Pod Insights The Why Files: Operation Podcast Project Pegasus | The CIA's Child Time Soldiers About this episode In 1968, six-year-old Andrew Basiago stepped through Tesla's teleportation device and emerged at Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1863. He was part of Project Pegasus, DARPA's classified program using technology reverse-engineered from Tesla's confiscated research. The program began after Sputnik shocked America into creating DARPA to prevent technological surprises. When scientists rediscovered Tesla's stolen files, they found blueprints for a teleportation machine that could bend space and time using zero-point energy. Adult test subjects either vanished, aged rapidly, or arrived in pieces across different moments. Only children's flexible minds could handle temporal displacement, so DARPA recruited 140 young "chrononauts" for missions throughout history. By 1980, the technology evolved to transport people to Mars, where Basiago claims he served alongside Barry Soetoro - later known as Barack Obama. But the program unlocked more than time travel - it opened doorways to infinite parallel realities that the government desperately tries to keep hidden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCjo9KBpK9ISOURCES & LINKS Tesla's Stolen Tech and the New Arms Race: • Weather Weapons & Worse | Tesla's Stolen T... The Most Destructive Weapon Tesla Ever Made: • The Most Destructive Weapon Tesla Ever Made Free Energy & Anti-Gravity Cover-Ups: • Killer Patents & Secret Science Vol. 1 | F... Chronovisor: The Vatican's Secret Device to See Through Time• Chronovisor: The Vatican's Secret Device t... The Dark Side of DARPA:• The Dark Side of DARPA | The Human Cost of... Backyard Time Machine: Mike “Mad Man” Marcum:• Backyard Time Machine: The Time Travel Mys... America's Secret Space Program: • America's Secret Space Program and the Ali... 20 And Back - Super Soldiers Defending the Kuiper Belt: • 20 And Back - The Super Soldiers Defending... Project Redsun: NASA's Secret Manned Missions to Mars: • Project Redsun: NASA's Secret Manned Missi... Alien Artifacts on Mars: What NASA doesn't want you to know: • Alien Artifacts on Mars: What NASA doesn't... The Airforce UFO Cover Up That Drove a Man INSANE: • The Airforce UFO Cover Up That Drove a Man... Secret 10-Year Mission to Project Serpo: • Secret 10-Year Mission to an Alien Planet ...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:31 AJ Gentile? In 1968, a six-year-old boy stepped through a shimmering curtain of light and vanished.
0:39 AJ Gentile? When Andrew Baxiago's vision cleared, he was no longer in an empty airplane hangar in New Jersey. He was standing in a muddy field.
0:49 AJ Gentile? He'd practiced this moment for weeks. Walk through the crowd, find the platform, observe, memorize, report back.
0:58 AJ Gentile? Andrew weaved his way between soldiers and civilians, but his oversized shoes kept sticking in the mud. He finally made it to the front, and then he saw it. A tall man in a black coat climbed onto the platform and removed his hat. The crowd fell silent. It was November 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Abraham Lincoln was about to give a speech.
1:34 AJ Gentile? The Gettysburg mission was a success. Andrew Baxiago traveled back to 1863 and returned with memories that were sharp, vivid, and historically accurate. For the scientists at Project Pegasus, this was the breakthrough that they needed. But the technology that sent him there wasn't developed in a government lab. It was found in a hotel room. Found? The word you're looking for is... Stolen.
2:01 AJ Gentile? On January 7th, 1943, Nikola Tesla died alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Within hours, government agents sealed the room. They confiscated everything: 80 boxes of ideas, inventions, and decades of research. When Tesla's belongings were returned to his family, 20 boxes were missing. The FBI still has classified Tesla documents they won't release. We've covered this in our Tesla episode, which is linked below. Those 20 boxes launched dozens of black projects over the next 15 years: weather modification, directed energy weapons, mind control technology, all traced back to those stolen files.
2:45 AJ Gentile? And at this point in time, the United States had the atomic bomb, the transistor, the ENIAC computer. The US was confident, cocky even, that it was the most technically advanced country in the world. But in 1957, it realized it wasn't.
3:11 Speaker 02 Today, a new moon is in the sky.
3:13 Speaker 03 The world's first artificial satellite called Sputnik-1.
3:16 Speaker 02 One of the great scientific feats of the age.
3:19 Speaker 04 The people of the United States have been humiliated. What went wrong? They're disturbed. How did a nation of backward peasants forge so dramatically ahead of us in the race to space?
