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I'm in the nation's capital, Washington, DC.

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And everywhere I look, I'm reminded of the ancient world.

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There are Greek pillars, a giant stupa-shaped dome,

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and even a huge Egyptian-style obelisk.

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But it's not just the architecture that was inspired by civilizations

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that thrived thousands of years ago.

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Many of America's founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson,

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Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, were steeped in ancient knowledge

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and even believed that intelligent life existed throughout the universe.

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But was this belief based on logical speculation, or was it based on something more?

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I'm on a mission to find out if there might be more to this country's origins

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than what we've been told by mainstream scholars,

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and to see if there are any real connections between extraterrestrials and the founding of America.

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My name is Georgiy Tsukaloz.

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I explore the world that exists between reality and speculation, the known and the unknown.

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What we've been taught by mainstream scholars is not the whole picture.

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But I'm convinced that every day we are one step closer to the truth.

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On July 19, 1952, during the height of the Cold War,

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an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport

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picked up seven unidentified flying objects on his radar screen, approaching our nation's capital.

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He initially feared that they were Soviet military,

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but quickly determined otherwise based on their strange movement.

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Witnesses in the airport tower reported seeing large bright lights moving quickly across the sky,

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some speeding away, and others simply disappearing.

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These lights were reported to be seen over the Capitol building, the White House, and the Washington Monument.

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Fighter jets were deployed to intercept the objects,

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but as they closed in, the mysterious lights suddenly disappeared.

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Several days after this event,

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Major General John Samford, Director of Intelligence for the United States Air Force,

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addressed the issue at a Pentagon press conference.

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We have received an analyze between one and two thousand reports

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that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things.

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But what were these strange lights?

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Could they have been some sort of alien spacecraft?

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And if so, what were they doing in Washington, D.C.?

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Some have suggested that since ancient times,

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extraterrestrials have monitored human progress

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and may have even played a role in influencing human history.

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So is it possible that they have been watching over the United States of America

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and even guiding its progress since the nation's very beginnings?

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I'm in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.,

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to meet with historian Richard Dolan,

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an expert on the history of extraterrestrial contact and UFO events in the United States.

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With his help, I hope to find out if there's a history of documented contact right here in Washington

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and possibly dating back to the founding fathers.

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Richard has studied not only early American history,

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but he's authored several books on the hidden history of UFO contact

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and its influence upon our government.

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America or the United States was supposed to be this place of freedom of speech,

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freedom of the press, freedom of religion.

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Absolutely.

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All these things that were censored and looked down upon in the old countries.

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So in your view of history, has a country ever existed

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that was based on the principles of the United States

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with the tenets of freedom of speech and religion and the pursuit of happiness?

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That's the beautiful thing about the United States, the truly beautiful thing,

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is that this was the place where those principles were first incorporated

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into the very foundation of the society.

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That's what we talk about when we make the American dream.

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This is a place where you had freedom of speech, freedom to be yourself.

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America was always considered the New World.

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When Columbus got here, it was the New World.

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And back in the days of Washington, they were very aware of that.

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And when they were creating that republic,

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they consciously were trying to create a new and better world,

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one based on principles of freedom.

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The discovery of America really was like the discovery of a New World

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because when Christopher Columbus sailed westward from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean,

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there were those who thought that he would either reach Asia

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or he would fall off the edge of the earth.

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They had no idea that America even existed.

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On the night of October 11th, 1492, just days before he reached land,

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Columbus wrote in his log that from the deck of the Santa Maria he saw,

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and I quote,

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a light glimmering at a great distance

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and appeared like the light of a wax candle moving up and down.

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Now, they were too far out to see for this to have been a light from shore.

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So what could it have been?

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Some kind of an extraterrestrial beacon,

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a sign that Columbus and his companions were being welcomed?

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But if so, by whom?

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Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, James Madison,

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all of these thinkers and more were enamored of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans.

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And they were very self-consciously trying to bring back those traditions.

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That's why we have this institution called the Senate that comes out of ancient Rome.

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That's why all the architecture is based on classical models,

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the classical pillars and the domes and all of this.

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This is all right out of classical models.

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I think it's a great homage to the great free thinkers of the ancient world

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because you wouldn't create these structures unless it were to honor

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where this whole knowledge and these ideas originated.

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For sure.

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Shortly after the start of the American Revolutionary War,

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on July 4th, 1776, the 13 colonies formally severed their ties to England,

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both politically and philosophically.

