've had to, I have a podcast, strange company where we talk about this stuff. It's great. But you have to do it at some point.

I would love it. But he, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's, there are, there are people who shut you the fuck up on stuff, you know, like there is, that's 100% a real thing, you know, that are, you know, outside government agencies. Now, luckily enough, I've never been trusted enough with anything important enough to like, consider yourself lucky. That's nice. Kind of.

I kind of do feel lucky. I'm in the same boat. I don't want. Yeah, now if somebody says, like, I can't tell you, I go, okay, I trust you. Yeah, it's great. Don't tell me. Yeah, I don't want to know. I don't know.

Yeah, because these guys, like, I would hate being, you know, one of these guys is a whistleblower, then you can't get a job, which happens all the time. Yeah. Which also is a good excuse. If you're not really working that much. Yeah. Like, you're not getting that many TV writing jobs. Be like, ah, I'm actually a whistleblower.

Yeah, yeah. You want to, yeah, you want to, like, if you want to get out of a job, whistleblower. Yeah, exactly. Be like, I hate working to the subway. this guy jerks off into the guacamole, you know, like, just get out of it. I'm just saying false accusations. Yeah. Now, where did you get so interested in this kind of stuff?

I got interested in the Franklin cover-up, which you've had Nick Bryan on the podcast. He's actually been on my podcast as well, and I saw conspiracy of silence. I read his book, The Franklin Cover-up. I mean, the Franklin Cover-up is the book. The Franklin Cover-Up is the John DeCamp book, who's one of the investigators for it. And, you know, Johnny Gosh and the relation to the occult. And I kind of thought that that was like, okay, well, they were using the occult as a way to mask their crimes or some of these kids were like mentally ill. And they were saying that it was a cult when it really wasn't a cult.

But now, you know, especially with the revelation of Epstein and how his temple was set up and what all these victims are saying, you start to think maybe there's some smoke to this fire. Yeah. Maybe they are channeling something. Maybe the world's a little bit darker than we thought. And you're like, you know, like, people will be like, no, people are just greedy and you can just explain how the world works through greed. And I think that they're right. They're about 80% right. But some of like the excess cruelty that goes out in the world, that feels almost like, you know, like then you start to get in the area of Anaki and like, are they harvesting our trauma to some sort of psychological energy?

And yeah, I mean, you know, when the earth doesn't make sense, you look to the stars, right? So that's kind of where I've been going. And, you know, again, the connections, like we said before, to these, you know, guys who you think would just be, you know, like playing cosplay at a Comic-Con or some sort of horror convention are actually prominent members of the government who've been trusted before. And I think the number one thing that really got me was the story of Jack Parsons, who you've talked about in this show, where this is a guy who founded NASA. and he communicated with a demon. That was his first formative experience. So people were like, science, science, science. I was like, well, the science started from the occult in this particular case,

which then led to Scientology. You can woke up the whole, you know, the whole freaking rabbit hole. I mean, so many of these guys, right? I mean, Isaac Newton to an extent who would consider himself like... Tesla communicated with the dead. Yeah. Right. And there's some type of weird overlap with science and the occult.

and religion in this very sort of abstract way. Like Newton, if you ask Newton, I've heard people say again, I've never talked to Isaac Newton, but if you ask Newton like what his job is, again, this is the guy that invented calculus. He's like one of the literal fathers of physics, as we know it. And if you ask him what his job was, he'd be like, oh, I'm like a theologian.

I'm like an alchemist. I'm like an occultist. Like, I don't know if he would use this exact words, but if you look at the totality of his work, so much of it was involved in trying to understand and decode the Bible and other ancient texts. He was fascinated by these things.

And apparently, you know, they're telling people in Congress now, all right, you want to understand the UAP situation, read three-body problem and the book of Enoch. They're saying that. And then you hear the stories about the Candahard Giants or doing an episode on our podcast. You hear about these stories, and then that kind of like validates the Nephilim,

and you're like, well, maybe, you know, not everything is a symbol or not everything as just some sort of, you know, an analogy or I'm fucking blanking on the word, that some of this stuff is just they're literally, hey, there were literal giants, dude. There was a literal Nephilim and maybe the world that we think is real is less real. Yeah. And that's the actual real world, you know.

