Original subtitles

A secret society believed to possess knowledge connected to the very origins

mankind. Our ceremonies are ancient, and this is the way that we teach our

lessons.

Their members played key roles in establishing the United States of

There are even some people who argue that the United States, in its creation,

was a Masonic republic.

And today, some believe... that this organization may be on the verge of

enacting new historic plans.

We want to make the world better. And what we have to do to get there is what

have to do to get there.

For nearly three centuries, members of the fraternal order known as the

Freemasons have played key roles in building Western civilization.

However... The secrecy with which they deliberately shroud themselves and their

ancient rituals has made many question their ultimate agenda.

There are many who suspect that today some Freemasons are trying to lay the

foundation for a new world order.

Could it be true?

And if so, does the truth about this secretive fraternity lie hidden within

pages of America's book of secrets?

Washington, D .C., December 7th, 2016.

President Donald J. Trump nominates former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a

prominent Freemason, to be the new United States Ambassador to China, a

that has actually banned its citizens from joining the very secretive

fraternity.

Freemasonry is based around a cult of secrecy.

it inevitably creates suspicion from the outside.

Some people believe the Freemasons are the hidden hand that controls everything

going on at high levels in politics.

It's the largest and the oldest fraternal order in the world, and

order is a social club for men, basically. And the Freemasons have been

for centuries, and they've had major impact on our society and our

democracy.

According to some historians and researchers, more than 6 million people

taken the Masonic oath of secrecy across the globe.

In the United States alone, they've held powerful positions in Congress at every

level of the court system.

And 14 have ascended all the way to the office of the presidency.

Could it be mere coincidence that many Freemasons have sought and gained such

power throughout American society?

The answer may lie in the legend that Freemasonry evolved out of another

and mysterious organization, the Knights Templar.

People ask, are the Freemasons a direct descendant of the Templars? And I would

say possibly, I think in their ideology and their belief, yes.

The Knights Templar were established in 1118 A .D. to protect Christian pilgrims

in the Holy Land during the Crusades.

However, after establishing their headquarters on the Temple Mount in

at the site where the biblical Temple of Solomon once stood, some believe the

Templars discovered not only priceless religious relics, including the Ark of

the Covenant, but also documents containing secret ancient knowledge that

been lost to history.

While there, what they believed was the tomb of Solomon was unearthed.

And they began to find things that were, shall we say,

valuable.

It was during this period, as the Templars guarded not only the lives of

religious pilgrims, but also their valuables, that they created one of the

organized banking systems.

The Templars were the first bankers. They were actually the ones that started

the whole credit system.

They lent money to people for a payment, what we would now call an interest

rate. They basically had a treasure to back it up, and they became very, very

powerful as a result of it.

However, by 1307 AD, the Templars' influence and wealth had become a great

threat to King Philip IV of France after he fell into their debt.

With the cooperation of Pope Clement V,

The king charged the Templar order with heresy, outlawed their very existence,

and had many arrested, tortured, and

executed.

Friday the 13th, 1307, a date which will live in Templar infamy, was the day in

which the king of France and the pope at that time decided to rid themselves.

of the Knights Templar. They burned at the stake Jacques de Molay, who was the

head of the Knights Templar.

Many of the people in the King of France's court, as well as the Vatican,

Templars, so that the Templars did understand that something was coming.

Therefore, they were actually able to go somewhere else to prosper and to

conduct their business.

There were two major places in Europe where the Templars were more or less

allowed to continue, and not officially, but a blind eye was taken. One was

Portugal and one was Scotland.

There's the story that Freemasons descended from the Knights Templar upon

fleeing France.

Some Knights escaped to the British Isles, maybe Scotland, and that they

employment among the stonemasons of the day.

and that they brought aspects of their traditions, their rituals and symbols

into Freemasonry.

While the direct connection between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry remains

the subject of debate, what is more certain about the origins of the

is that between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Catholic Church

large numbers of Master Masons to oversee the construction of elaborate

cathedrals across Europe.

These master masons soon came to be known as Freemasons due to the fact that

they traveled freely among various lodges which had been established as

where they could fraternize with their colleagues and share the inner secrets

their specialized craft.