3:29 Speaker 05 The course of United States policies in the competition with Russia has been severely shaken. Why and how did the Russians beat us to the draw? We had better get on our toes.
3:39 AJ Gentile? We must see to it that whatever advantages they have are temporary only. The Soviets had launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, a metasphere the size of a beach ball circling the Earth every 96 minutes. Americans were terrified. If the Soviets could put a satellite in space, they could put a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth. The CIA, the military, the best scientists, nobody saw it coming. President Eisenhower demanded answers. Within weeks, he created ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Later, they'd add defense and become DARPA. Their mandate was simple: make sure America was never surprised by technology again.
4:22 AJ Gentile? DARPA had unlimited funding and one goal: stay ahead of the Soviets at any cost. But despite all that money and manpower, America kept falling behind. In 1963, America was losing the space race. The Saturn rocket program was still years behind the Soviets. Saturn is still going to put us well behind, several years behind the Soviet Union. I can just say to you that regardless of how much money we spend on the Saturn, the Saturn is going to put us, we're still going to be second. Without making a determination based on careful scientific judgments as to whether a real success can be achieved, or whether because we're so far behind now,
5:06 AJ Gentile? this particular race is, we're going to be second in in this decade. DARPA scientists were desperate. They decided to dig deeper into those stolen Tesla files. Maybe there was something they'd missed, something that could give America the edge it desperately needed. And in 1968, buried under all those notes and research, that's exactly what they found.
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6:06 AJ Gentile? The basement of the Curtis Wright Building in Woodbridge, New Jersey, isn't on any blueprints.
6:14 AJ Gentile? The freight elevator went down past the ground floor and kept going.
6:23 AJ Gentile? One floor deeper than it should. Armed soldiers escorted visitors down the hall. No name tape, no rank, no insignia. This was the most secret program in America. They were building Tesla's teleportation device. Teleportation was more powerful than any nuclear weapon. With this technology, America could put a million soldiers in Moscow instantly. Asians could grab every Soviet leader and lock them up. The United States could end any conflict without firing a shot. The lab was a windowless concrete room. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. It smelled like ozone and burnt metal. That sharp electric smell that you can almost taste.
7:07 AJ Gentile? Tesla's machine was in the center. Two gray metal pillars, eight feet tall, 10 feet apart. And that was it. The scientists expected something impressive. Instead, they got two pillars and some copper coils that looked like they belonged in an old radio. The whole thing plugged into a wall socket, but the cord wasn't drawing power from the grid. Tesla had discovered that empty space isn't empty at all. It's full of energy, what we now call zero-point energy. Physicist Hal Puthoff calculated there's enough zero-point energy in an empty cup of coffee to boil all the Earth's oceans. Now, I covered this in our Free Energy episode. Now Tesla had figured out how to tap into it. Dr.
7:51 AJ Gentile? Harold Agnew assembled the machine exactly to Tesla's specifications. Every measurement, every angle, everything matched the stolen designs. And looking at it, he was sure something was missing. This couldn't possibly work. Dr. Sterling Colgate disagreed. He'd studied Tesla's other inventions: the alternating current motor, the Tesla coil, wireless electricity. Tesla's work was always simple, always elegant.
8:18 AJ Gentile? The first test was March 12th, 1968. Five people in the room. Agnew, Colgate, and three technicians. One manned the power switch, another monitored instruments, and the third stood by with a fire extinguisher. They flipped the switch. Nothing happened. At first. Then the pillars began to vibrate. Not a hum, but a frequency that you felt in your bones. The lights flickered. The air between the pillars shimmered like heat waves over hot pavement. But it wasn't heat. The temperature was actually dropping. 60 degrees, 50, 40. Their breath became visible. Ice formed on the concrete walls. Colgate grabbed a pencil and tossed it between the pillars.
9:02 AJ Gentile? It vanished. They waited. Five seconds, 10, 20. Then the pencil fell from the ceiling. But it wasn't the same pencil. The yellow paint had turned brown. The metal band was corroded. The wood cracked when it hit the floor. The machine had aged it decades in seconds. Now if it can do that to wood and metal, what would it do to flesh and blood? Well, there was only one way to find out.
9:40 AJ Gentile? The volunteers lined up outside the machine room. Young military physicists who understood the theory and had seen the object tests. Now it was their turn. Dr. Agnew explained the procedure one more time. Step between the pillars, enter the energy field, exit at the destination point. Simple. The first destination was Sandia National Labs in Mexico, 1,800 miles away. A receiving team waited with medical personnel, monitoring equipment, and a direct line to the Pentagon. Lieutenant Morrison went first. 26 years old, Rhodes Scholar, perfect physical condition. He stepped through the shimmer and vanished. The receiving team in New Mexico waited. Five minutes, 10 minutes, an hour.