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It is well documented that many of the men whom we call the Founding Fathers

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fully embraced the Age of Enlightenment,

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a social movement that valued science over superstition

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and individual human rights over what they considered the tyranny of the European monarchies.

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A big part of this philosophy was a concept dating back to the 5th century BC

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called the plurality of worlds,

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the belief that life exists not only on Earth, but throughout the entire universe.

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One of the questions I'm dying to ask you is that

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there are these rumors that have circulated that at some point

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George Washington apparently made contact with these green-skinned people.

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Is there any truth to that because I find it incredible?

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I did look into this.

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I feel that there's no justification for this whatsoever.

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But here's the interesting thing about Washington.

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There were many stories or myths about him during the days of Valley Forge,

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which was a really horrible, difficult, dark time for Washington and the Continental Army.

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And many of these men starved and froze to death that winter.

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It was horrific.

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And during that time, Washington would go out to pray,

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trying to get guidance, spiritual guidance.

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And he had some kind of mystical encounter.

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He supposedly was met by this woman who called him son of the Republic.

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According to one of the accounts, a strange so-called woman in white

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informed Washington of the victory that the Continental Army would have against the British.

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She presented him with a vision of the new United States of America.

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General Washington was even shown a map of the United States.

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And as raindrops fell onto this map, cities began to appear,

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popping up throughout the entire country.

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It was a model of what the United States would look like in the future.

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So that is very interesting to me because the idea or the legends of cosmic mothers

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are prevalent throughout ancient history.

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And it supposedly surfaced from one of the survivors of Valley Forge.

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You get a number of these myths, stories about Washington

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having some kind of mystical encounter at Valley Forge.

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Could it be true? Sure it could be true.

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This is the most esoteric piece of paper money that exists on the face of the earth.

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It has hidden symbols that only somebody who has been taught to decipher them

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can really understand them.

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I'm about to meet with Grandmaster A.K. Melias, a long-time Freemason in Washington, D.C.

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And I want to find out about Freemasonry's influence on some of our founding fathers,

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such as Washington and Jefferson,

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and to see how Freemasonry may have impacted the birth of our nation.

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This is amazing.

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So, Grandmaster A.K. Melias, where are we? What is this particular room right here?

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Please call me Akram first. I will. Thank you.

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Well, we're here in the Masonic Lodge Room of the Scottish Rite in Washington, D.C.

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Architecture, in short, is very important in Masonry,

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and that is one of the reasons why the Supreme Being is referred to as the Grand Architect of the Universe by Freemasons.

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Now, the letter G, quite often people think it's related to God.

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In fact, the letter G is the initial of the word geometry,

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and the idea, again, of the Grand Architect of the Universe is the Grand Geometrician.

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It doesn't matter what religion they come from,

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but the word architect brings reason, design, and beauty together.

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And the origins really go back to the Renaissance period,

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which is the time when scientific discovery, the explosion in art,

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and Renaissance going back to some of the ancients, the Greeks, and the Romans.

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What was the lost knowledge? How can we bring it back?

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This is incredibly fascinating to me because these are essentially the original tenets of the United States.

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And so with the idea that George Washington was a Mason,

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people have forgotten that in the end it is all connected.

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Absolutely. I may even go further by saying it was a lot of the Masonic ideals and principles

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that inspired the founding fathers and helped the founding of this nation.

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According to historians, nine signers of the Declaration of Independence

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and 13 signers of the Constitution were Freemasons.

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And Akim told me that Master Mason George Washington was so passionate about the concepts of Freemasonry

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that on September 18th, 1793, he insisted on laying the cornerstone of the Capitol building

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according to Masonic ceremonial traditions.

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George Washington, dressed in his full Masonic regalia,

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led a Masonic parade from the White House to Jenkins Hill, which is now called Capitol Hill,

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to lay the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol,

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the powerful symbol of this new grand experiment, the legislative branch.

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Was it more acceptable for George Washington to show up in his regalia with people back in the day scoff at that?

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Or was it something that was accepted in society?

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No, it was very much accepted.

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And as a matter of fact, the United States stood out in a way

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because so many of the founders, founding fathers of the United States, were Freemasons and proud to be Freemasons.

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One of the most fascinating paintings that exists of George Washington is an 1866 lithograph

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that depicts him in his Masonic regalia, and there is Masonic imagery throughout the painting.

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Over his right shoulder is the popular Freemason symbol of Jacob's ladder,

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which comes from the biblical story where Jacob witnesses angels ascending and descending a ladder from heaven.

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But in the painting, the ladder doesn't appear to be coming from heaven,

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it looks to be coming out of a dark, round object emitting multicolored lights.