These people were among the most educated people at the time. They had to

understand geometry and mathematics and understand how to cut particular stones

and the stresses of stones. They had to have certain trade secrets.

What they did is created a kind of an initiatory system that would admit

practicing stonemasons into this society.

By the late 1500s, there were dozens of Masonic lodges in Scotland and across

the United Kingdom.

It was also a time when guild membership began to change.

A greater emphasis was placed on rituals, symbology, levels of

and the sharing of secret knowledge.

There are those who believe the descendants of Knights Templar used

to pass down their secrets to the Freemasons and protect their vast

When you join the Masons, there's a lot of study, understanding, research, and

the early degrees when you first enter.

The first, second, and third degrees are what's known as the craft or craft

masonry. That's what most masons are. They're craft masons or lodge masons.

And then there's the entered apprentice, the fellow craft, and then the master

mason. There's beholden truth that you have to keep secret as you go through

various gates to get to the higher levels.

When you get to the highest level, you have to be appointed.

suppressed by certain powers.

Whenever there is a form of government that is tyrannical and tries to suppress

knowledge, secret societies immediately emerge to protect that knowledge and

disseminate it to the next generation.

Research suggests that by the 18th century, Freemasons had accumulated

power to strike back at the European monarchies that sought to destroy them.

According to some, this led to an opportunity in the new world and a

change the course of history.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4th, 1776.

The Second Continental Congress issues the historic Declaration of

a bold decree.

that the 13 North American colonies are now independent states and no longer

ruled by Great Britain.

Over the course of the next seven bloody years, during the Revolutionary War,

the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, would secure the

independence of the United States of America.

It was a new nation, a new experiment in democratic self -rule, and...

A new world order.

When you go back to the founding of the United States, all of the founders were

what we consider rational.

Like they were pushing for, you know, a republican form of government. They were

pushing against the monarchy, against these dogmas. This was a very

revolutionary idea.

The motto of the United States, e pluribus unum, out of many, one.

What does that mean?

That means diversity within unity.

Freemasonry brings together people of diverse backgrounds.

Freedom from ignorance.

Freedom from superstition. Freedom from intolerance. Freedom from extremism.

Those were dangerous ideas back then because absolutist monarchies

and the church wanted to control you.

But along with the glory of the brave men and women who tirelessly worked and

fought to establish the United States of America, there existed a curious

connection to a secret society that had migrated to North America centuries

earlier.

The connection was apparent not only among its leaders, but also its founding

documents. That secret society was the Freemasons.

Many of the founding fathers, especially the influential ones, people like

George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were Freemasons.

If there is one place on the planet where the principles and the

teachings of Freemasonry had the greatest impact, that would be the

States of America.

There are even some people who argue that the United States, in its creation,

its inception, even in its constitutional order, was a Masonic

Freemasons account for two of the five committee members who drafted the

Declaration of Independence, 40 % of the generals during the Revolutionary War,

and 30 % of those who signed their names on the U .S. Constitution.

Freemasonry and...

The ideals that went into the American Constitution and the Declaration of

Independence have an awful lot of overlap.

They had values of religious tolerance and cosmopolitanism and rights and

equality between all citizens.

One of the masons of the time was Montesquieu, a famous French political

philosopher who had this radical idea of a separation of powers.

that you should have three branches of government, legislative, executive, and

judicial, that they should check and balance each other to form a true

Republican government.

Washington, D .C., 1791.

George Washington, now the first president of the United States of

appoints French architect Pierre -Charles L 'Enfant to design the

capital.

While Washington was a master mason, L 'Enfant apparently never passed the

of entered apprentice.

However, some believe that symbols associated with Freemasonry were

into the city's design as an acknowledgment of the ties between the

society and the founding of the country.

The basic layout of the city originally had these kind of odd diagonal streets.

So they had to have some reason to lay them out that way because the normal way

you would lay out a city is by a grid pattern.

And DC did not follow a traditional grid pattern.

It's a very cleverly worked grid shape. So when seen from above, you have a five

-sided star.

You have a cascading star, which is all part of the Masonic thought.

There's no doubt that Washington, D .C. was laid out according to

Masonic ideals and symbolism.

In 1793...

President George Washington presided over the laying of the cornerstone for

U .S. Capitol building, a ceremony that not only initiated construction, but was

also highlighted by elaborate Masonic rituals.