10:25 AJ Gentile? Morrison never arrived. Not in New Mexico, not anywhere. The best physicist in the program had simply ceased to exist. The second volunteer made it through. But something went wrong. Lieutenant Farley spent 30 seconds in the field. When he appeared into Mexico, he'd aged 30 years. His hair was white, his skin was paper thin. He tried to speak but collapsed. The medical team couldn't save him. Cause of death? Old age. He was 31. They recalibrated everything. Checked Tesla's notes, made adjustments. The third test stayed local.
11:06 AJ Gentile? Just one floor up, 10 feet of distance. Lieutenant Hutchins stepped through. What happened next made everyone in the room step back. Hutchins arrived in pieces. Not torn apart, separated in time. His legs materialized first. His torso 30 seconds later. Arms two minutes after that. The medical team stood by helplessly. His heart had arrived before his lungs. His brain was sending signals to limbs that existed in different moments in time. The few who survived came back broken. Private Anderson made a successful jump and returned physically intact, but he couldn't
11:50 AJ Gentile? stop screaming about the space between. The place where time moved sideways. Where he felt himself dying and being born over and over again. Where past and future existed in the same moment, and his mind tried to be in both. The psychiatrist sedated him, but he never spoke again. Dr. Agnew studied the data from 15 failed tests. 15 volunteers. Only three survivors, and all went insane. But there was a pattern. Morrison was 26 when he vanished. Farley was 31. Anderson was 19 and survived, though his mind didn't. The younger the subject, the better the outcome. Adult consciousness was the problem.
12:35 AJ Gentile? Too rigid, it's too fixed. When you're 30, your brain knows how reality works. And when that reality breaks, so does your mind. But children, their minds were still forming, still flexible. They could bend without breaking. Agnew knew what this meant. The military had done terrible things before in the name of national security. We covered some of this in our MKUltra episode. But using children as test subjects crossed a line that nobody wanted to cross.
13:06 AJ Gentile? That's when Raymond Boshago spoke up. Ray worked for the Ralph M. Parsons Company, DARPA's main contractor. He'd been on the project from the beginning and understood the stakes. Ray had a six-year-old son, smart kid, resilient, adaptable. Ray volunteered him for the program. Agnew wanted to say no. Every instinct told him this was wrong. But the data was clear, and they were out of options and out of adult volunteers. The children were their only chance.
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14:48 AJ Gentile? The lab at Curtis Wright looked like any government facility. Gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling, metal desks covered in paperwork, coffee-stained mugs next to oscilloscopes and voltage meters. You'd never know this bland room was about to send a six-year-old boy back in time.
15:08 AJ Gentile? Andrew Basiago stood between the metal pillars. The machine hummed. Not loud, more like a vibration that made your teeth hurt. He'd done this before. Three times to Santa Fe, once to his grandparents' house in Ohio. But this jump was different. This time, he was going farther, way farther. November 19th, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. President Lincoln would give a speech. Andrew's job was simple. Watch, listen, remember, report back.
15:40 AJ Gentile? The shimmer started between the pillars. The air got thick. Andrew knew the feeling, like trying to walk through jello. He took a deep breath and stepped forward into the Voril Tunnel. Then everything went white.
16:07 AJ Gentile? Then his feet hit mud. Cold mud that squished into his shoes. Except, these weren't his shoes. They were huge. Adult military boots that flopped when he walked. He was wearing a Union uniform. It was itchy and smelled old. And the smell hit him hard. Sweet and rotten, mixed with horse manure and smoke. Andrew's stomach turned. People pressed in from all sides. Hundreds of people. Soldiers in blue uniforms, women in long dresses. Everyone looked tired. Their faces were dirty. The November cold cut through the wool uniform. Andrew pushed through the crowd toward the wooden platform. That's where Lincoln would speak. And that's what he came to see. But moving was hard.
16:52 AJ Gentile? The oversized boots kept sticking in the mud. A soldier muttered something about whose kid he was, but nobody stopped him. Just another boy in uniform. The ground was churned into thick mud. Not regular mud. In places, it had a rusty color. The battlefield was only four months old. The earth still remembered. Somebody's elbow caught Andrew in the head. His eyes watched. But he didn't cry. He had a mission. Find the platform. See Lincoln. Remember everything. The platform came into view. Raw wood hammered together. Men in top hats stood around it. They looked different than everyone else. They had clean clothes. They looked fed, like they belonged in another world. Then the crowd stirred.
