I’ve often mentioned Project Pegasus, but we’ve never really talked about it, you know? So sit back, relax, mix yourself a cool Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Or don’t, because reading this will probably give you the same effect.*

In 2004, Washington-based attorney Andrew D. Basiago began telling his story of a top-secret organization called Project Pegasus. Although he was only seven years old at the time, Basiago claims he had, from 1968 to 1972, participated in a number of bizarre experiments that took him on journeys through time, space, and potentially into parallel universes.

“Project Pegasus was the classified, defense-related research and development program under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in which the US defense-technical community achieved time travel on behalf of the US government – the real Philadelphia Experiment.” – Project Pegasus Mission Statement

The mission of Project Pegasus was to study the effects of time travel and teleportation on children, as well as to relay important information about past and future events “to the US President, intelligence community, and military.”

The project, or so the story goes, involved a total of 140 children who would go on to become “America’s first generation of chrononauts.” According to Basiago, children were recruited specifically for their ability to adapt “to the strains of moving between past, present and future.”

But how?

While Basiago claims there were several time travel devices at work during these experiments, the majority of his temporal adventures can be attributed to our old friend Nikola Tesla.

Documents, allegedly retrieved from Tesla’s New York City apartment after his death in January 1943, revealed the schematic for a teleportation machine. Using something Basiago calls “radiant energy,” the machine would form a “shimmering curtain” between two elliptical booms.

“Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space.” – Andrew Basiago

Passing through this curtain of energy, Basiago would enter a “vortal tunnel” that would send him to his destination. The other teleportation devices included a “plasma confinement chamber” in New Jersey and a “jump room” in El Segundo, California. There was also some kind of “holographic technology,” which allowed them to travel “both physically and virtually.”

They weren’t always safe, though. According to the Huffington Post, one of Basiago’s cohorts, Alfred Webre, recalls one instance in which a child returned from his temporal voyage before his legs. As he puts it, “He was writhing in pain with just stumps where his legs had been.” These bugs, according Webre, have been ironed out in the 40 or so years since the experiments began.

As for his own trips, Basiago described traveling through the vortal tunnels as a rough and turbulent experience.

Through Time And Space

So where did Basiago travel during these experiments?

Several of his voyages led him to the 1800s. On one occasion, he found himself at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, the day President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg address.

As Basiago tells the story, he had been dressed up as a “Union bugle boy.” However, he felt that his over-sized shoes were drawing too much attention, so he wandered away from the crowd, only to be photographed (as you can see in the alleged photo up there, blue arrows added). I go into more detail about this peculiar photograph here.

Basiago also traveled to the Ford Theatre on the evening President Lincoln was assassinated. In fact, he did so multiple times, even running into himself twice, though he never actually witnessed the assassination.

Each trip, he says, was slightly different than the last, leading Basiago to believe that it wasn’t just time travel at work; he was being sent into “slightly different alternative realities on adjacent timelines.”

Journeys To Mars

Finally, let’s not forget Basiago’s trips to Mars.

In the 1980s, while working under Project Pegasus, he utilized the aforementioned “jump room” to teleport to the Red Planet, with the express mission of acting as an ambassador to the Martian civilization. His fellow travelers? William Stillings and President Barack Obama, among a number of others.

During his escapades to the Red Planet, Basiago claims he encountered many extraordinary things, not the least of which were towering dinosaurs and what he described as humanoid “scorpion men.” In fact, according to Basiago, the roaming Martian dinosaurs were known to devour any humans who found themselves lost on the planet’s surface.

Indeed, to hear Basiago tell it, Project Pegasus revealed Mars to be an extraordinary and dangerous place.

Andrew Basiago and the “Planetary Impact” of Project Pegasus

Today, the “new” Project Pegasus, with Andrew D. Basiago himself positioned as team leader, is apparently campaigning for the United States government to publicly disclose its teleportation technology. They believe this would benefit humanity as a whole, and make transportation both on Earth and throughout the cosmos instantaneous and environment-friendly. Or something like that.

At any rate, Basiago’s story is far from over. While the Web Bot’s prediction in 2009 that he would “make a [planetary impact]” as a government whistle blower never really came to pass, he’s got some new plans. Namely, he intends to run for President of the United States. He first attempted this in 2016:

“In 2016, Andrew D. Basiago will be a candidate for President of the United States under the banner Andy 2016 – A Time for Truth.”

However, while he didn’t succeed then, he may be planning to try again in 2020 (unfortunately, the official campaign website is currently missing). Their promise: To “lead the American people into a bold, new era of Truth, Reform, and innovation as great as they are great.”

To be honest, at this point I’m not entirely opposed to the idea.

*A beverage invented by ex-President of the Universe Zaphod Beeblebrox. Drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is said to be very much “like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon, wrapped ’round a large gold brick.”