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Banned
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Originally Posted by pr0f3n
.... It's easy to understand why you sense a cabal, some type of guiding cadre, but it's just people being people. .....
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I could not disagree with you more, and I can make a reasonable case to support my contrary opinion:
The History Channel:The Plot to Overthrow FDR
43 min - Sep 20, 2006
This post is a presentation about the corporatist "bi-partisan" plot to overthrow FDR's government in 1934 and install a fascist dictatorship in it's place. The point of this thread is that the paranoia, propaganda, and political ambition of the wealthy conservative segment in this country, was and is a cancer fomenting war and the threat of war for the sake of the economic churning (opportunity) that enriches this segment with the wealth that buys the power and influence that controls the rest of us and has bankrupted the US treasury...
Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...9957-2,00.html
Plot Without Plotters
Monday, Dec. 03, 1934
....After these highly embarrassing incidents, General Butler found it best to resign from the Marines in 1931 to devote himself to politics and public speaking as a private citizen. In 1932 he went to Washington to harangue the Bonus Army, was an unsuccessful candidate for Senator from Pennsylvania on a Dry ticket. Last December he exhorted veterans: 'If the Democrats take care of you, keep them in —if not, put 'em out." In May the current Butlerism was: "War Is A Racket." Last month he told a Manhattan Jewish congregation that he would never again fight outside the U. S. General Butler's sensational tongue had not been heard in the nation's Press for more than a week when he cornered a reporter for the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post, poured into his ears the lurid tale that he had been offered leadership of a Fascist Putsch, scheduled for next year.
Congressmen Samuel Dickstein, from Manhattan's lower East Side, and John W. McCormack, from South Boston, picked up the fantastic story and summoned the doughty warrior from his home at Newtown Square, Pa., to a closed hearing of the Un-American Activities Committee.
The general began by saying that last summer Gerald McGuire, a bond salesman for G. M.P. Murphy & Co. of Manhattan, had approached him in behalf of a big private investor named Robert Sterling Clark, offered him $18,000 to address the American Legion convention in behalf of hard money. This the general refused to do. Then, said the general, McGuire. a onetime Connecticut Legion commander, had broached the big plan for the Fascist coup. Du Pont and Remington were putting up the arms. Morgan & Co. and G. M.P. Murphy & Co. were putting up $3,000.000 to raise an army of 500.000 veterans which apparently would be concentrated at Elkridge. If General Butler refused to be "the man on the White Horse" who would lead it into Washington and wrest the Government from Franklin Roosevelt, command would be offered to others in on the scheme—General Johnson, General MacArthur, the three ex-commanders of the American Legion. General Butler said he had "bided his time" until he had heard the whole plot, then made his revelations.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...9957-3,00.html
Thanking their stars for having such sure-fire publicity dropped in their laps, Representatives McCormack & Dickstein began calling witnesses to expose the "plot." But there did not seem to be any plotters.
A bewildered army captain, commandant at the Elkridge CCC camp, could shed no light on the report that his post was to be turned into a revolutionary base.
Mr. Morgan, just off a boat from Europe, had nothing to say, but Partner Lamont did: "Perfect moonshine! Too unutterably ridiculous to comment upon!"
"He had better be pretty damn careful," growled General Johnson. "Nobody said a word to me about anything of this kind, and if they did I'd throw them out the window."
G.M.-P. Murphy & Co.'s President Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, Wartime lieutenant colonel, snorted: "A fantasy! . . . and I don't believe there is a word of truth in it with respect to Mr. McGuire."
Investor Clark, in Paris, freely admitted trying to get General Butler to use his influence with the Legion against dollar devaluation, but stoutly declared: "I am neither a Fascist nor a Communist, but an American." He threatened a libel suit "unless the whole affair is relegated to the funny sheets by Sunday."
"It sounds like the best laugh story of the year," chimed in General MacArthur from Washington.
From San Francisco, Socialist Norman Thomas wryly doubted that "it would be worth $3,000,000 to any Wall Street group to attempt to overthrow the Government under the present Administration, because Wall Street and Big Business have flourished under it more than any other group."
Dr. William Albert Wirt, Gary, Ind. school superintendent, who thought the Reds were about to capture the Government last spring, took a practical view of General Butler's Fascist uprising. "Three million dollars would be a mere bagatelle for a revolution," said he. "Why, that would be only $6 a head for an army of 500,000. . . ."
