Disgusting: Josh Reeves's Vile Attack on Scott Wolter Uses and Abuses My Blog

Today I am going to go out on a limb and do something that will cause many of the people who regularly criticize me to get the vapors. I am going to defend Scott Wolter. Why, you may ask? What did he do right? Earlier this season Scott Wolter correctly concluded that the rock wall of Rockwall, Texas is in fact a clastic sandstone dyke, a completely natural feature, and not the work of lost giants from the Bible. Now one disgruntled investigator of forbidden truths is on a multimedia quest to “expose” Scott Wolter. The force behind an all-out multimedia assault on Scott Wolter is Josh Reeves, Global Reality radio host and a competitor of Scott Wolter’s in the field of North American prehistoric mysteries, including Templars, holy bloodlines, Freemasons, and above all else the Rockwall rock wall, his prized research centerpiece.

Reeves appeared last week on a radio show blasting Wolter for refusing to endorse his belief that the wall is the remnants of a lost race of biblical giants during the December episode on the rock wall. The woman he’s talking to, Erin Dakins of Truth Traveler, says she’s disgusted with Wolter and lost all respect for him for refusing to confirm the existence of the Nephilim in Texas. She describes his dismissal of evidence that “blew me away” as “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Reeves asserts that Wolter ignored the evidence of artificiality in favor of a false claim of natural creation, part of a conspiracy. Reeves says he believes that the stones tested on the show for their magnetic orientation were not part of the rock wall and were placed there as part of a History Channel hoax. Reeves is correct, though, that Wolter wasn’t entirely forthcoming about the rock wall, wrongly calling the whole thing limestone based on a few small stones claimed to have come from the wall. The majority of the rock wall is sandstone. I think this is probably a production error (cutting a longer explanation, perhaps) rather one made by Wolter. I’ll defend Wolter here: Although the producers spun the episode out into ridiculous territory to avoid the obvious for as long as possible, Wolter correctly understood the geology of the site and reported the findings fairly. All of the geological evidence points to a natural formation.

However, this is a relatively sedate discussion compared to a previous video that Reeves made before the episode aired in December as part of a for-profit DVD called Lost Secrets of America, vol. 2. Let me remind you again: Josh Reeves is making money from the material you are about to see.

The clip appears to rely heavily on my own blog postings on the subject. I had nothing to do with this, and I am deeply saddened that my work has been twisted in this way.

Reeves complains that the excavation conducted for H2 (mistakenly called the History channel) did nothing more than to pull dirt from the 1999 excavation conducted on the rock wall, and he correctly points to many of the “cheats” used in the production to make the show seem more grandiose and original than it was. Reeves, who apparently is jealous of Scott Wolter, accuses Wolter and the History Channel of creating a “whitewash” (his words) to suppress the truth found in his earlier mail-order DVD, Lost Secrets of Ancient America, vol. 1. According to Reeves, History and Wolter had no interest in the rock wall until his video was released.

Reeves’s video rehashes material about the rock wall that was debunked as far back as the early twentieth century alongside more recent speculation; even the indefatigable Frank Joseph wrote about it in Ancient American before Reeves’s “exposé.” It’s all hilariously self-serving and self-promotional until it turns dark and disturbing. I am especially amused that Reeves rants about how Wolter failed to give him credit, all while reading from my blog post about Scott Wolter’s honorary master’s degree without giving me credit. Trust me, though, I don’t want anything to do with this DVD.

Here is where I will step in again to defend Wolter: Reeves is wrong that Wolter’s credentials as a geologist are based on the non-existent honorary master’s degree. He is and remains a licensed geologist (at least until he has to renew the license later this year), and he has completed all the required education and training needed for such a position. Reeves fails to understand that which he tries to criticize.

I will be looking forward to Steve St. Clair and Phil Gotsch taking Josh Reeves to task for the personal insults and invective he levels at Wolter’s character, across multiple media and for profit, including his claim that Wolter merely uses his geological credentials to make his fabricated conclusions seem credible. I expect both of them to shout until they are blue in the face about how Reeves is insulting and disparaging Scott Wolter in order to make money directly from these claims and raise his media profile.

(Disclosure: I do sell a collection of my America Unearthed reviews as a paperback and eBook. I sell them at just above the breakeven point, and any profit goes directly toward maintaining this website.)

Reeves seems to also be reading from my blog post about Wolter and Rock Wall, again without credit. He refers to information I gathered about Frank Joseph’s Lost Worlds of Ancient America (2012), in which Wolter’s work appears alongside an article on the rock wall, and how this undercuts Wolter’s claim to have never heard of the rock wall. In my later review, I claimed that Wolter had failed to review the books in which his own material is published; Reeves accused Wolter of outright lies and seems unaware that Joseph’s book was a collection of previously-published articles, not a work of newly-commissioned pieces. He therefore accuses Wolter of a level of dishonesty that the facts cannot support.

Reeves does worse: He accuses Scott Wolter of causing his father’s death. This is as low a personal blow as I can imagine, and it is disgusting, not to mention irrelevant. Wolter has written that he felt grief and guilt when his father drowned while the two were scuba diving in Australia: “The details of why he died are unclear to me to this day, but the fact is a diver is responsible for his partner’s safety and I lost him.” Wolter implies that he wished he had done more or did things differently; he did not say he killed his father. To use this as a weapon to attack a geological finding is beyond the pale.

He also accuses Wolter of “collaborating” with Frank Joseph, whom he describes as a “neo-Nazi” and “convicted child molester” (which he is). Wolter did not collaborate with Joseph. Joseph served as the editor of Lost Worlds, a collection of Ancient American articles published mostly after Joseph had retired from the magazine. The decision to entrust the collection to Joseph was almost certainly taken by Ancient American and not Scott Wolter. You can say what you want about me, but I have never accused Wolter or the H2 network of collaborating with Nazis, though I did criticize Wolter for his uncritical use of a pro-Nazi source in his latest book.

Reeves then tries to see America Unearthed as a tool of a corporate media controlled by, and I am not making this up, white supremacist Freemasons. He accuses the Hearst Corporation, 50% owner of A+E Networks, the parent of H2, of being a front for Freemasonry and Nazism. Reeves assumes, wrongly, that History has embraced sensationalism on orders from Hearst, famous for its yellow journalism in the 1890s. Hearst was not a 50% owner of A+E Networks until NBC sold its stake in the company as part of the complex deal involved with the Comcast takeover of NBC Universal in 2012. A+E Networks, though owned by Hearst, ABC, and (in the past) NBC, Radio City Music Hall (the Rockefellers!), and Radio Corporation of America (which is how NBC got a chunk of it), has remained functionally independent of its part owners.

Is America Unearthed yellow journalism? It’s sensationalism to be sure. But Reeves is an ignoramus of the first order. In the video he even confuses Erich von Däniken, ancient astronaut theorist, for the fictitious Erick Van Datiken, the parody of von Däniken who “writes” for the Weekly World News. Reeves seems to think von Däniken is a tabloid writer and that History employs him because of a Hearst-backed yellow journalism conspiracy.

Reeves further asserts that Disney is run by Freemasons and tied to Nazism (which I guess is why they cleverly used to have a Jewish CEO). He accuses Disney of producing the National Treasure movies as “disinformation” and sees America Unearthed as an extension of the same, even though production documents make clear that the program emerged organically from producer Maria Awes’s professional relationship with Scott Wolter and both her and Wolter’s deep-seated belief in fringe history theories.

I invite A+E Networks and Scott Wolter to have the courage of their convictions and take legal action against Reeves for using their material without permission and for libel. Surely this is a far graver legal issue than the concern over whether Scott Wolter owned the letter X when it has a hook on it, which prompted the network to threaten me with a lawsuit. Reeves is actively trying to make money by accusing Wolter and his corporate partners of Nazism and fraud.

“Scott Wolter and America Unearthed are a disinformation vehicle,” Reeves says, “for high level Masonic interests and wish to keep these secrets from the public and keep the real truth of America’s history quietly buried under human progress.”

I would pay to see Reeves and Wolter argue over which one of them is the truest believer and which is the biggest hero exposing the “truth.” Templars vs. Bible Giants: The ultimate fringe history showdown! Seriously, though: This is a classic conspiracy claim, that the incompetent investigator is actually a stooge intentionally making the truth look ridiculous so no one will believe it.

Now I’d like someone to explain to me why my blog warrants legal action, coordinated attacks, and daily monitoring by Wolter supporters yet Reeves’s insane anti-Wolter rants, including outright lies and disgusting personal attacks—which he sells for a profit!—warrant nary a peep. The next time someone wants to accuse me of being too mean to Scott Wolter, remember Reeves’s video. That’s what being mean actually looks like.