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So are we really looking at a ladder from heaven here, or could this be a ramp coming out of some type of craft?

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And if so, what is it doing in a painting of George Washington?

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I can get you into some of the additional Masonic symbolism in the city.

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The Washington Monument is an extraordinary example of Masonic symbolism in the city.

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In fact, it was the one thing that triggered my interest, curiosity.

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Really?

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He said, what is an obelisk, an Egyptian-styled structure doing here in the middle of Washington, DC?

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The architect was a Freemason.

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At 555 feet high, the Washington Monument is the largest obelisk on the planet

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and hearkens back to the ancient world more than any other structure in Washington, DC.

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The Freemasons built it so that the constellation of Pleiades would be visible directly over its pyramid-shaped tip.

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But even more fascinating is the fact that they also installed a reflecting pool.

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So the observer is given the impression that the monument itself is not only pointing up to the heavens,

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but is pointing from the heavens down into the earth.

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This notion represents another concept that the Freemasons adopted from the ancient world,

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that of as above, so below, meaning the world of the universe is also right here, all around us.

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Then I started looking at the architects and then I discovered that all the major architects

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who worked on these major structures were also Freemasons from the Supreme Court to the United States Capitol

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to the White House to the Lincoln Memorial and I said, wow!

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And of course, an architect is an artist and an artist reflects his or her views, believes whatever it is in their art.

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Now, just as interesting to me as the Washington Monument is the dome of the Capitol building.

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I mean, look at it. It looks exactly like a stupa, a bell-shaped dome that was believed by ancient Buddhists to have mystical powers.

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Numerous ancient Sanskrit texts describe stupas as chariots of the gods,

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flying machines in which powerful beings came down from the heavens.

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There are even those who believe that the stupas design helps people underneath it to connect directly with extraterrestrial knowledge.

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So I've always been curious about the dollar bill and since I've got you right here,

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I wanted to see if there's anything you can explain to me about the symbolism that exists on our dollar bill.

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This is the most esoteric piece of paper money that exists on the face of the earth and esoteric means it has hidden symbols

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that only somebody who has been taught to decipher them can really understand that.

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So I'm going to start with the pyramid. The pyramid is really connected to the obelisk because both are two great symbols from ancient Egypt, the great builders.

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Now, below the pyramid, you will see there is a Latin inscription. It says, Novos Ordo Seclorum, which in Latin means New Order for the Ages.

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The founders were basically telling us, it is up to you, future generations of Americans to keep the building going.

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And to do that building, you need the source of light. That's why you see on top of the pyramid an all-seeing eye with light in a triangle.

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It's also a symbol from ancient Egypt. It's mythological. You interpret it any way you want.

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I mean, there are countless cultures with that exact same idea.

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The Masonic symbolism on the dollar bill is fascinating, especially the all-seeing eye, because this is an ancient symbol that is sometimes meant to suggest that there is someone or something watching over us.

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So for men who were promoting science and reason over religious faith, what might this mean?

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Was the all-seeing eye meant to allude to the Almighty God? Or could it be that the founding fathers believed that there was some other, perhaps, some kind of extraterrestrial presence guiding their way?

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A presence that may have had a vested interest in the American experiment.

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Panked out, Pierre La Fon, he was the engineer of the city of Washington, the designer of the city of the planner, and he played with symmetry, which was a brand new revolutionary concept.

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I'm talking with Grandmaster Akram Elias, a longtime Freemason in Washington, D.C., who has been pointing out to me just how abundant Masonic symbolism is in America's capital.

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But what really caught my interest is the fact that the symbolism doesn't end with the architecture. There are symbols built right into the layout of the city itself.

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Since Washington, D.C. was designed on a map, what makes it unique is that it had to be designed with the intent that it should reflect a philosophy of government and geometry.

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So if you look at Washington, D.C., everything is geometrically shaped. The capital is at the center. The district's divided into four quadrants.

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Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest. Very scientific.

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So now, when you look at the city from above, you're going to see the intersection between avenues and streets forming, obviously, geometric shapes. Triangles, rectangles, squares.

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This is to make a very important point. This new form of government will not be based on religion to govern the affairs of the people.

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It will be based on the scientific method, geometry, reason, and beauty.

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I must call you Grandmaster Elias, because this has been very, very enlightening.

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To find out more about the design of our nation's capital, I'm heading to Logan Circle in downtown Washington to meet up with Freemason, Mark Kolkarevera, and local historical surveyor, Chas Langlin.