Only public figure to support General Butler's story was Commander James Van Zandt of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He said he had known about the plot all along, that he had refused to participate in it.
Though most of the country was again laughing at the latest Butler story, the special House Committee declined to join in the merriment. Turning from the Fascist putsch yarn to investigate Communism among New York fur workers, Congressman Dickstein promised Commander Van Zandt a later hearing in Washington. "From present indications," said the publicity-loving New York Representative, "General Butler has the evidence. He's not making serious charges unless he has something to back them up. We will have some men here with bigger names than Butler's before this is over."
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<h3>Although for months, the corporate news media delighted in making Major Gen. Smedley Butler look ridiculous, in a footnoot, at the bottom of yet another article painting Gen. Butler as a clown, Time magazine printed:</h3>
Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...754551,00.html
Monday, Feb. 25, 1935
"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:
...To Pittsburgh one morning went eagle-nosed Major-General Smedley Darlington ("Old Gimlet Eye") Butler, to speak at a banquet.* That same day Jimmy ("Schnozzle") Durante was appearing at a Pittsburgh theatre. Stepping off his train, General Butler thrust his head forward in characteristic pose, stomped down the platform. Loiterers, mistaking him for the well-publicized Durante, began to cheer. That evening nosey Comedian Durante turned up at the banquet where nosey General Butler was speaking. A cameraman snapped them nose to nose.....
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...4551-3,00.html
....Also last week the House Committee on Un-American Activities purported to report that <h2>a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.</h2>
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Quote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9E5...3bDEznXMP78Wpc
The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the ... - Google Books Result
by Jules Archer - 2007 - History - 256 pages
... his broadcast over WCAU on February 17, 1935, Butler revealed that some of the ... he growled, had "stopped dead in its tracks when it got near the top. ...
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Quote:
http://www.historytoday.com/dm_linki...spx?amid=10081
Home >
History Today > Magazine Online > Archives (1980-2008) > Volume: 45 Issue: 11 > An American Coup d'Etat?
Volume: 45 Issue: 11 | November 1995 | Page 42-47 | Words: 3980 | Author: Cramer, Clayton
AN AMERICAN COUP D'ETAT?
Did America's far right plot a coup d'etat against Franklin Roosevelt and his new Deal -- only to be foiled by a retired Marine Corps general? Clayton Cramer lifts the lid on an intriguing but little-known tale.
Some Americans regard their country as superior to other nations because they do not change governments by coup d'etat and never have. Perhaps because of a long tradition of power changing hands by election, Americans regard their nation as immune to the use of force for political purposes. True, assassins have killed four presidents, but these deaths did not lead to turmoil and chaos; the government simply followed well-established procedures for transferring control to the vice-president. Unlike other nations where assassination often leads to civil war, the United States has avoided this.
How different is America from nations where political power comes quite directly 'from the barrel of a gun'? A curious footnote to American history suggests that, except for the personal integrity of a remarkable American general, a coup d'etat intended to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt from office in 1934 might have plunged America into civil war.
This remarkable man was Smedley Darlington Butler, retired US Marine Corps Major-General. Butler is the sort of person for whom the word' colourful' is woefully inadequate. This is a man who won America's highest military award for bravery (the Congressional Medal of Honor) twice. His style of warfare was unusual not only for his personal courage, but for the energy he put into avoiding bloodshed when it was possible to achieve his aims in other ways. Not surprisingly, this engendered a remarkable loyalty among the men who served under him --and that loyalty was why certain men asked Butler to lead a military attack on Washington DC, with the goal of capturing President Roosevelt.
Butler was more than a remarkable soldier. He served as police commissioner of Philadelphia during 1924-25 (on loan from the Marines), in an attempt to enforce Prohibition. While the effort was a failure, his insistence on enforcing the law against wealthy party goers as well as poor immigrants established his reputation as a man of high integrity. He was not universally loved, but he was widely respected.
Butler is best remembered today for his oft-quoted statement in the socialist newspaper Common Sense in 1935:
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested . . . Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate this racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.
