"America Unearthed" Guest: Producers Misrepresented Me, Lied to Audience about Facts

America Unearthed makes people angry, especially the type of people who go on America Unearthed. It seems that they make enemies wherever they go. In the past, we’ve heard from Scott Dawson about his deep anger at the show for promising a sober documentary about Roanoke and then spending the filming day attacking Dawson for his refusal to agree with pseudoscience. We’ve seen bookbinder Joe Rose express his upset that America Unearthed misrepresented his views to make it look like he supported factually inaccurate claims about Mithraism. Other guests have made similar claims that they had been taken out of context or misrepresented or had important parts of their statements omitted. Today we can add another name to this list of the program’s discontents.

Jay Longley appeared in S02E12 “Lincoln’s Secret Assassins,” about the Knights of the Golden Circle, where he seemed to suggest that a man named Henry Ford in his hometown of Brownwood was actually the outlaw Jesse James. It almost goes without saying that Longley claims to be another victim of the show’s slippery relationship with the truth.

Here he is in his own words, posted last Sunday on his website. I have broken it into paragraphs for easier reading, but the original spelling and punctuation remain:

I was with the crew in Downtown Brownwood for 11 hours in September 2013. Much of it was while being recorded as I gave as much information about the subjects as I could. They promised that they would return to Brownwood to do a much more detailed account but when the show aired in February, I was truly disappointed in the results.

They made it look like I believed that our Henry Ford was Jesse James, which I don't believe and which I told them I didn't believe. I also told them that I believed "J. Frank Dalton" was and why. We spent a lot of time as I detailed the circular route of the KGC Tunnel Network under Downtown Brownwood too but when the show was edited, they took out the top half of the route which included me saying that one tunnel went from the Old County Jail (Museum) across Main Street to the old Ford School. My tunnel route was confirmed when Scott Wolter and I took a trip during a break in the filming to visit the Courthouse and the Old Jail. Nick, the Museum manager, took us under the old jail and showed us exactly where the tunnel was and it clearly led precisely to where I had told Scott it did. I didn't have my camera with me but Scott took some photos of it with his.

After the show aired, I wrote to one of the contact people with the film production company that makes America Unearthed for the History Channel and asked for Scott Wolter's email address because I wanted him to send me some copies of the photos he took of the tunnel entrance. I never heard back from them again.

Also, in the program, Scott says that they left the ground penetrating radar operator and equipment with me. That is simply not true. I met the gpr operator when he arrived from Ft. Worth about lunchtime as Scott, the sound and film crew and I were about to take a lunch break and he began scanning some of the areas while we were at lunch and when we were filming in other locations downtown so I never got to see him actually using the machine. Scott and the crew continued filming me until an hour or so after the gpr man had left to return to Ft. Worth late that afternoon. Their filming of the descendent of Gen. Joseph Shelby didn't happen until a day or two after they had shot the Brownwood part of the episode. 

Scott Wolter made several inaccurate statements during the episode.  Many of them were done after the filming during the "editing" process. I made one very clear and non-negotiable stipulation when I finally agreed to meet with Committee Films for the show.  That was that I would not say anything that I didn't believe was true or accurate and they assured me that they didn't want me to and that they would portray my statements accurately. Well, that's not the way it turned out… […] Needless to say, I won't be doing any more tv shows based on our work here in the foreseeable future.

How many times do we have to travel down this path? The ritual is always the same. Someone goes on the show and gives a lengthy interview. The producers chop it up and reassemble selected pieces to support a different narrative, and then they utterly ignore the anger and bad blood created through their misrepresentations. It happens often enough that it can’t be an accident or ignorance; the producers must be purposely manipulating interviews to support a predetermined narrative. Worse, Committee Films’s irresponsible behavior is poisoning the pool for future documentarians and researchers.

But on the other hand, America Unearthed seems unable to shake Richard Thornton, the fringe writer who appeared in the very first episode to discuss his belief that the Maya colonized Georgia. Thornton continues to publish an unending series of articles attempting to keep alive the pseudo-conspiracy Scott Wolter hinted at in that first episode, namely, that the U.S. Forest Service was conspiring to suppress Wolter’s work for fear of… well, it was never really stated. Thornton, however, has become a bit of an embarrassment as his version of the conspiracy has mushroomed into a trans-national conspiracy involving prejudiced Latinos who hate Thornton for his self-described racial identity of “mestizo,” evil Federal authorities bending over backward to appease Native Americans, and gay panic.