17:38 AJ Gentile? People pointed. They got excited. A tall man in a black coat climbed onto the platform. Even from where Andrew stood, he can see how tired Lincoln looked, how his shoulders bent forward. The president removed his hat. He cleared his throat. The crowd went silent. Andrew was six years old, standing in a field in Pennsylvania, listening to Abraham Lincoln speak. He was alone, scared, and 105 years before he was born. Then Andrew saw something to his left. A flash. Andrew panicked a little. He was trained to avoid this. Someone had taken his picture.
18:20 AJ Gentile? The project moved faster after Andrew's success. DARPA immediately began recruiting more children. They worked through defense contractors and military families, looking for kids with specific traits. High intelligence, obviously. Physical resilience to handle the stress. But most importantly, the children needed minds that could handle temporal flexibility.
18:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, I wish my bookie would have some temporal flexibility on the two G's I own. I lost the bundle on the ponies.
18:49 AJ Gentile? I told you to stop gambling.
18:51 Speaker 06 The filly's name was Hump and Run. At 15 to 1, I had no choice.
18:56 AJ Gentile? Hump and Run? How'd she do?
18:58 Speaker 06 I had no idea. After the clubhouse turn, she came really fast and I never saw again.
19:04 AJ Gentile? Okay. Anyway, hundreds of kids were interviewed and tested.
19:08 Speaker 06 For a secret time travel program? What responsible parent is gonna sign their kid up to play pin the tail on a T-Rex?
19:16 AJ Gentile? Well, they were told their child had been selected for a special program for gifted students. The children began intense testing and training.
19:26 AJ Gentile? Physical conditioning came first. Then meditation techniques to help them stay grounded across different timelines. Some kids couldn't handle it. They were quietly returned to their families with a cover story that they just weren't the right fit. Out of thousands of recruits, only 140 children made it through training. They became known as Krononauts.
19:48 AJ Gentile? They were divided into teams based on age and ability. Each team specialized in a different time period. They memorized layouts of ancient cities. They learned to recognize clothing styles. Practiced blending into crowds from different eras. Now, this wasn't school. It was a covert operation. And for especially dangerous missions, children were even given cyanide capsules.
20:10 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's one way to stop the student loan crisis.
20:13 AJ Gentile? Ugh. Andrew made multiple trips to Gettysburg. On his fourth mission, something strange happened. He was watching Lincoln from his usual spot when he noticed another boy. Same uniform, same oversized shoes, same face. He was looking at himself, a younger version from an earlier trip. During training, they warned about this. Two versions of the same person existing in the same moment. They said to avoid contact, but never explain why. When the two Andrews locked eyes, he understood. The younger one looked terrified. The older Andrew felt his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
20:53 AJ Gentile? He remembered being in that exact spot, seeing his older self, feeling that same fear. In that moment, reality felt fragile. Andrew just couldn't explain it, but he could sense that the world was just somehow wrong. Other Krononauts reported similar experiences. A girl named Sarah met three versions of herself at Pearl Harbor. Mark, an older boy, watched himself die at Intiitim. But a new Mark was able to change the past, survive, and complete his mission. Some children claimed they'd witnessed events that never happened or hadn't happened yet. Different versions of history where different choices led to different outcomes. Testa's technology hadn't just unlocked time travel.
21:38 AJ Gentile? It gave access to the multiverse.
21:40 Speaker 06 Dapa, open the multiverse!
21:43 AJ Gentile? Yep.
21:44 Speaker 06 Well, now we know who to blame for ruining the MCU.
21:48 AJ Gentile? By 1980, Project Pegasus achieved something new. They learned to bend space as well as time. The children who'd proven themselves on Earth would now be sent somewhere else, somewhere 140 million miles away. The Chrononauts were going to Mars.
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22:43 AJ Gentile? The multiverse discovery changed everything. Project Pegasus had started as a time travel program. By 1980, they'd learned something new. Tesla's machines that bent time could also bend space, including outer space. Project Pegasus was getting an upgrade.
23:01 AJ Gentile? This new phase was a joint venture. The primary contractor was the Ralph M. Parsons Company, where Andrew's father worked. But they also had engineers from Lockheed Skunk Works and Hughes Aircraft, and of course, the CIA. This team of elite researchers had built the most sophisticated machine on Earth. They called it the Jump Room.