In his book War Is A Racket, Butler argued for a powerful navy, but one prohibited from travelling more than 200 miles from the US coastline. Military aircraft could travel no more than 500 miles from the US coast and the army would be prohibited from leaving the United States altogether. Butler also proposed that all workers in defence industries, from the lowest labourer to the highest executive, be limited to 'thirty dollars a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get'. He also proposed that a declaration of war should be passed by a plebiscite in which only those subject to conscription would be eligible to vote.
From 1935 to 1937, Butler was a spokesman for the League Against War and Fascism, a Communist-dominated organization of the time. He also participated in the Third US Congress Against War and Fascism, sharing the platform with well-known leftists of the era, including the poet Langston Hughes, Heywood Broun and Roger Baldwin. When the Spanish Civil War threatened the collapse of the Soviet-supported Spanish government, the League's pacifism evaporated and they supported intervention. Butler, however, remained true to his belief in non-interventionism. 'What the hell is it our business what's going on in Spain?' he asked. But before Butler became involved in these causes, he had already exposed a fascist plot against his own government.
Butler had friends in the press and Congress, so he could not be ignored when he came forward in late 1934 with a tale of conspiracy against President Roosevelt, in which he had been asked to take a leading role. At first glance, Butler seems an unlikely candidate for such a position. Even though Butler was a Republican, in 1932 he campaigned for Roosevelt, calling himself a 'Republican-for-Ex-President Hoover'. (Butler had a poor relationship with Hoover going back to their time together during the Boxer Rebellion, when Hoover had been a civilian engineer in Peking and had behaved in a rather cowardly manner.)
But there were good reasons why someone seeking to overthrow the US government would have wanted Butler involved. Butler was a powerful symbol to many American soldiers and veterans -- an enlisted man's general, one that spoke out for their interests while on active duty and after retirement. Butler would have attracted men to his cause that would not otherwise have participated in a march on Washington.
Butler would also have been a good choice because of his military skills. His personal courage and tactical skill would have made him a powerful commander of an irregular army. Finally, his ties of friendship to many officers still on active duty might have undermined military opposition to his force, as friends and colleagues sought to avoid a direct confrontation with him.
Another reason that the plotters might have approached such an unlikely candidate was that Butler was not regarded as having a great intellect. After the First World War, the Marine Corps had began to emphasise a new college-educated professionalism. Butler, one of the old-style less educated 'bushwhacker' generals, might have seemed easy to manipulate.
Butler testified that bond trader Gerald MacGuire had approached him in the summer of 1933. MacGuire claimed to represent wealthy Wall Street broker Grayson Murphy, Singer sewing machine heir Robert Sterling Clark and other unnamed men of wealth. They asked Butler to speak publicly on behalf of the gold standard, recently abandoned by Roosevelt. MacGuire's rationale as to why Butler should ally himself with the gold standard cause was that the veterans of the First World War were due a bonus in 1945. As MacGuire told Butler, 'We want to see the soldiers' bonus paid in gold. We do not want the soldiers to have rubber money or paper money'.
It appears that the plotters underestimated Butler's intelligence and character. When this explanation failed to persuade Butler, MacGuire and Clark offered him money, abandoning any pretence of civic-mindedness. Butler's sense of honour prevented him from speaking in favour of any policy for mercenary reasons.
MacGuire eventually told Butler their real aim. MacGuire asked Butler to lead an army of 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington DC. The stated mission was to 'protect' Roosevelt from other plotters, and install a 'secretary of general welfare' to 'take all the worries and details off of his shoulders . . .' But Butler saw through their supposed concern for Roosevelt. He testified before COngress that he told MacGuire:
[M]y interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home . . .
Yes; and then you will put Somebody in there you.can run; is that the idea? The President will go around and christen babies and dedicate bridges and kiss children. Mr. Roosevelt will never agree to that himself.
Butler deduced that the real goal was a coup to take Roosevelt captive and force reinstatement of the gold standard, the loss of which many wealthy Americans feared would lead to rapid inflation. The plotters would keep Roosevelt as a figurehead until he could be 'encouraged' to retire.
That MacGuire had significant financial backing behind him seems clear, considering the substantial bank savings books he showed to Butler. What remains unclear is whether the names MacGuire dropped (other than Robert Sterling Clark) were really involved, or whether MacGuire was a conman.
MacGuire's claims and financial resources alone did not convince Butler that such a conspiracy actually existed. The fulfillment of a series of startling predictions by MacGuire did finally persuade Butler that there was more than just hot air involved.