We're playing dress up right now. Any specific anecdotes or stories about Aquino that we didn't talk about that you wanted to share that we didn't cover? As I looked through it, got to everything. There is the rumor that, like, we briefly mentioned J.D. Vance. There is the rumor that he's J.D. Vance's dad. Yeah.

That's one of them. There's also a side by side. Someone must have made, though, which is hilarious. There's also the rumor that Erica Kirk is maybe his daughter or something because, you know, there's way more about Eric's Kirk's mom than her dad. And they were always trying, you know, like Crowley and Jack Parsons. and they were always trying to create this moon child. So I think that that's all really fascinating.

Do I think any of that's true? Probably not. I mean, I also think it's like if you have a boring parent, then people are just like, well, maybe that's not really the parent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that's just kind of like an easy, you know, an easy way to go. But yeah, they say the turning, yeah, they say that they're, oh, this is one.

And I guess that I didn't realize this, that Aquino is the father of Erica Kirk and J.D. Vance who are both twins, which I don't think makes any sense because J.D. Vance is older than, I mean, I can see that being his son. Can you get J.D. without a beard? That's really going to, that's going to sell. Yeah. Oh, do J.D. without a beard dicks of this guy, it's going to be, you know, like the Spider-Man meme. Yeah, J.D.'s beard really does a lot of heavy lifting. I mean, it's good for him. Mine does, too, by the way. There's nothing on beer. It's real rough. I have no personality once I lose my beard.

It's face tits. Yes. Yes, that is the exact way to put it. It's face tits. Oh. I mean, can we have a younger picture now? Sorry I keep doing this like you're wrong, but can we get a younger picture of Michael Okinao? Because it looks pretty fucking close, dude.

Yeah, I mean, we're inching our way. First up, beautiful eyes, JD. Yeah, I mean, piercing, right? Piercing blue eyes. Yeah So unbelievable Also how do his eyebrows

Do that Is that like an old man thing You can do Oh his eyebrows I mean literally He styles those But like how do you have That much extra hair

Like I think he just lets it go It's like those guys Like the Coke fingernail All right I mean Very similar You know This is very similar

Oh you can see He's trying to do the eyebrow thing But he doesn't have enough It doesn't have enough sauce on it He looks like If Aquino got a nose job Yes, that's stuff. And...

The hair is hilarious. And also, interesting fact, too, this Geraldo episode that he's on, Father James LaBar is on it, who when I was in eighth grade, I wrote a book on The Exorcist, and I interviewed Father James LaVar. Did you really? Yeah, who, like, told me about all his possessions. And I became less of a believer. I'm a little bit, like, a little bit because, like, some of the people that I thought he would

show me a video of one, and I think it was on 2020 or something. But I'm like, this woman is just clearly... Mentally unlawed. Yeah. You know, but he was on it. And I think who's the guy who was the head, Ted Grunderson, who is one of the CIA chiefs of some office, he was on there talking about it. He has connections to the Franklin cover up.

So I do think that there was something to this, dude. And I do think that like, it's like, yeah, we use words like Satan and Seth and Bathamette. But, you know, who knows, maybe these are the green. gods, you know, maybe these are the biblical gods. It, like, the words themselves are just us human beings, mere mortals, understanding something that's divine. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's got to be, I, I tend to believe now, you know, I used to

be with conspiracy theories like everybody else, like, okay, okay, well, prove it to me. Now I'm like, prove it to me, but I'm talking about the official story. You know, that's how much things have changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you read like the Tyler Robinson. text messages you stuff and you're just like yeah none of this you'll look more into you know JFK and and all the uh free mason connections there um and you're like yeah nothing is what it seems you look at cash Patel's press conference you remember that after the charlie kirk and he

keeps saying 33 33 33 yeah yeah and you're a 33 degree free mason if you guys are that's what i'm alluding to um yeah so it seems like there's something under the fucking surface for sure. And I just don't, you know, people are like, oh, they made fun of on the Daily Show Stargates and because it was like a Trumper who was into it last week. But I'm like, but the U.S. military has funded several Stargate programs. So it's like if they're pouring this much money into it, there's got to be something to it. Maybe it's not what they want it to be, but there's got to be something to it. They're at least open to it. Yeah. They're at least looking into it alone. That's Father James LaVarre right next to your old. Your old

My old pal, father James LaBar, we had chicken parm together. That's where he got? Where was he? You guys were living in the same town? No, I called him up. That's so crazy. And then I lost the book report and he got pissed. Which I understand now.