23:20 Speaker 06 Oh, I always get one of those for my guppies' birthday parties. A lot of fun.
23:25 AJ Gentile? A jump room?
23:26 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. It's a big inflatable castle, and the rug rats hop around in there. You're cracking skulls until summer starts crying.
23:33 AJ Gentile? No, no, no. You're thinking of-
23:34 Speaker 06 Little monsters get a gristle in these bouncy castles. It's like Thunderdome. If Thunderdome was made of inflatable rubber and Tina Turner was made out of, well, stalker moms with inflatable lip injections.
23:47 AJ Gentile? This has nothing to do with a bouncy castle. Would you let me get back to this?
23:51 Speaker 06 Fine, fine. Go ahead.
23:56 AJ Gentile? The Tesla Portal facility in New Jersey was retired. The new facility was hidden in plain sight at 999 North Sepulveda Boulevard in El Segundo, California. Just another office building in the aerospace corridor. Normal lobby, normal waiting area, except for the elevator. Press a sequence of buttons and the walls would dissolve. Then you'd be somewhere else, somewhere very, very far away.
24:29 AJ Gentile? Andrew Basiago was 19 when he made his first Mars jump. The training had been different this time. Three weeks at College of the Siskiess near Mount Shasta.
24:39 Speaker 06 Now look, oh wait, wrong mouth. Go on.
24:42 AJ Gentile? Major Ed Dames ran the program. Not time travel training, survival training. They learned about thin atmospheres, extreme temperatures, and how to use the weapon they were issued, a handheld device with three settings: stun, heat, and kill. The instructors were blunt about the dangers. Of the 97,000 people sent to Mars over the years, only 7,000 lived longer than five years. Those were not good odds.
25:17 AJ Gentile? Andrew remembered taking his first steps on the alien planet. Mars isn't the barren, lifeless world NASA shows us. In certain places, it had breathable air, and in those places, there was life on Mars.
25:30 Speaker 06 No, Ben, wonder if you'll never know. He's in the best-selling show. Is there life on Mars?
25:44 Speaker 06 What?
25:47 AJ Gentile? Andrew saw creatures that reminded him of pleseosaurs, dinosaurs with long necks and powerful bodies. He was surprised at how graceful they moved. He saw huge spider-like creatures. They kept their distance, which was just fine to Andrew. Imagine tarantulas about the size of a car but can move twice as fast.
26:06 Speaker 06 Now Ziggy play guitar, jamming good with wit and gilly, and the spiders from Mars.
26:14 AJ Gentile? You are killing me, dude.
26:15 Speaker 06 Oh, sorry. I thought you were setting me up for another Bowie tune.
26:18 AJ Gentile? Okay, whenever you assume that...
26:20 Speaker 06 Yeah?
26:21 AJ Gentile? Assume you're wrong.
26:25 AJ Gentile? There weren't just animals on Mars. There were people. Tall, thin beings with large heads and black eyes. The mission was to beat the Soviets to Mars and establish contact with this advanced civilization. And Andrew wasn't going along. The Mars program recruited young people who'd proven themselves in the time travel experiments. One member of Andrew's team introduced himself as Barry Soetoro. Barry was a lanky college student from Columbia University. Friendly guy, articulate, easy smile. Years later, the world would know him by a different name. Barack Obama.
27:00 Speaker 06 Wait, wait, wait, what? Barack Obama was a Martian crying a nort?
27:04 AJ Gentile? Yep.
27:05 Speaker 06 Wasn't Obama also invited to the Bilderberg before he was president?
27:09 AJ Gentile? He sure was.
27:10 Speaker 06 Yeah, the lizard people picked their candidates early.
27:13 AJ Gentile? Obama being part of the program might sound unbelievable, but two other chrononauts came forward. William Stillings and Bernard Mendez. Independently, they confirmed everything. The training, the jump room, the alien species. And they both said Barack, or Barry, was there. But the most shocking confirmation wouldn't come from witnesses or documents. It was broadcast live to millions of people by a late-night radio host. Well, not a late-night radio host. The late-night radio host. The confirmation from other alleged chrononauts was compelling.
27:56 AJ Gentile? But the most shocking validation of Bashago's story didn't come from a fellow participant. It was broadcast live to millions of people.