There appears George Washington and his Masonic regalia to perform a Masonic

ceremony with grain and oil and Masonic measuring instruments and so on.

You've got the leader of the republic, many of its key officers, in a public

Masonic ceremony.

And yet they're doing this as a ceremony based around their secret society.

But what was the true purpose of this new experiment in declared self

-governance? An idealistic new form of democracy?

Some suggest that the Freemasons who were involved actually had a hidden

people became suspicious of the fraternity.

It kind of supported, I believe, the fears that Freemasonry exerted some kind

power over the government or among society.

Freemasonry was enormously successful in the early American Republic, but in

1826, a kind of disaster befell Freemasonry by the name of the

Morgan Affair.

In 1826, William Morgan, a prominent Freemason in upstate New York, signed

a publishing contract promising to reveal secrets of the Masonic

Traditionally, the Masonic oath has been quite blood -curdling.

They were supposed to swear absolutely solemnly in front of all their brethren

that they would never tell the secrets outside of the lodge.

on pain of some quite hideous punishment, such as having their tongue

and their throat cut.

When Morgan announces he's going to tell all the secrets of Masonry, some of the

guys in town decide to take their Masonic obligation much more seriously

they really should have.

And they essentially...

throw him in a carriage, right off into the woods, and Morgan shouts out the

window, murder, as they go off into the sunset, and he's never seen again.

Morgan's body was never found, but an investigation was conducted, and members

of the local lodge were put on trial for his death.

There was a trial that was held of the Masons who had abducted him.

The judge in the case was a Mason.

The governor, he was a Mason. I believe the sheriff was a Mason. You have all

these Masons involved with the prosecution of the crime. Lo and behold,

is convicted for the murder of William Morgan.

That sets off this massive national wave of hysteria against the Masons.

This resulted in an anti -Masonic excitement that lasted from 1826 to

and for that period it was very unpopular to be a Freemason.

In 1828, the Morgan Affair even spurred the creation of a new political party,

the Anti -Mason Party.

The party appealed to voters fearful of the Masonic influence within the United

States government.

The party actually...

the presidential election in the state of Vermont, there were hundreds of anti

-Masonic newspapers that popped up around the country, and Masons all over

country start getting attacked.

You read newspaper accounts at the time of Masons being hauled out of their

meetings and tarred and feathered in the streets.

The anti -Mason movement was hugely popular at the time.

Did the Morgan affair really close the book on Freemasonry and signal its end

a powerful force within American society?

There are those who believe just the opposite occurred, that it led to

secret plot within the Brotherhood to not only consolidate more power, but

hide billions in gold.

A secret plot directly connected to the American Civil War.

Marin County, California, February 2013.

While walking their dog on their rural property, a couple notices the top of a

rusted tin can peeking through the surface of the dirt.

They dig it out and discover that it contains more than 1 ,400 gold coins.

To date, the so -called Saddle Ridge Hoard is the largest buried coin

ever documented in the United States.

It was $10 million worth, dated from mid to late years of the

19th century. And there's lots of mysteries about this. The actual burial

of these coins was marked with a sort of angular stone.

So obviously it was marked for somebody to find.

There's a lot of speculation as to who buried these golds, where did it come

from. How many people have 1 ,400 gold coins today? That's very rare.

So why bury it? Was that part of this Masonic template, the Masonic treasure

map? It's a lot of money for someone to hide away.

So people have claimed that the Battle Ridge cache of 1 ,400 gold coins might

have been hidden by the Knights of the Golden Circle?

The Knights of the Golden Circle was a 19th century secret society that

supported the secession of the Confederacy and the preservation of the

institution of slavery.

The organization was believed to be working to create a new federation that

would expand the power of the southern states.

And some of its members were Freemasons.

Well, the golden circle that the society sought to create would have been a huge

slavery -based empire surrounding the Caribbean Sea.

So the idea, roughly, was to detach the southern states from the United States.

Somehow conquer Mexico and northern South America and all of the Caribbean

then combine this into this new empire.

They patterned a lot of their rituals and oaths around Freemasonry, only they

made them darker.

You know, they had darker oaths, harsher penalties for breaking their oaths,

things of that nature.