MacGuire knew in advance of significant personnel changes in the White House. He correctly predicted the formation of the American Liberty League (the major conservative opposition to Roosevelt) and the principal players in it. Especially disturbing was that many of the supposed backers of the plot were also members of the League. MacGuire's claim that the League was part of the plot could not be easily dismissed.
The American Liberty League was a successor to the highly effective Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, the lobbying organization responsible for the repeal of the 'Noble Experiment'. From its formation in 1918 until 1926, the AAPA made little progress, at least partly because it had little money. But from 1926 money poured into the AAPA from some of America's wealthiest men, including Pierre, Irenee and Lammot du Pont, John J. Raskob and Charles H. Sabin. The AAPA spent its new-found wealth on the distribution of literature and on the formation of a bewildering number of associated organizations. These gave the impression of a grassroots movement, rather than a collection of millionaires feeding press releases to friendly newspapers. The AAPA also rapidly took control of the Democratic Party, with one of their supporters, Al Smith, receiving the 1928 Democratic presidential nomination. While the AAPA had powerful friends within the Republican Party, they never achieved control of it.
The AAPA's motivations were a mixture of idealism and pragmatism. The stated concern was that Prohibition had done serious damage to the principle of federalism -- that the federal government's authority did not include the police powers used to enforce Prohibition. But it appears that this was not the only motivation, or even the reason most important to the men who funded the AAPA. Like many other Americans, these business leaders found themselves unable to gratify what seemed a natural, more or less innocent, desire without breaking a law (i.e. the consumption of alcoholic beverages).
To suddenly find themselves among the criminal classes was not pleasant to a group who had always thought of themselves as law-abiding and respectable members of American society. There is also strong evidence that the backers of the AAPA saw repeal as a method of reducing income and corporate taxes, by taxing alcohol instead.
The AAPA went out of business at the end of 1933, with the end of Prohibition. But within a year, from the same offices, with most of the same backers, many of the same employees and much of the same style, it reappeared as the American Liberty League. Throughout the next six years, it led the fight against the New Deal, arguing that much of Roosevelt's programme was contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In an age where Hitler and Mussolini had commandeered extraordinary economic powers, the fears that the American Liberty League expressed about Roosevelt's vaguely similar gathering of economic power could not be summarily dismissed.
The League, in spite of its impressive resources, was rapidly made to appear 'ridiculous or dangerous' or both by the Roosevelt administration. Most importantly, the leadership of the League was made up of largely rich men. The Depression-era gap between rich and poor had become too wide, too obvious and too painful for the League to be credible to the majority of Americans. Butler's testimony before Congress claimed that some of the people associated with the League were the very ones that had approached him -- including Grayson Murphy, the League's treasurer.
In the depths of the Depression, in that nadir of despair before Roosevelt gave his stirring first inaugural address in 1933, America was awash with political groups identifying in greater or lesser degrees with communism or fascism. Samuel Dickstein, the Democrat Representative for New York, concerned about the threat of such groups, persuaded the House of Representatives to create the Special Committee to Investigate Nazi Propaganda Activities in the United States. It was this committee which investigated Butler's charges in late 1934.
MacGuire, not surprisingly, denied that such a plot existed. Instead, he claimed his activities had been political lobbying to preserve the gold standard. But he quickly destroyed his credibility as a witness by giving contradictory testimony.
Yet while the final report agreed with Butler that there was evidence of a plot against Roosevelt, no further action was taken on it. The Committee's authority to subpoena witnesses expired at the end of 1934 and the Justice Department started no criminal investigation.
Part of the reason for the lack of prosecution of the alleged plotters may have been the untimely death of the only man who could have testified against the rest: Gerald MacGuire. He died at thirty-seven from complications of pneumonia, less than a month after the Committee released its report. MacGuire's physician claimed that his death was partly the result of the stress induced by the charges made by Butler, but there is no reason to assume that MacGuire's death was in any way suspicious.
The Committee's report excluded many of the most embarrassing names given by MacGuire and repeated by Butler. MacGuire had claimed that the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, General Hugh Johnson (head of Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration), General Douglas MacArthur and a number of other generals and admirals were privy to the plot.