I wish I could apologize, but he's pretty dead. Whoa. He might have sicked a demon on you. Yeah, and I think LeVay's daughter was on this, too. Who I think is... Yeah, LeVe's daughter. I think she has a pretty sordid relationship with him. which is pretty funny.

Is it some Mamas and the Papa's shit? I think it's a little bit like, my dad was really there for me, which is kind of funny. Like, her big gripe is, again, I don't know, I don't want to speak for their personal family, but my understanding is like,

it's a little bit like, yeah, he was really into like hanging with Ozzy Osbourne and not really into hanging with me. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of sad. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, so scratch what I said about the Mamas's Apaza, it's way less dark than that. But yeah, there's,

um, yeah, she, I mean, these guys get, I mean, I would be fucking. pissed off if I wanted to be taken to a soccer practice and my dad is like chanting with some actress he just picked up from

you know that fucking Los Angeles Greyhound station you know in the carpool line you got to jump into a hearse yeah and you're like why can't we just get a minivan and by the way like if you like okay this is like back goes back to the revelation of the method which I'm sure you've explained on this show

but you have to you know like for these Luciferians to have some power they actually have to tell you what they're doing and then you have to like not call them out so it becomes tacit approval Geraldo is the perfect place to do it because you're telling everybody but no one respects Geraldo

it's not like you're doing with Diane Sawyer you're not doing it Walter Cronkite you're doing it with somebody who's already kind of known as a PT Barnum Circus Massacre and you have some guy who looks like fucking Michael Aquino come on I actually had a couple of roast jokes but I got into it Do you want to hit some of those? I'll hit some of these right now

I have like five. But Michael O'Kino, a.k.a. bisexual Eddie Munster. Michael O'Kino is what happens when you make the Halloween Adventure Store a lifestyle. Very true. That's hilarious. Michael O'Kino is a weekend with Michael Jackson without the Ferris wheel. When he died, his wife, inherited everything besides his eyebrows,

which are left for Ben Shapiro. Very funny. I feel like if his eyebrows made it with Geraldo's mustache, you'd get Mark Davis's haircut. That's a deep cut, but I like it. That's a deep cut. Well, you got to see Mark Davis's haircut. It's insane. He's the reason girls stop dressing his Wednesday, Adam.

I'm not saying Michael Aquino a mess. I'm not saying Michael Aquino. I'm screaming it from a microphone. Weirdly enough, his favorite movie was Girls' Trip. That's the footage of him kidnapping John Bonae Ramsey. And finally, Michael Okino is the nightmare before after and during Christmas,

aka Hanukkah. Dan St. Germain, where can the people find you? You can find me on Instagram, please. Dan St. Germain on Instagram. I need more followers. I don't know why I'm starting to sound like Gil from the Simpsons. The big gig that I want to promote, and of course I forgot my phone now,

but I'm going to be doing my special at the New York Comedy Festival. November 12th at the Stand West. I've got two shows. please come out and see it. And then I've got a paranormal podcast. True crime. We just did missing persons that Tim Dillan stopped by at called. Why am I having a problem?

Strange company. Oh, I have a website, dance and germane. It should be on my schedule, the special, just to make sure that I get the right. But yeah, man, join my own newsletter, do all that kind of stuff. I got some stuff on the road. When is this coming out? Well, probably two weeks.

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to be, I'm going to be a tri-state comedy club next weekend, but then November 12th is when I'm at the stand. And, yeah, I'm going to be at Boston Comedy Club in October and some other places, too. Amazing. If you enjoy the show, you're probably going to really like Dan's show.

And if you like stand-up comedy in any capacity, Dan is one of the best. Well, thank you, dude. So I think the good people here at the camp will really enjoy it. And it's not all a cult. Don't worry. There's some guy being like, God, dang. I was hoping for more cult. Yeah, there's some guy dressed his Uncle Fester.

Yeah, he puts down to Satan stars. He's like, fine, I'll just wear a hoodie. Whatever. Anyway, this has been amazing. I really appreciate this. Thank you again for taking the time. Yes, dude, this is so much fun. Thanks for doing the research, man.

I appreciate when guests are so passionate. I'm a little bit of a dork with that. So, yeah. But no, it was a blast, dude. Thank you. There's a little Michael Aquino and all of us. There's a little, I hope not. I hope not.

That's when he got in trouble. All right, man. Thank you so much.