28:17 Speaker 03 From the high desert in the great American southwest, I meet you all. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whatever the case may be, wherever in the world you are, every single time zone covered by this program, Midnight in the Desert. I'm Art Bell.
28:35 AJ Gentile? For decades, Art Bell was the king of paranormal radio. From his home studio in Prump, Nevada, or as he called it, "The High Desert," Art Bell had an audience of millions, and I was one of those millions. Art was known for being open-minded, no idea it was too strange for him. But he never ridiculed his guests, and he never talked down to his audience, and I take the same approach with the Y-Files. But Art was also a sharp interviewer. If someone was clearly lying, Art would call it out and ask for proof. If someone made a wild claim, Art demanded an explanation. But most of all, Art Bell was a master storyteller, and so was Andrew Basiago.
29:16 AJ Gentile? Basiago made several appearances on Art's shows over the years, but one stood out.
29:21 Speaker 03 Today, Andy is waging a truth campaign to reveal his experiences in these programs, so humanity can understand the true extent of technical development on our planet and the true history of our activities in outer space.
29:40 AJ Gentile? Basiago announced that he had a quantum bombshell for Art. They agreed to save it for the end, you know, storytelling. Art and Andrew talked for hours about Project Pegasus, then Basiago recalled a minor detail from one of his training exercises.
29:55 Speaker 02 Having spent fifteen years waiting to tell you, and here it is. On November 5th of 1971, we participated in an advanced chronovisor probe from ITT Defense Communications in Nutley, New Jersey.
30:11 AJ Gentile? The broadcast went silent, not dead air, stunned silence. When Art spoke again, his voice had changed. The confident host was gone.
30:21 Speaker 02 I encountered you when I was in Project Pegasus, and I've been waiting fifteen years to tell you.
30:27 Speaker 03 Well, I'll tell the audience, and I don't think I've really told anybody that I know of except some close friends a long time ago. I worked for ITT in Nutley, New Jersey. I was a technician, and I was checking waveguide for a government project.
30:47 Speaker 03 Rather secret government project, actually. Um, so that's the truth.
30:53 AJ Gentile? It was a spontaneous, unprompted confirmation of a key obscure detail in Bajago's story. Art was floored. You can hear him trying to reconcile the impossibility of what he was hearing.
31:05 Speaker 03 I indeed worked for ITT in Nutley, New Jersey. So, oh my God, I, I just, I, okay, that's a bomb. That's a bombshell. Okay. Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna break it here because, um, how the hell could he know that?
31:25 AJ Gentile? For listeners, this was a mind blowing moment. A respected host had just become a witness. It suggested that Bajago had access to very specific information, classified or otherwise. But he had more than just anecdotes. Andrew said that during one of his trips to Gettysburg, a photographer is there. But there were no known photos of Lincoln at Gettysburg. Or so he thought.
31:54 AJ Gentile? For 90 years, historians searched for photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. They knew photographers were there. They knew the equipment existed, but no confirmed image of Lincoln giving his most famous speech had ever been found. In 1952, archivist Josephine Cobb was examining Civil War glass plate negatives at the National Archives. She studied each plate under magnification, looking for details others might have missed. One plate caught her attention. It showed a crowd in an open field, soldiers, civilians, a wooden platform in the distance. The scene matched descriptions of Gettysburg, November 19th, 1863. But where was Lincoln? Cobb increased the magnification.
32:39 AJ Gentile? There, barely visible on the platform, Abraham Lincoln, the first confirmed photographic evidence of Lincoln at Gettysburg. The discovery made headlines, and for decades, this would remain the only known photograph of that historic day. The image went to the National Archives, another piece of American history preserved. But Josephine Cobb noticed something else in the photograph, something odd. In the foreground stood a young boy, maybe six or seven years old, wearing a Union Bugle Boy uniform. Now that wasn't unusual. Many children wore military-style clothing during the Civil War. Drummer boys and Bugle Boys were common at public gatherings. What was unusual was that the boy was alone. No adult supervision, no other children nearby.
33:24 AJ Gentile? Just a small figure standing by himself in the crowd. The uniform looked authentic. Brass buttons, military cap, everything period correct. Except for one detail: the boy's haircut. Even in the grainy photograph, it looked wrong for 1863. Too modern, like something you'd see in the 1970s. And then there were the shoes. The boy was wearing adult shoes. Brown leather shoes, clearly too big for his feet. The kind that would fall off if he tried to run. The photograph raised questions that wouldn't be answered for decades. Who was this boy? And why was he alone? Why did he look out of place in a photograph where everyone else belonged? The photograph exists.