Their whole goal during the war was to harass the northern troops and impede

their movements by any means necessary, burning bridges and tearing up railroad

tracks, things like that.

The Knights of the Golden Circle was a powerful, subversive organization. They

were a group of Freemasons that fomented the Civil War.

helped execute the Civil War, and then went underground when it looked like the

Civil War was going to be lost to prepare for a second Civil War, burying

for that day.

As the influence of this shadowy organization grew, rumors circulated

agents of the Knights of the Golden Circle buried what would amount today to

billions of dollars worth of treasure throughout the American South and

Southwest.

They were able to do that by initially stealing from the U .S. Treasury with

their insiders. The Knights of the Golden Circle were well informed.

They had insiders, moles in every organization.

So they knew when gold, silver payments to the troops were about to head out and

where to hit them.

According to some of Jesse James' descendants, the notorious outlaw was

Freemason and a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

And they insist that despite the official record, he was not shot dead in

Missouri in 1882.

They say he faked his death, took on an alias, and continued to steal and hide

gold across the country.

They robbed banks, they robbed trains, but they weren't robbing for themselves.

They would take a cut, and then they would bury the loot.

It was obvious that someone was giving...

Jesse the information.

He was the guy who hit the target, but it went deeper.

Jesse James was a political operative. He was essentially an American terrorist

for the Confederacy and a field commander of the Knights of the Golden

with the likes of Jesse James and others.

building the financial reservoir that they had, the reserves, to launch that

Second Civil War. But it went on for a very long time, such that a Second Civil

War was never really in the cards anymore.

But why did some Freemasons depart so strongly from the vision of the Founding

Fathers to the point that they actively tried to undermine the United States?

What could have caused them to embrace such a destructive agenda?

an agenda that seemed at odds with the Masonic principles of freedom and

democracy.

People say that something may have happened with Masonry in America, where

went from a benign, benevolent force to one that maybe organized internal

revolution, which is the Civil War, and that had to be under the influence of

Albert Pike.

The evidence points to Pike.

being the supreme leader, not only of the Knights of the Golden Circle, but of

the Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

Scottish Rite Freemasonry was formally established in 1801, not in Scotland,

but in the United States.

By the start of the Civil War, Albert Pike, a renowned writer and scholar, had

ascended to the highest rank of the Order.

As its sovereign Grand Commander,

Pike worked to transform the Scottish Rite into the most elite branch of the

Freemasonry Brotherhood.

It's said that Pike found the Scottish Rite in a cabin and that he left it in a

temple. And in a real sense, he did this. He revised our rituals and

He translated many rare and important documents into English.

He modified the 33 degrees of the Scottish Rite, the 33 membership levels,

33 different ways to teach lessons.

Albert Pike systematized and created the whole elaborate philosophy

that lies behind the Scottish Rite, which is the most important and richest

symbolic system that Freemasons have in the United States. Now, the problem

with Pike is that he was also a Confederate general.

And so he embodies, if you like, all of the contradictions of American

Freemasonry.

Less than a century after some Freemasons fought to build the United

other members fought to tear it down.

But was that the true aim of the Freemasons during the Civil War?

Or were they simply playing both sides of the conflict to ensure that they

retained power and influence?

No matter what.

January 4th, 2017.

Congressman John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and member of Atlanta's St.

Masonic Lodge No. 4, introduces the Martin Luther King Jr.

National Historical Park Act.

The law makes the area around Dr. King's birthplace in Atlanta, Georgia, into a

national park.

and includes the Prince Hall Masonic Temple, where King's office was located

when he led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King was reportedly preparing to secretly join the Prince Hall Masons in

April of 1968, but was shot mere days before he could be

initiated.

But who were the Prince Hall Masons?

And what role did this branch of Freemasonry play in the Civil Rights

The story starts in 1775 with Prince Hall, who was

freed from slavery just five years beforehand. And what happened in 1775

is that he tried to become a Freemason in Boston and was rejected

on the basis of race.

Prince Hall ran into the common prejudices of the time. So what he then

to find other free Africans to form a lodge on their own.

He founded the first what could be called African -American Masonic Lodge,

today is called Prince Hall Freemasonry, after him, by being inducted into a

British military lodge.