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These are some very interesting instruments, and I presume they're quite old. They're wonderful.

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1700s, early 1800s is the period of time that the city of Washington was surveyed.

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To get a hands-on demonstration of how the founding fathers planned and surveyed the city and with the actual instruments they would have used was really amazing.

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This is the angle device, transit. This is how they measure distances in colonial times.

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Can you show us here on the field how some of these things were actually implemented?

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They didn't have a flexible steel tape. Prior to that, it was this. 33-foot surveyors chain.

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Why 33 feet? Exactly. Why?

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33 feet works into a mile evenly. It works into an acre evenly. You want to try it?

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Yeah, absolutely. Where do I go?

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It's interesting that the length of the surveyors chain is exactly 33 feet.

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Three is a mystical number in Freemasonry dating back to ancient times.

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Is it possible that a 33-foot measuring device was chosen once again to keep with Masonic principles, or is this just a coincidence?

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Clunk it down. Congratulations. You've just measured the first 33 feet of the continental United States.

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Keep going, then measure it back and you will do what the surveyors did.

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It's awesome to think that the entire city of Washington, D.C. was measured to make such a design using nothing but chains.

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And the effort it clearly took the founding fathers to realize their vision got me even more curious about the design they chose and the purpose behind it.

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Is it possible that the founding fathers perhaps intended for it to be recognized from the sky?

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What do you think somebody might see seeing Washington, D.C. from space?

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You know, there's been articles that Lafont speculated about that. I think they're true. Pierre Lafont.

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He was the engineer of the city of Washington, the designer of the city of the planner.

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And he played with symmetry, which was a brand new revolutionary concept.

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The eastern 13 colonies are, if you look at them from the air, the lines and the roads and the fields are all cockeyed and caddy-wampus.

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It's the old English system. That system came here. We were English colonies.

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He wanted his plan to be symmetrical.

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These circles were lined up on high points, but then he played with them.

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He wanted it and it's not exactly symmetrical. He wasn't able to get it perfect.

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But he played with it. Make this parallel with that, parallel with that, this, this, this, this. Make them parallel.

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In other words, he could have connected an avenue from here to here, but he didn't because he wanted symmetry.

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He was concerned about what the plan would look like from the air.

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This is really fascinating to think that the founding fathers, along with surveyor Pierre Lafont, also a Freemason,

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considered what Washington, DC, would look like from high above the earth when they came up with their design for the city.

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In the ancient world, we can find a number of sites purposely designed to be seen from the sky.

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Most famously, we have the Nazca Lines in Peru, but there's also the serpent mound in Ohio,

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the co-functumes in Japan, the Atacama giant in Chile, and numerous others.

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And of course, in the ancient world, the mythology was always that these places were meant to be seen by the gods.

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So what were the intentions of the founding fathers?

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Could it be that the founding fathers, many of whom believe that intelligent life existed elsewhere on other planets,

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designed Washington, DC in the anticipation that America might one day be visited by extraterrestrials?

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Or is it possible that America had already been visited hundreds of years ago?

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How do you think Franklin has approached the idea of the plurality of worlds?

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Franklin took it as a given that there were many, many other worlds, and he just took that as a matter of fact.

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On April 5th, 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson received one of America's first official UFO reports.

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Astronomer William Dunbar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana reported to Jefferson that he witnessed a bright glowing light

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the size of a large house hovering 200 yards above the ground.

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Dunbar said that it was very bright, gave out a lot of heat, and crashed to the earth close by.

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Jefferson took this report very seriously, so much so that he wrote about it in his diary.

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He even presented it to the American Philosophical Society, and to this day,

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Thomas Jefferson along with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter remained the most powerful public figures ever

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to officially acknowledge a UFO encounter.

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It's incredible to me that Thomas Jefferson reported a UFO sighting and almost no one today knows about it.

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But one of his contemporaries was even more adamant that we are not alone in the universe.

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I'm in Philadelphia to learn more about the founding father who was the most outspoken of all

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concerning his ideas about extraterrestrial life, Benjamin Franklin.

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To find out why Ben Franklin was such a strong proponent of the notion that life exists beyond Earth,

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I'm meeting up with author and historian Michael Zuckerman.

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Michael and I have arranged to meet at Philadelphia's Stenton House, built by James Logan, a friend of Ben Franklin's.

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So did Ben Franklin frequent this house?

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Franklin would have come here a lot because Franklin loved books, and Logan had the most amazing library, for sure in Pennsylvania.

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Really?