34:08 AJ Gentile? You could see it for yourself. Abraham Lincoln, surrounded by citizens and soldiers, could be seen in the background. But in the foreground, wearing an itchy blue uniform and oversized shoes, is six-year-old Andrew Baciago.
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34:44 AJ Gentile? 50 U.S. and D.C. Age 18+. See playatmcd.com for rules and playatmcd.com/amoe for info on playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.
34:58 AJ Gentile? The story of Andrew Baciago is compelling. He's intelligent, articulate, he knows how to tell a story. But is it true?
35:06 Speaker 06 Oh, no.
35:07 AJ Gentile? Well, some of it is.
35:09 Speaker 06 Yarrah!
35:10 AJ Gentile? The government did confiscate Tesla's files after his death in 1943. That's documented. Were some of his files kept secret? Probably. The FBI still has classified Tesla documents they won't release. We know the government has attempted remote viewing through time. Joe McMonigal, one of the military's top remote viewers, claims he saw ancient civilizations on Mars. That was part of the official Stargate program. We also know the US military and CIA have experimented on children. MKUltra did it. Multiple programs tested drugs, psychology, and worse, on kids without consent. And if you want to get really angry, watch our episode on the dark side of DARPA.
35:49 Speaker 06 Lean down in your wormhole. Yeah.
35:52 AJ Gentile? But that's where the provable facts end.
35:54 Speaker 06 Now I hate this part.
35:56 AJ Gentile? The science doesn't work. Tesla's radiant energy was about wireless power transmission, not teleportation.
36:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, but he teleported Wolverine a bunch of times during that magic show.
36:09 AJ Gentile? You're talking about the movie The Prestige.
36:12 Speaker 06 Right, and who played Tesla in that movie?
36:16 AJ Gentile? David Bowie.
36:16 Speaker 06 Right, and who played life on Mars?
36:19 AJ Gentile? David Bowie.
36:20 Speaker 06 I rest my case.
36:27 AJ Gentile? Yes, scientists have teleported quantum states of particles. But teleporting a person? That would require more energy than an exploding star, even if they could figure out how to do it. Basiago says they just plugged the machine into the wall. Now, I don't know of any wire that can carry that kind of juice.
36:43 Speaker 06 Ah, maybe some heavy-duty black-market Romex. Don't tell the local 164.
36:49 AJ Gentile? Local 164?
36:50 Speaker 06 Ah, Bergen County knows what I'm talking about.
36:55 AJ Gentile? Another problem. Every time we do a time travel story, they never mention that the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, they're all constantly moving. If you time travel five seconds, you'll be in the middle of space. Nobody ever accounts for this.
37:10 Speaker 06 Nobody except?
37:11 AJ Gentile? Nobody except Mike "Madman" Markham. Factored this into his calculations. That's why his time travel story is probably my favorite.
37:19 Speaker 06 Link down in your portal tunnel.
37:21 AJ Gentile? Oh yeah, the terminology doesn't make sense. Vortal isn't a word. He combined vortex and portal because it sounds cool. In terms like quantum displacement and quantum holographic destabilization, these are just physics words strung together. They don't mean anything. The chronovisor is another red flag. You've got chrono, which means time, and you've got visor, which means vision. So this is a device that allows you to see through time.
37:48 Speaker 04 The original idea for the chronovisor came from a Benedictine monk by the name of Pellegrino Ernnetti.
37:56 AJ Gentile? He used to watch ancient Roman plays, the crucifixion of Christ, speeches by Mussolini.
38:01 Speaker 06 Oof, that priest must have a weird Netflix feed.
38:04 AJ Gentile? Well, according to the legend, the chronovisor is hidden in the secret Vatican archives. I did a whole episode on this and it's a lot of fun. Now, I didn't debunk the chronovisor, but I did prove Father Ernnetti was lying.
38:16 Speaker 06 Link down in the holiest of holies.
38:19 AJ Gentile? Then there are all the timeline problems. Basiago says Donald Rumsfeld ran the project from 1969 to 1972. But Rumsfeld was working on domestic policy then, nowhere near DARPA, and that's documented. The Art Bell confirmation seems stunning until you realize Art mentioned working at ITT Nutley in his 1998 autobiography, so it was public information. And Basiago's story has changed over the years. The year of his recruitment, the number of trips to Gettysburg, the number of children, the years of the Mars jumps, and all kinds of other dates. And speaking of Mars, that part of the story is a mess. In 2008, Andrew Basiago published The Discovery of Life on Mars.