Prince Hall writes to the Grand Lodge of England, and he asks them for a

charter. because they're considered the utmost authority on Freemasonry in the

world. And he gets one, and he charters African Lodge No.

459 on the rolls of the Grand Lodge of England in Boston, Massachusetts.

And then Prince Hall starts issuing other charters to other groups of Black

Masons who want to start Masonic Lodges.

By the 1840s, Prince Hall Lodges were established in major cities across the

northern United States.

In the midst of chattel slavery that was still existing in the United States of

America, one man had a tremendous vision to not just simply become part of the

fraternity, but to expand it to African Americans everywhere.

Prince Hall Freemasonry, as it came to be called, started to grow into this

large organization, almost exclusively made of black men.

Prince Hall Masonic Lodge became the center of the black middle class

Fire!

In 1863, when the first regiment of

black troops was recruited in the North to fight in the Civil War, Prince

Hall Freemasons were...

instrumental in the recruitment drive, and many of the sergeants and so on in

that regiment were themselves Prince Hall Freemasons.

The Black Lodges became a good place for the abolitionist movement in the 1800s.

The NAACP and many other organizations got their start with people who were

members of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.

It was much the same way in the 1960s.

A lot of the leading light in the black community in the 1960s in the civil

rights fight were also Prince Hall Masons.

Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who led many of the most important legal

of the civil rights movement, was himself a Prince Hall Mason.

Medgar Evans, the civil rights leader from Mississippi who was murdered in

Jackson by a white supremacist, was also a Prince Old Mason.

Freemasonry at its heart and soul is about the evolution of humankind

and the positive change of humankind.

And so Freemasons are drawn to causes that help.

make a better society.

The kind of lessons that we teach are things like free thought, brotherhood,

equality, honesty.

We don't care how old you are, how rich you are, what color you are, what your

religion is. If you're a Freemason, you're a brother.

There have been many, many people who have been in positions of power who

to be Masons. We're talking about self -declared or revealed Masons, but there

are many who are just not known. It's a source of pride for some to keep their

affiliation totally secret. And so the question becomes whether they act in

collusion with each other to get an agenda across.

The conspiracy theory about Freemasonry doing the rounds now is the idea of the

new world order, which is basically what these groups are supposed to be aiming

for, their own world order, which is their great mission.

There is a general suspicion of any secret organization.

They don't know what we're thinking. They don't know what we're saying. They

don't know we're preaching amongst each other. They don't know what we're doing.

This is something that conspiracy theorists love to think about.

The Masons will say they're not a secret society.

They're a society with secrets that are discussed confidentially among them.

But they would just deny that they organized in a way that would be known

collusion to influence events, politics, the way society develops, because

they don't leave records.

of these secret meetings, it's very hard to know.

Why do the Freemasons maintain such absolute secrecy?

And what are they trying to achieve?

Is it possible, as some believe, that they have a master plan for a new world

order?

The truth may lie behind closed doors in the secret meetings of a mysterious

organization known as the Bilderberg Group.

Montreux, Switzerland, June 2nd, 2019.

Prominent political leaders, financiers, media moguls, and tech titans are

photographed arriving for closed -door meetings at one of the world's most

exclusive and secretive gatherings.

The annual event, known as the Bilderberg meeting, has been closed to

and press since its inception in the Netherlands in 1954.

The very first one happened in the Bilderberg Hotel.

So that's why they're called Bilderbergers.

The world's elite, trendy leaders get invited.

They are thought of as being the creme de la creme of the world.

The location of the Bilderberg meeting is different each year, as is the roster

of the elites in attendance.

But a strict code of secrecy remains.

They follow the so -called Chatham rule.

which is based on the rule of Chatham House in London, which is the Institute

for International Affairs.

And the rule is quite simple.

It's forbidden to talk about what was said within the

meetings. The idea is that this group of people can sit down and have a free,

open, fair, frank conversation without being held accountable for it.

But the problem is that we don't know what they're talking about. We don't

what decisions are being made. And so paradoxically for the group to have an

open, frank, transparent conversation amongst themselves, they have to

a rule that makes it that much more sort of secretive.

According to Bilderberg officials, their sole aim is to gather political leaders

and industry experts from across the globe to foster a frank dialogue about

significant issues facing the world.