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Probably in all of early America, and the only library that ever approached it was Ben Franklin's own library, as he built it later on.

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Even though America's founding fathers included some of the most brilliant men America has ever known,

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Benjamin Franklin still managed to stand out.

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He was an inspired genius, who's advanced scientific ideas on everything from electricity and light waves,

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to weather patterns and ocean currents, place him on par with men like Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.

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He contributed to everything. He was the greatest diplomat America ever had, the greatest scientist we ever had.

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When he was the most important scientist of the 18th century period, and he got honorary degrees from half a dozen universities,

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he was a great writer, he was obviously an inventor, but he was a civic leader, he was the most powerful politician in Pennsylvania.

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He was a military man. There was nothing he couldn't do.

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It's staggering what Benjamin Franklin was able to accomplish with virtually no formal education.

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As a young man, he refused to attend church, but instead educated himself about all the major religions.

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He was the antithesis of spiritual. Despite that, he read widely in theology.

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He wrote more theology than any non-clergeyman in all of colonial America.

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How do you think Franklin has approached the idea of the plurality of worlds?

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For people of some scientific knowledge in the 18th century, it was a given scientific fact.

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Franklin said that if you're going to pray, it's a grand mistake to pray to God, because God has to watch over this enormous cosmos.

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God can't be bothered with this tiny little planet Earth.

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So Franklin took it as a given, that there were many, many other worlds.

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He imagined serried ranks of angels taking care of different parts of that universe, and he just took that as a matter of fact.

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The concept of the plurality of worlds originated in ancient Greece.

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But what many people don't know is that the founding fathers were also heavily influenced by Native American culture,

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and their stories of beings that descended from the stars.

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It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the concept of life existing beyond Earth had a strong influence on the founding fathers.

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But I'm really curious to discover what they learned from the people who first inhabited America.

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It's interesting that you would have a creation story and a recognition that North America looked like that without satellites in those days.

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You just took the words out of my mouth.

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At this point of my investigation, I'm convinced that America was founded by men and women who were undoubtedly religious.

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But they were also tolerant of the idea that intelligent life might exist throughout the universe.

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They also intentionally found their new nation on the ancient philosophies of Rome, Greece, Egypt and India.

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Civilizations which in turn credited their origins to so-called gods,

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visitors from the stars who came to Earth and shared their wisdom with mankind.

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I'm also becoming convinced that another ancient civilization played a significant role in conducting the American experiment, that of the native Iroquois.

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For this reason, I've traveled to Georgetown in Washington, D.C. to meet with Dr. Donald Grindy, an expert on Iroquois history.

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How are you?

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Nice to meet you.

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How are you?

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I'm interested to hear how the Iroquois Six Nations Treaty may have actually been an inspiration to our very own constitution.

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I've heard all these different stories about how the Iroquois played an instrumental part in the creation of our nation.

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What can you tell me about the Iroquois?

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Well, the Iroquois are Haudenosaunee people, is what they call themselves, which means people of the Long House.

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They are basically in New York State and Southern Ontario.

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They're the indigenous people to those areas.

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What can you tell me about Chief Canas Atego? Who was he and why was he so significant?

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Well, Canas Atego was a Six Nations Iroquois chief.

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He spoke at a treaty that Benjamin Franklin was in attendance in 1754.

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And he told the American colonists that they should think about developing a confederation similar to the Iroquois confederacy.

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Did this great law of peace inspire the founding fathers to found this nation on similar laws?

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Yes, yes. Benjamin Franklin was inspired about the Iroquois, how they govern.

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It is generally regarded as one of the first steps towards independence.

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Are there any specific concepts that you're aware of that have made it into our present day government?

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Well, I mean, there's we the people, which is sovereignty or power resides in the people.

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Under the monarchical system, sovereignty resided in the king who was appointed by God.

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And we the people is how the Iroquois constitution starts is about the people.

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I'm excited to see how much the principles and even the structure of American government was inspired by the native Iroquois.

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But I'm also curious if the founding fathers were equally influenced by the Iroquois own stories about having extraterrestrial origins.

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What can you tell me about Sky Woman?

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Sky Woman is part of the Iroquois Hedinoshone creation story.

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There's a world in the sky and she falls down towards the earth, which is covered with water.

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And then a giant turtle rises up to catch her.

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And that land is what Hedinoshone people call Turtle Island, which is North America.

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If you look at a map of North America, North America looks like a turtle.

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Mexico down to Panama is the tail.

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Florida is one back leg.

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Baja California is the other back leg.

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The front leg is Alaska and the other front leg is up near Labrador.

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And the turtle is kind of like that.

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It's interesting that you would have a creation story and a recognition that North America looked like that without satellites in those days.

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You just took the words out of my mouth.

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It's fascinating to hear that a turtle figures into this Iroquois creation story because in ancient cultures all over the world you can find origin stories that begin with a cosmic turtle.

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Now in the case of the Iroquois, it is said that a giant turtle rose up to catch the Sky Woman.

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But could this really be a reference to some kind of spacecraft?

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But even if the turtle in the story is only referring to the shape of North America, that's just as incredible.

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Because how would ancient Native Americans have had any idea about the shape of the continent unless they could see it from space?

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When the American Revolution started, one of the symbols of the colonists was a Native American woman.

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It isn't until the 1840s or 50s that you get Uncle Sam.

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Now this is fascinating to me that one of the earliest symbols of colonial America was a Native American woman who may have been a representation of the Iroquois Sky Woman.

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Because we also have that weird story of George Washington being visited at Valley Forage by an angelic female being.

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In one of the various versions of the story, the Sky Woman goes on to spread soil and seed while standing on the back of a turtle.

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The turtle then grows and grows and becomes rich and fertile.

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So is the story of the Sky Woman simply a colorful myth?

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Or could it be a description of a real flesh and blood extraterrestrial?

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My investigation must continue.

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I'm fascinated to learn about the strong connections between men like Benjamin Franklin and the Native Iroquois,

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especially as it relates to the incorporation of Iroquois philosophies and laws into the U.S. Constitution.

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But I'm also equally excited to find out that the Iroquois have an origin story concerning a so-called Sky Woman,

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who they believe came to Earth tens of thousands of years ago,

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and that she served as a symbol for the United States until the mid-19th century.

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To learn more, I've arranged to meet with Native American folklorist Dr. Joanne Shenandoah,

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a member of the Oneida Iroquois Confederacy.

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Joanne, what can you tell me how the Iroquois had influence on the founding fathers?

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Iroquois people had a beautiful thing to offer America, and that was democracy, equality, women's rights,

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and the respect for human dignity, religious rights. There were no class systems.

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We didn't have kings and queens.

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What can you tell me about the legend of Sky Woman?

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First of all, we don't consider it a legend. We consider it reality.

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We believe this is the beginning of who we are as a people on this earth.

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When Joanne told me that for her people, these stories of beings descending from the stars are not legend, but reality,

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it gave me goosebumps because that is the whole point of the ancient astronaut theory.

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But would it be safe to say that the Iroquois greatly influenced the Declaration of Independence and perhaps even the Constitution?

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Most definitely. They say my ancestors seven generations ago, Chief Shenandoah, was there on the second floor when that was being signed.

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So I mean, that's pretty amazing right there. The room full of Iroquois people there to witness this event,

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this great event of how people could live in freedom and democracy.

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So do you think that the Iroquois creation story had influence on the founding fathers?

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Yes. And I'm not so sure that America is aware even of the fact that the Iroquois brought together the colonists and showed them a different way.

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I truly appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

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If someone were to challenge and ask me if it is at all possible that the United States perhaps has some ancient astronaut origins

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or at least some connections, then I tell them to look no further than right here in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

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Because not only can you find entire monuments and buildings inspired by ancient civilizations,

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civilizations which believe that mankind's ancestors have traveled here from other worlds,

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but also because as bizarre as this may sound, there is a statue that could be interpreted as an extraterrestrial right here out in the open for everyone to see.

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Where is this, you might ask?

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There, on top of the capital dome, is a statue called the Spirit of Freedom, but it might just as well be called the Sky Woman.

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It was sculpted by Thomas Crawford and dates back to the 1860s.

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When you look closely, you can see that she is dressed in what appears to be the native garb of the Iroquois,

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and on her head is an elaborate headdress made of eagle feathers which is ringed with stars.

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Perhaps we shouldn't only be thinking of America as having founding fathers, but also a founding mother.

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Is it possible that the Iroquois stories about a Sky Woman were really an attempt by early humans to describe the visitation of a female astronaut in the remote past?

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And could this mean that it was really an extraterrestrial who inspired the Iroquois to believe that a good government should guarantee its citizens life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

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Although I'm not entirely convinced, I am open to the idea that the statue on top of the dome could be a depiction of a real flesh and blood extraterrestrial

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whose influence can still be found by those who study our nation's laws, examine our most sacred of institutions and everyone who challenges authority in search of aliens.