Since Butler had no evidence of their involvement, other than MacGuire's claims, it was certainly reasonable for the Committee to exclude these details from the final report as 'certain immaterial and incompetent evidence'. But in conjunction with MacGuire's apparent advance knowledge of the details of internal White House staff activities, it certainly suggests that if a coup was planned, it had significant support within the Roosevelt administration.
The news media gave an inappropriately small amount of attention to the report. Time magazine ridiculed Butler's claims. The week following Butler's testimony, Time described it as a 'Plot Without Plotters', simply because the alleged plotters claimed innocence. But Time admitted that the Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander James Van Zandt confirmed that he, too, had been approached to lead such a march on Washington.
The leftist magazine New Masses carried an article by John Spivak that included wild claims of 'Jewish financiers working with fascist groups'. Spivak's article spun an elaborate web involving the American Jewish Congress, the Warburg family, 'which originally financed Hitler', the Hearst newspaper chain, the Morgan banking firm, the du Ponts, a truly impressive list of prominent American Jewish businessmen and Nazi spies. Spivak's article raised some disturbing and legitimate questions about why much of Butler's testimony was left out of the final committee report. But these important concerns were seriously undermined by Spivak's paranoid ravings. The left-of-centre magazines Nation and New Republic were unconcerned about the plot, since in their view 'fascism originated in pseudo-radical mass movements', and therefore could not come from a wealthy cabal.
Newspaper descriptions of the final report are also astonishing for how lightly most treated it. A New York Times article about subversion and foreign agitators started on the front page, but gave only two paragraphs to the coup plot inside the paper. 'It also alleged that definite proof has been found that the much publicised Fascist march on Washington . . . was actually contemplated'. It was not a major story.
The San Francisco Chronicle took the story more seriously. The only headline with a larger type size that day concerned the recent fatal crash of the airship Macon. The Chronicle carried an Associated Press story headlined, 'Justice Aides Probe Butler Fascist Story'. The first five paragraphs were devoted to Butler's allegations. The Chronicle quoted the Committee report that it 'was able to verify all the pertinent statements by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting creation of the organization'.
A third newspaper showed an even more astonishing lack of interest than the New York Times: the Sacramento Bee used a substantially different Associated Press wire story that emphasized propaganda efforts by foreign agents. Another AP wire story, at the bottom of page five, described Butler's allegations, taking the Committee's report at face value. This wire story includes the comforting knowledge that the Committee found 'no evidence to show a connection between this effort' and any foreign government.
An apparently serious effort to overthrow the government, perhaps with the support of some of America's wealthiest men, largely substantiated by a Congressional Committee, was mostly ignored. Why? Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, wrote a book in 1939 about the concentration of American journalism. He claimed that, 'in 1934, eighty-two per cent of all dailies had a complete monopoly in their communities'. Newspaper chains, in Ickes' view, 'control a dangerously large share of the national daily circulation and in many cities have no competition'.
Ickes' book was largely devoted to proving that the major newspapers of the United States were intentionally distorting the news and, in some cases, directly lying. Ickes argued that newspaper editors did so in the interests of both their advertisers and in defence of the capitalist class. Ickes mentioned the Liberty League as one of the 'propaganda outfits' who were allied with the major newspapers. Indeed the New York Times, one of the papers that had downplayed the Committee's report, had editorialized in favour of the Liberty League's formation.
Did newspapers and magazines consciously play down the plot, because it represented an embarrassment to people of influence? Or did editors simply give it low visibility because they regarded it as an absurd story?
We must consider another disturbing possibility. Butler was associated with the loose alliance of progressive and populist forces that were dragging Roosevelt towards the left. It is easy to forget that for much of Roosevelt's first term as president from 1932-36, he was the rope in a tug-of-war between conservative and progressive forces in America. The popularity of men such as Senator Huey Long, the Democrat for Louisiana, and the nationally known radio priest Father Coughlin -- and the need to short-circuit their rising political power -- appears to have caused Roosevelt's increasingly leftward movement in 1935-36.
Is it possible that Butler concocted this story as a way of creating animosity towards conservatives by Roosevelt? If Butler had lied to the Committee and no such conspiracy was ever planned, why did MacGuire apparently perjure himself before the Committee? Or, alternatively, could left-leaning members of the Roosevelt administration have manipulated Butler into believing that such a plot actually existed as a way of creating animosity towards conservatives, thus dragging Roosevelt to the left? Either theory could explain why MacGuire, Murphy, Clark, or the other supposed plotters were never prosecuted.
