The suspicions of "Freemasonry" involvement by the witnesses will never go away.
But I think it's not an issue of "Freemasons" as much as some related secretive cult similar to the Freemasons. There are many branches of these secret societies. The winged disc, for instance, was more a symbol of the "British Israelites" than the "Freemasons".
My take on this is that Russell, being familiar with Freemasonry, developed his own form of the secret cult and putting the winged disc and the Knights of Templar emblems on the magazines invited various secretive cults into the organization and the even made a quote loosely referring to that.
Also condemning them is that they used to publish "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hyslop which dealt with a lot of connections between Babylon and modern religious symbolism, but far too specific not to be considered more than a manual for the Freemasons or those following the same type of secretive cultic references. You know when you tell someone about something even though you are claiming to be against it, you are also teaching them about that as well. That's why parents don't like their children learning about contraceptives and birth control since you can't teach that without giving sex instruction.
At any rate, it would appear that they started out with fundamental Freemasonry and then branched out and became more subtle and refined and sort of got into the "tower goddess" cult end of it.
The people who are aware of the "mysteries", of course, know when there is secretive symbolism involved. Rutherford of note, if he were a Freemason or into the mysteries would have easily recognized the "Song of Solomon" as a pagan "mysteries" book that got into the Bible canon. Thus the Tower Goddess references in the pagan book of the Song of Solomon became the symbolic references on the face of the Watchtower. Thus one way to express the goddess is through architecture. Look up Song of Solomon and you'll see a reference to the goddess to her "wall" and her breasts on the wall, which is the structure of the Watchtower.
Also the original scene of the older watchtower showing the stream of water coming from the white-capped mountain is simply the breast of the goddess providing water and millk as is the common symbolism of Isis and Ishtar. Plus the evergreens which are used at Christmastime also represent the goddess since the Christmas tree is based upon the original tree goddess.
The deep gorge formed by the river is also mystical since it represents AGE. Just as a smooth stone represents a very old stone since it probably was a larger, ragged stone before but after years and years became smooth, etc. Thus a deep valley carved out by a stream is also representing a very old entity connected with the goddess.
Of note, Rutherford, the ultimate Apostate who wanted Russell to be the "faithful and discrete slave" but now the WTS is denying it, in addition to proclaiming Russell as the FDS in the 7th volume, he had a special chapter totally devoted to interpreting "Song of Solomon" which contains much of the "Freemasonry" mysteries cult doctrine, and the Watchtower symbolism with the wall reflect that secret reference to the goddess.
So are they into Freemasonry? Maybe not the formal Freemasonry we see around, but a form of their own Freemasonry for sure based upon the "Goddess of Fortresses"--the "Tower Goddess".
If you look up "Tower Goddess" I think you'll see some references to that, so it has been pointed out before.
JC