In a lengthy piece published on his LinkedIn profile on Friday, Thornton outlined the racial conspiracy he feels Scott Wolter stumbled into alongside him. He began by describing how Ignacio Bernal, the Mexican anthropologist, refused to assist him, implying that Bernal was prejudiced against both mixed race people and the poor:

When he realized that I was a young mestizo student from a family of modest means, who was just beginning to speak Spanish, he glanced at his watch, threw up his hands, uttered “idiotas,” and walked away. I never saw or heard from him again.

Thornton said he had to turn to a fellow “mestizo,” Dr. Roman Piña-Chan, to learn about the mysteries of Mexico, though he also claims to be “self-taught.” Thornton oddly enough also revealed some of the origin for his hatred of the federal government. He writes that in 2009 he lost his home to a Fannie Mae eviction and contemplated suicide before throwing himself into forest exploration as an escape from his troubles, moving from site to site every two weeks for two years. The turning point came when he started writing for Examiner.com and sparked a controversy with what he (wrongly) believed to be evidence of a Maya city in Georgia. This in turn prompted Scott Wolter to come calling.

This is where the conspiracy truly began. It really has to be read in his own words, especially the part where Thornton asserts that Federal authorities tried to frame him as gay and a sexual predator:

On the day before filming began here at my cabin, Scott Wolter, the host of the History Channel’s America Unearthed, made one more attempt to get permission to at least personally visit the Track Rock Site. He was rejected and told that with or without a film crew, he would be arrested if he stepped on the property. The arrogant USFS bureaucrat signed the denial with an oversized signature that stretched across the form. It was on a clipboard beside my computer as I was being filmed with Scott. They filmed here for over eight hours, but only about seven minutes made it to through the final cutting.

After the History Channel completed filming in Georgia and Mexico, the US Forest Service launched a multi-media propaganda effort that it called “Maya Myth-Busting in the Mountains.” Vastly more taxpayer’s money was expended in this silly program than I have earned in the past ten years.

A law enforcement smear campaign was initiated. Federal and state law enforcement monitored my movements throughout 2012 and early 2013. On several occasions federal law enforcement contacted people in my day to day contacts, including my landlord, to tell them, “He’s crazy. Don’t believe anything he says about the Mayas.” Apparently, the jurisdiction of the Patriot Act has been extended to include protection of obsolescent interpretations of Native American town sites.

Neighbors were told by federal and state law enforcement that my three Scottish farm collies were dangerous attack dogs, who would kill their babies, puppies and cats. The bad cops also said that I was probably gay, but they hadn’t been able to get a photo of me with another male. They asked the neighbors for assistance in proving that I was gay. When only women were seen in my company, the feds tried something else. Men, who I only knew from emails, wanted to drive from other states to spend the weekend in my cabin. No way José!

Officials at the University of North Georgia (located in my county) were told that I was probably a sexual predator of coeds. Wait a minute! I thought you said I was gay? Throughout the later part of 2012, UNG campus cops would race out to the boulevard that bounds the campus to protect their coeds, whenever I drove to Walmart or the supermarket.

Thornton provides no evidence than any of his allegations actually occurred. There is a Florida sex offender who shares Thornton’s name, so there is a small chance that there was some confusion about his identity, though it seems unlikely. Thornton, of course, also believes that academics are out to get him because several archaeologists made public statements against his views in response to his Examiner articles.

His statements remind me of nothing so much as Sirius Mystery author Robert Temple’s angry allegations that the CIA and the “hypnosis community” were conspiring to ruin his life, deny him jobs, and suppress his books because of “revelations” about space frogs from Sirius. Both men felt that dark forces were monitoring them and secretly turning their friends against them. We could draw some conclusions from this, but Thornton seems like the type who’d sue me for doing so; therefore, I’ll leave readers to make their own evaluations about whether we can trust Thornton’s account of what he sees as the government’s gay frame job.

Thornton credits America Unearthed with helping him put one over on the evil Federal government, and he says it changed his life (it’s the first thing on his LinkedIn profile), so much so that tourists now visit his cabin to thank him for sticking it to evil “college professors” who are suppressing the truth.