Yet another possibility (though less likely) is that there was no prosecution because Roosevelt's own advisers had taken part in the plot, as MacGuire claimed. A criminal prosecution would have meant washing the Roosevelt administration's dirty laundry in public.
Butler's account of the MacGuire plot was a very serious accusation. If MacGuire had told Butler the truth, a large number of wealthy men had made serious plans to overthrow representative government in the United States -- though their concern that Roosevelt was creating a government in the style of Mussolini or Hitler might provide some legitimate reason for their actions. Why does this plot not appear in the history books? That conservatives might discount the plot is not unexpected; that liberals have tended to ignore it is a little more surprising.
It is hard to imagine how different American politics was in the 1930s. The collapse of the world economy had shaken the faith of many Americans in individualism and free-market capitalism. Many traditionalists, in the US and in Europe, toyed with the ideas of Fascism and National Socialism; many liberals dallied with Socialism and Communism. Prominent populists such as Huey Long and Father Coughlin sided with progressives in support of isolationism, redistribution of wealth and a federal government that would play a more active role in the American economy.
In hindsight, the moral and economic deficiencies of these various corporatist systems are now clear. In 1934, however, people of good will persuaded themselves that Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were doing good, and ignored the great evils that were already underway. To turn over the rock exposing MacGuire's plot raises unpleasant questions about the political sensibilities of both right and left in 1930s America.
It would be tempting to write off this entire matter as a group of conmen separating wealthy conservatives from their money by pretending to hatch a plot against Roosevelt. But there are too many disturbing pieces of evidence in this tale that suggest that the Zeitgeist of the 1930s was not limited to Europe.
If MacGuire's claims to Butler were true, some US military commanders were prepared to stand aside while 500,000 veterans marched on Washington and took Roosevelt captive. (Between the World Wars, the United States Army was so small that 500,000 veterans might have given them a serious fight -- even if every officer remained loyal to Roosevelt).
But unlike many European countries, American government was highly decentralized in 1934, and this would have hindered any serious military action against the legitimate government. Every state governor had control of state militia units, armed with out-of-date, but still serviceable, military weapons.
In addition to the regularly organized state militias, the population of the United States, then as now, was heavily armed with the sort of weapons well suited to military operations. Whatever the advantages of the plotters' army of veterans, they would have been far outnumbered by the unorganized militia of the United States -- consisting of every US citizen between eighteen and forty-five, and legally obligated by state laws to fight at the order of the governor in the event of insurrection, invasion, or war.
But in a nation that was suffering from the ravages of the Depression, another model exists for what might have happened: the Spanish Civil War. The divisions over religion in America were not as dramatic as those that ripped apart Spanish society. But many Americans were beginning to lose their faith in American institutions -- as evidenced by the growth of American Nazi and Communist movements during the 1930s. It is frightening to think of what might have happened if a general as capable as Butler had become the man on a white horse.
In the words of US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, delivered at New York University in 1960, concerning the protections of the US Bill of Rights:
I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an eighteenth century straitjacket, unsuited for this age . . . The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today . . . Experience all over the world had demonstrated, I fear, that the distance between stable, orderly government and one that has been taken over by force is not so great as we have assumed.
Indeed, the plot that Butler exposed if what MacGuire claimed was true -- is a sobering reminder to Americans. They were not immune to the sentiments that gave rise to totalitarian governments throughout the world in the 1930s. It would be a serious mistake to assume 'It can't happen here!'
FOR FURTHER READING:
Jules Archer, The Plot To Seize The White House, (Hawthorn Books, 1973); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest, (Knopf, 1982); Smedley D. Butler, War Is A Racket, (New York, 1935); Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine (University Press of Kentucky, 1987); George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A history of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940 (Houghton Mifflin Co;, 1962); Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, (Knopf, 1946).
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By Clayton E. Cramer
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Quote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9E5...og4vuIpsFo7520
The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the ... - Google Books Result
by Jules Archer - 2007 - History - 256 pages
In addition to Butler and himself, Van Zandt told reporters, MacArthur, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and former Legion Commander Hanford MacNider had ...