There are those who suspect that this network of world leaders and influential

private citizens may also include a number of the Freemasons.

Some people believe the Bilderberger group is part of the hidden hand agenda

the Freemasons.

These large get -togethers of influencers in the world are kept

Some of the people attending those meetings are Freemasons.

There is a theory that a group comes together and they discuss

what's happening and the direction of the world. Are they able to control the

world?

No. But they can try after free -thinking meetings.

to create a direction.

Freemasonry attracts men who want to improve their communities and the rest

the world.

It's an experiment in governance, and the idea is that we need to constantly

move the experiment forward.

So, if that is an agenda, then I'll take it.

Both the Freemasons and the Bilderbergers claim that their intention

change the world for the better.

However, Rumors persist that these secretive groups have a less benevolent

agenda.

But what fuels these suspicions?

Any time you have what is seen by the outside world to be a secret or a

secretive organization, it almost immediately leads their mind into

something evil is going on within it.

The Masons, the Bilderbergers, are good targets.

Things where people get together and discuss different political ideas behind

closed doors and the public's not allowed.

The public doesn't like that.

What's on the other side of that locked door over there? I can't get in it.

What's back there?

As far as we Freemasons are concerned, we're a secret society. We keep our

secrets. But we are not looking to cause disorder.

We are only looking to cause order.

And what we have to do to get there is what we have to do to get there.

Is it possible that the Freemasons are on the cusp of realizing a new world

order, one that has been centuries in the making?

And if so, what will this new world order look like?

Perhaps some clues can be found by examining the chaos that arises during

international crises.

Chaos that some claim is being used to reshape the world as we know it.

June 3rd, 2020.

In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum

releases a document entitled The Great Reset.

The initiative calls for a complete reimagining of the world's economic and

social systems.

for a more fair, sustainable and resilient future.

High -profile members of the global elite publicly stepped forward in

the agenda, including heir to the British monarchy, Charles, Prince of

Unless we take the action necessary and we build again in a greener,

more sustainable and more inclusive way.

then we will end up having more and more pandemics and more and more disasters.

This is the one moment when we have to make as much progress as we can.

Although many people across the globe see the proposed changes and

as necessary, there are those who question the timing of this initiative.

They suggest that the idea of the Great Reset bears a striking similarity to how

the Freemasons...

transformed the world by founding the United States more than two centuries

The Scottish Rite has a slogan from chaos order, and people would

say, oh, new world order, perhaps.

That seems consistent with the Masonic tradition of fighting the orthodoxy of

the monarchy and the clergy, and that is a Templar tradition.

But they haven't really ever come out saying we're behind the formation of a

world order.

And so the average citizen doesn't know. And there's no way of knowing.

Could it be true, as some suggest, that members of Freemasonry are once again

working to establish a new world order, just as they helped to do during the

American Revolution?

And if so, would it actually bring about more justice, equality, and freedom?

as the founding of the United States eventually did?

I think all we have to do is look back to our early history.

That's how Freemasonry began to creep into the United States.

We want to make society better. The United States was the experiment in the

order for democracy, for the good of mankind, and that was the one

revolution that did succeed.

So the whole idea is we need a new social construct.

I can create a new construct of society with others who can be from different

religions, can speak different languages, who are of different

because we come together around common needs.

Whether it is to liberate people from slavery, whether it is the

struggle for civil rights.

Whether it is even today in Black Lives Matter or wherever you look, somewhere

in there, you're going to trip over a Freemason.

There are lots of people involved in current social change movements, not

here but all over the world. Some of them are going to ultimately be

not because they were at the center of planning at all, but because they're

drawn to making a better world.

New world order. I would like to simply see some order in the world. I would

like to see people respecting each other. I would like to see people stop

for ridiculous reasons.

We don't want to keep repeating the past.

The great American experiment moves forward.

We're making a leap.

I don't call it an agenda.

I call it a service to humanity.

Some Freemasons insist that they must maintain secrecy because they are

perceived as a threat to those in power.

But conspiracy theorists claim that it's the Freemasons who actually wield all

the power and use it to remake the world whenever they see fit.

What is the proof?

For now, it remains hidden, deep within the pages of America's book of

secrets.