PSYOPS and Satanism
US Army officer Michael Aquino was a psychological operations specialist, defense attaché, and practicing Satanist.
In 1969 Michael Aquino attended an event in San Francisco at the home of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Aquino joined the church soon afterwards and later wrote an 18-page pamphlet called The Diabolicon while he was serving a tour in Vietnam. He also edited the church’s newsletter The Cloven Hoof and published other books on Satanism.
However, in 1975 Aquino split from the church over disagreements with LaVey and formed the Temple of Set. Aquino claimed Satan appeared to him in a dream and revealed his true name to be Set, which he had been called by ancient Egyptians.
In 1980, Aquino and Colonel Michael Vallely co-authored a report titled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. Aquino wrote that the concept of MindWar was to ‘seize control of all of the means by which [the enemy’s] government and populace process information to make up their minds, and you adjust it so that those minds are made up as you desire.’ He later claimed he saw applications of the concepts he created during the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
While serving in Germany in the 1980s, Aquino visited Wewelsburg Castle, used by Heinrich Himmler and members of the SS in the 1930s and 40s. He claimed to have performed a satanic ritual in the Hall of the Dead located underneath the castle.
In 1986, San Francisco police began investigating allegations of sexual abuse at the Army’s Child Development Center at the Presidio of San Francisco. The 3-year-old daughter of a soldier stationed at the Presidio told investigators she was driven to Aquino’s house and filmed by two men dressed as women inside a room with black walls and a cross painted on the ceiling. Although Aquino’s house featured a black-painted room, the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence in August 1988.
Aquino has also been accused of involvement in the Franklin Omaha Scandal, a child-trafficking ring centered in Omaha, NE in the 1980s.
Aquino continued to serve in the military until 1994 and was active with the Temple of Set through at least 2006. In September 2019 he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
References:
Bryant, Nick. The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal. Trine Day Publishers. 2012. Available at: https://amzn.to/46yzhlF
Laycock, Joseph. Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion. Oxford University Press. 2020.
Horowitz, Mitch. The Long, Strange Trip of Michael Aquino. Medium.com. August 15th, 2023. Located at: https://mitch-horowitz-nyc.medium.com/the-long-strange-trip-of-michael-aquino-5c533d67bf46