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<h3>Read the testimony (from Macguire) and then post how credible it impresses you to be, responding to investigators' questions about the money that was shown to Ge, Butler, in the lower part of the page at this link:</h3>
Quote:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCorm....99s_testimony
McCormack-Dickstein Committee
.....Page 5
Paul Comley French, a reporter for the Philadelphia Record and the New York Evening Post, followed the general on the witness stand, testified that General Butler had spoken to him about this matter, and that they agreed that French should go to New York to get the story.
French testified that he came to New York, September 13, 1934, and went to the offices of Grayson M.-P. Murphy & Co. on the twelfth floor of 52 Broadway and that MacGuire received him shortly after 1 o'clock in the afternoon and that they conducted their entire conversation in a small private office.
French testified under oath, that as soon as he left McGuire's office, he made a careful memorandum of everything that MacGuire had told him.
French testified that MacGuire stated, “We need a fascist government in this country to save the Nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize one million men over night."
Continuing, French stated that during the conversation MacGuire told him about his trip to Europe and of the studies that he had made of the Fascist, Nazi, and French movements and the parts that the veterans had played in them.
French further testified that MacGuire considered the movement entirely and tremendously patriotic and that any number of people with big names would be willing to help finance it. French stated that during the course of the conversation, MacGuire continually discussed "the need of a man on a white horse" and quoted MacGuire as having said "We might go along with Roosevelt and then do with him "what Mussolini did with the King of Italy."
MacGuire, according to French, expressed the belief that half of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars would follow General Butler if he would announce the plan that MacGuire had in mind.
Toward the close of the conversation, French says that MacGuire told him that he was going to Miami for the American Legion convention and that he would try to see Butler before he left, but that Butler's being out of town prevented a meeting and that, so far as he knew, they had not seen each other since.....
MacGuire’s offer to overthrow the government
[edit] Page 18
cannot keep this racket up much longer. He has got to do something about it. He has either got to get more money out of us or ho hw got to change the method of financing the Government, and we are going to see to it that he does not change that method. He will not change it.
I said, "The idea of this great group of soldiers, then, is to sort of frighten him, is it?"
"No, no, no; not to frighten him. This is to sustain him when others assault him."
I said, "Well, I do not know about that. How would the President explain it? "
He said: "He will not necessarily have to explain it, because we are going to help him out. Now, did it ever occur to you that the President is overworked? We might have an Assistant President somebody to take the blame; and it things do not work out, he can drop him."
He went on to say that it did not take any constitutional chance to authorize another Cabinet official, somebody to take over the details of the office—take them off the President's shoulders. He mentioned that the position would be a secretary of general affairs— a sort of a super secretary.
The CHAIRMAN. A secretary of general affairs?
General BUTLER. That is the term used by him—or a secretary of general welfare—I cannot recall which. I came out of the interview with that name in my head. I got that idea from talking to both of them, you see. They had both talked about the same kind of relief that ought to be given the President, and he said: "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspaper. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everybody can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second."
And I could see it. They had that sympathy racket, that they were going to have somebody take the patronage off of his shoulders and take all the worries and details off of his shoulders, and then he will be like the President of France. I said, “So that is where you got this idea ? "
He said; " I have been traveling around—looking around. Now about this superorganization—would you be interested in heading it?"
I said, " I am interested in it, but I do not know about heading it I am very greatly interested in it, because you know, Jerry, my interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you gut these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, lam going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home. You know that."
"Oh, no. We do not want that. We want to ease up on the President."
He is going to ease up on him.
“Yes; and thon you will put somebody in there you can run; U that the idea? The President will go around and christen babies and dedicate bridges, and kiss children. Mr. Roosevelt will never agree to that himself."
"Oh, yes; he will. He will agree to that."
[edit] Page 19
I said, “I do not believe he will." I said, “Don’t you know that this will cost money, what you are talking about?”
He says, “Yes; we have got $3,000,000 to start with, on the line, and we can get $300,000,000, if we need it."
"Who is going to put all this money up?”
“Well," he said, "you heard Clark' tell you ho was willing to put op $15 000,000 to save the other $15,000,000."
“How are you going to care for all these men ? "
He said, "Well, the Government will not give them pensions, or anything of that kind, but we will give it to them. We will give privates $10 a month and destitute captains $35. We will get them all right."
"It will cost you a lot of money to do that."
He said, “We will only have to do that for a year, and then everything will be all right again."