39:02 Speaker 06 There's a life on Mars.
39:07 AJ Gentile? That's enough Bowie for one show.
39:09 Speaker 06 Never enough Bowie.
39:13 AJ Gentile? Anyway, he published a paper claiming to discover life on Mars by analyzing NASA photos. He said he saw humanoids, animals, and structures. But he never mentioned he'd been there himself. Why analyze blurry photos if you've walked on Mars? He only added the jump room story years later.
39:31 Speaker 06 Oh, so he probably didn't blow up his entree with barrier?
39:34 AJ Gentile? Probably not. Like almost everyone who claims they were part of a secret space program, Bashago's story follows a pattern. They all say they were in multiple programs. They all fought aliens, traveled through time, and then got sent back to their childhood bodies. And whenever someone challenges the details, there's always the same answer: Their memories were suppressed, but now they're slowly coming back. And these storytellers share something else: They turn their stories into income. Why couldn't someone else talk about their experience in a secret space program? As long as they don't talk about the stuff that I created based on my real IP here. And it says, "I created a lot of this stuff."
40:17 AJ Gentile? I created Dark Fleet. Dark Fleet didn't exist before I talked about it. Now all these people are popping up, "I was on Dark Fleet, I was on Dark Fleet." Paid speaking events, weekend seminars, podcast appearances, and of course, books.
40:32 Speaker 06 There's always a book.
40:34 AJ Gentile? There's always a book. Yet millions of people believe these stories. Intelligent people. Why? Well, because time travel represents something we all desperately want: A second chance.
40:55 AJ Gentile? We all have regrets. Things we'd change if we could. Mistakes we'd undo. Words we'd take back. People we'd save. Time travel stories give us hope that somewhere, somehow, there's a loophole in the rules of the universe. I'd give anything for that loophole. To go back and fix my mistakes. To say goodbye to people I never got the chance to. To tell them I love them just one more time. But I can't. None of us can. And regret is a powerful emotion. But regrets are just memories. They live in the past. By focusing on the past, regrets rob you of the joy you could be feeling right now. Regrets can rob you of the joy you deserve to have in the future.
41:40 AJ Gentile? You don't need to fix the past. Just accept it, learn from it, and let it go. Your second chance isn't in some secret government program. It's not hidden in a classified file or a stolen Tesla blueprint. Your second chance starts the second you stop looking backward and start looking forward. The time machine you're looking for, you're living it. It's called today. And unlike Andrew Baciago's story, yours is real.
42:18 AJ Gentile? Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. Here's Igo Fish.
42:22 Speaker 06 Yeah, let's shake and sexy bacon.
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44:04 Speaker 06 Grab yourself a Haggis t-shirt. Oh, one of these pistol of coffee mugs that you can stick your Martian fin in on your fist or a pendant, whatever you got hanging off your body there. Oh, torso, I don't know what it's called. Oh, do whatever. Oh, get a hoodie or something my face on it. Or get one of these YouTube creepy YouTube dolls. Or get a squeasy animal stuffed tiger in Haggis's mouth toy.
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44:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, you keep that under your tinfoil hat, you're cutting into my margins.
44:53 AJ Gentile? Those are the plugs. Oof, that's gonna do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.
45:56 Speaker 03 Got stuck inside mail's hole with them chaotic trucks Being only too aware Did Stanley Cuprid fake the moon landing alone? On a film set, were the shadow people there? Ruthwell aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told, and his name was Cold And I can't believe, I'm dancing with the fish Hank the fish on Thursday nights with A.J. And one more zombie beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth
46:39 Speaker 03 And one more zombie beat all through the night
47:01 Speaker 03 The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come To have got the secret city underground Mysterious number stations, planets circle to Project Stargate And what the dark watchers found In a simulation, don't you worry though The black neck satellite told me so I can't believe, I'm dancing with the fish Hank the fish on Thursday nights with A.J. And one more zombie beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth
47:45 Speaker 03 And one more zombie beat all through the night Hank the fish on Thursday nights with A.J. And one more zombie beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth And one more zombie beat all through the night
48:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, Gerdy loves to dance on the dance floor. Because she is a camel. And camels love to dance when the feeling is right on wasting time. Gerdy loves to dance. Gerdy loves to dance.
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Previous Synchronicities | The Science Behind Your Meaningful Coincidences (STRIPPED) Next 600: COMPILATION: Mars Mysteries and Secret Missions Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated