Scott Wolter and Alan Butler Discuss Freemasons, Oreos, and the Ark of the Covenant in Radio Appearance

Last night Scott Wolter and Alan Butler gave an interview to Paradigm Unhinged radio, a UFO and paranormal program, speculating about various artifacts and sites for a more than ninety minutes. The interview followed up on the premiere episode of this season of American Unearthed, and Wolter began by telling listeners that “I highly doubt” that Ark of the Covenant has been destroyed, which of course implies his belief that the object described in Exodus existed. While destruction, he said, is a possibility, “until you have evidence to go down that road, we don’t have any reason to go down that road.” Wolter insisted that the rock art viewed in America Unearthed S02E01 was “out of place” and therefore must be the Ark. He claims that the zigzag pattern within the petroglyph “represents stairways to heaven,” indicating the Anasazi’s knowledge that the Ark communicated “a deity,” apparently. Alan Butler found this “very telling.”

Butler blows the minds of the shows’ hosts, both of whom are former law enforcement officers and current UFO hunters, by discussing the speculation that the Hebrews borrowed from the Egyptians the idea that God(s) physically live in the box.

Wolter and Butler both agree that the Knights Templar brought the Ark of the Covenant to America. “That’s where I’d put my money,” Wolter said. “I’d be amazed if anyone else had done it,” Butler said, arguing that the Templars had the “means” to transport the Ark. What means would that be? Their nonexistent fleet of ships? Butler and Wolter both agree that the Templars sought to create a “New Jerusalem” in America in fulfillment of God’s plan. Weird, though, that they somehow are also heretical worshippers of the “sacred feminine” and pre-Christian Venus figures, in the estimation of both men. Bulter says it is “almost 100% likely” that the Templars transported the Ark to their secret American colony.

Remember, Butler thinks that the moon was built by time travelers.

Wolter offers a concurring opinion that “when you study [Templars] to the level I have” there are no better candidates, but he corrects Butler’s claim of unique Templar excursions by claiming that many previous European and Canaanite groups came to America earlier and could theoretically have also been candidates for Ark bearers.

The two men rapturously discuss their mutual love of the Templars and how wonderful the Templars were in ferreting out Jewish secrets in Jerusalem and how their home base in France was the crossroads of esoteric knowledge from east and west.

This, of course, leads to Freemasonry on the assumption that the Masons evolved from the Templars, and Wolter asserts his belief that the 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry are designed to “vet out” candidates in a process masterminded by “higher orders or side orders” that follow esoteric Templar teachings not known to run of the mill Masons, who therefore are doing the conspiracy’s bidding when they deny the conspiracy’s existence. According to Wolter “the fun starts” after degree 32 or 33, when select candidates are let into the global conspiracy to suppress the truth and control history. “I am 100% firmly convinced” that “side order” Templar-Freemason-Rosicrucian “or whatever you want to call them” are “looking after certain things.”

What are these certain things? Wolter asserts that a company of Knights Templar guard Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland and meet every eight years to perform unspecified “rituals.” He also claims that he “would not be surprised” if a side order of cole slaw—wait, Freemasons—“know where the Ark is.” “I would say that is almost a certainty.”

I guess that gives away the outcome of Season Two of America Unearthed: Wolter doesn’t find the Ark but thinks the Freemasons are hiding it from him.

Alan Butler chimes in to inform us that he and Scott Wolter’s wife Janet have concluded that the Ark of the Covenant is buried beneath President’s Park South (the Ellipse) in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. The park was planned in 1791 but left incomplete until after the Civil War. Butler believes Freemasons hid the Ark beneath the park during construction work in 1867. “That makes a lot of sense,” Wolter states, and this not the first time he, his wife, and Butler discussed the issue, thus confirming that the season premiere of America Unearthed was all for show since he never seriously thought that the Ark was in Virginia, Ohio, or the Grand Canyon. So, not only is America Unearthed not based on fact, it isn’t even based on Wolter’s genuine (false) beliefs!

Bulter believes all of Washington was designed around the “Megalithic Yard,” an imaginary unit of measurement that I discussed seven years ago in a review of one of his books that Butler threatened suit against me in a failed effort to suppress it. Butler says the Ellipse has “very special measurements” that date back to ancient sacred geometry. This would be surprising since prior to its landscaping in 1879 and the construction of the Ellipse road in 1880, the site was a baseball diamond for the Washington Senators. Bulter claims that “Brig. Gen. Casey,” by which he means Lt. Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey, reported that “city authorities” had dug a huge hole in the middle of the park—in front of the White House—apparently with no one noticing or making a record of it. In fact, Bulter states that he can find no record of why the hole was “built.” (How does one build a hole?)

Bulter is wrong here; in 1878 Casey told Congress that District of Columbia commissioners were conducting sewerage work installing part of the city’s sewerage system beneath the Ellipse, so he was unable to complete the grading of the park. That work was completed in 1879, after the sewerage work was finished. In 1871, Congress had created a “territorial” government for Washington and the surrounding suburbs, and one of their first orders of business was, in fact, the creation and installation of a modern sewerage system, which was constructed over the next decade. Treasury Department records for the year 1878 state that Treasury paid for the completion of the sewerage system covering the city of Washington that year.

So, we have a report to Congress that sewerage work was occurring, an Act of Congress creating the “district commissioners” doing the work, and a Treasury Department expenditure report for the sewerage work being done. And that is just what I found in two minutes of checking. And Butler says there are no records at all.

Butler should know this; he and Christopher Knight reported some of the above information (though not the records) along with their Ark-under-Ellipse conspiracy theory in their 2011 book Before the Pyramids, so these claims are not, as he suggests in this interview, “new” in any way. Like every alternative and fringe author, he repackages the same claims under new covers every few years like clockwork. Apparently, for him the entire D.C. sewer system is a conspiracy to hide the Ark.

Butler also asserted in 2011 that a line drawn from the Ark under the Ellipse through Mt. Vernon Square leads directly to Ground Zero in New York and that another “megalithic” line goes directly to the Pentagon, indicating that 9/11 was part of an Islamic conspiracy designed to take out 32 and 33 degree Freemason symbols, symbols centered in Washington by the time travelers who built the moon and founded Masonry.

I wish I was making this up.

Is there anything a History/H2 guest can say that is so outrageous it would finally disqualify him from appearing again on those networks?

Wolter chimes in that the global conspiracy plotted the earth in ancient times with meridians of longitude (“Templar meridians”) spaced 8 degrees apart, and special sites and mysterious artifacts are found along these lines of longitude. Well, more specifically, within 1 degree on either side. So, he gives himself two out of every eight degrees of longitude—one fourth of the earth!—and is amazed that “a significant percentage” (at least 25%!) of anything can be found within those confines.

The hosts suggest that a conspiracy is trying to suppress the truth by destroying artifacts related to Templar history, including the Narragansett Rune Stone. Wolter states that he is not able to discuss the whole story behind that stone’s disappearance and reappearance for reasons he would not specify, but he said it was not part of the conspiracy that is really suppressing the truth.

Wolter next corrects that hosts that the Sinclair family did not need constant reinforcements from Europe to maintain pre-Columbian control over America because they received “assistance” by “aligning” themselves with the Native Americans and intermarrying with them. Wolter asserts that the Sinclair-Templars assimilated with the Native Americans and eventually disappeared into their bloodlines after they had “gone native.” This is supposed to be a feel-good appeal to racial harmony, but it sounds like he is saying that the Europeans lost their identity, purpose, and strength after marrying non-European people.

After this Wolter and Butler discuss the “emotional” subject of the Kensington Rune Stone, which repeats Wolter’s standard arguments that paradigm-defending “academics” can’t overcome their emotional attachment to 1960s textbooks. Wolter asserts that “academics” “don’t understand the scientific method” and that there is no evidence of a hoax, at least not once you dismiss all of the academic arguments as “emotion.” Wolter says that the Rune Stone is “so ingrained in everyday life here in Minnesota” that Minnesotans are confused why academics refuse to recognize it as a Norse-Templar-Holy Bloodline-warning-secret code-land claim. Wolter asserts that “academics” are terrified that once one of Wolter’s artifacts or sites is accepted as European “the paradigm is shattered and the dominoes start to fall.” Because that’s what happened at L’Anse-aux-Meadows: Scholars burned it, buried it, and salted the earth. No, they rewrote the textbooks to reflect the findings.

Anyway, Wolter claims that the paradigm must be defended because “they,” meaning the conspiracy, know what the public will learn should the truth come out. The truth? “One trail of dominoes will end up in Jerusalem, and they don’t want it to go there.” So, as with ancient astronauts, it’s all about the supernatural and God. Of course it is.

This leads to a repeat discussion of the “Jesus Family Tomb,” the Talpiot Tomb, to which Wolter adds nothing he has not previously discussed. He then discusses his Oreo Cookie Conspiracy (at the 70:00 minute mark), and you really have to hear him talking about the zodiac, initiations, and the twelve “crosses” on the Double Stuf Oreo “guarding the [Talpiot] tomb and the Bloodline Families”—it’s so much worse when he says it out loud than when you simply read about it in print. “This is a lot to read into a cookie, but how the hell did they know about the chevron-circle Talpiot Tomb architecture when it wouldn’t be found for six more years?” One of the hosts calls this a “damn good question,” but the other people on the show don’t touch this with a ten foot pole, and for good reason. This is one of his stupidest claims, as I pointed out in my review of his book, linked above.

Just for fun, I have a request for comment in with Mondelēz International, the current owner of Oreos, but as of press time they have not responded. If and when they reply, I’ll let you know.

Callers then join in to question Wolter, beginning with one who claims to be a Knight Templar and to be part of a Templar lodge. Wolter sidesteps the man’s claims and offers some wishy-washy bromides. In response to further discussion, he claims to not have an opinion on extraterrestrials or ancient aliens “right now,” but he says if ancient aliens were real the government may be hiding the truth to prevent global panic—and he and Alan Butler suggest that this may be for the good, so long as it keeps people safe. Wolter says that he loves Freemasons and thinks they’re great, and their conspiracy is apparently designed to make the world better by ending oppression through global control. I didn’t really follow this because it just doesn’t make any sense. The conspiracy is global and secretive and controlling the world to suppress the truth about Jesus and God and leave humanity in the darkness of ignorance, but also fighting global oppression and “maneuvered” (as Butler said) America into World War II to defeat Nazis and then, in the Cold War, the Soviets in pursuit of a global liberation agenda. I can’t hold two opposing ideas in my head at once, but apparently I am not as subtle a thinker as Alan Butler, who believes Freemasons originated with the time travelers who built the moon as a giant Masonic beacon.

Sometimes it feels like I am just typing Freemason and Templar and aliens into a Mad Libs. It would make about as much sense.