Now, I cannot recall which one of these fellows told me about the rule of succession, about the Secretary of State becoming President when the Vice President is eliminated. There was something said in one of the conversations that I had, that the President's health was bad, and he might resign, and that Garner did not want it anyhow, and then this supersecretary would take the place of the Secretary of State and in the order of succession would become President. That was the idea. He said that they had this money to spend on it, and he wanted to know again if I would head it, and I said, “No; I was interested in it, but I would not head it."
He said “When I was in Paris, my headquarters were Morgan & Hodges. We had a meeting over there. I might as well tell you that our group is for you, for the head of this organization. Morgan & Hodges are against you. The Morgan interests say that you cannot be trusted, that you will be too radical, and so forth, that you are too and I said, "No; I was interested in it, but I would not head it." much on the side of the little fellow; you cannot be trusted. They do not want you. But our group tells them that you are the only fellow in America who can get the soldiers together. They say, 'Yes, but he will get them together and go in the wrong way’ That is what they say if you take charge of them."
So he left me, saying, “I am going down to Miami and I will get in touch with you after the convention is over, and we are going to make a fight down there for the gold standard, and we are going to organize."
So since then, in talking to Paul French here—I had not said anything about this other thing, it did not make any difference about fiddling with the gold standard resolution, but this looked to me as though it might be getting near, that they were going to stir some of these soldiers up to hurt our Government. I did not know anything about this committee, so I told Paul to let his newspaper see what they could find out about the background of these fellows. I felt that it was just a racket, that these fellows were -working one another and getting money out of the rich, selling them cold bricks. I have been in 752 different towns in the United States in 3 years and 1 month, and I made 1,022 speeches. I have seen absolutely no sign of anything showing a trend for a change of our form of Government. So it has never appealed to me at all. But
[edit] Page 20
as long as there was a lot of money stirring around—and I had noticed some of them with money to whom I have talked were dissatisfied and talking about having dictators—I thought that perhaps they might be tempted to put up money.
Now there is one point that I have forgotten which I think is the most important of all. I said, "What are you going to call this organization?"
He said, “Well, I do not know."
I said, “Is there anything stirring about it yet." "Yes," he says; "you watch; in 2 or 3 weeks you will see it come out in the paper. There will be big fellows in it. This is to be the background of it. These are to be the villagers in the opera. The papers will come out with it." He did not give me the name of it, but he said that it would all be made public; a society to maintain the Constitution, and so forth. <h3>and in about two weeks the American Liberty League appeared, which was just about what he described it to be. We might have an assistant President, somebody to take the blame; and if things do not work out, he can drop him. He said, "That is what he was building up Hugh Johnson for. Hugh Johnson talked too damn much and got him into a hole, and he is going to fire him in the next three or four weeks."
I said, "How do you know all this?" "Oh," he said, "we are in with him all the time. We know what is going to happen."</h3>[deleted] They had a lot of talk this time about maintaining the constitution. I said, "I do not see that the Constitution is in any danger," and I ask him again, why are you in this thing?" He said, "I am a business man. I have got a wife and children."
In other words, he had had a nice trip to Europe with his family, for 9 months, and he said that that cost plenty, too.
The CHAIRMAN. Did you have any further talks with him?
General BUTLER. NO. The only other time I saw or heard from him was when I wanted Paul to uncover him. He talked to me and he telephoned Paul, saying he wanted to see him. He called me up and asked if Paul was a reputable person, and I said he was. That is the last thing I heard from him.
The Chairman. The last talk you had with MacGuire was in the Bellevue in August of this year?
General BUTLER. August 22; yes. The date can be identified,
The CHAIRMAN. We thank you, General Butler, for coming here this morning.
We will hear Mr. French.....
Captain Glazier’s testimony
[edit] Page 8
The CHAIRMAN. Did he say anything about what the form of the Government would be when they took the Government over?
Captain GLAZIER. Strictly a dictatorship—absolutely. That inference was very plain.
The CHAIRMAN. Did he say that?
Captain GLAZIER. Yes; he made the statement.
The CHAIRMAN. What did he say in connection with that?
Captain GLAZIER. He said that there ought to be one man who would run the country; and he would be the head of the organization.
The CHAIRMAN. He would be the head of the organization?
Captain GLAZIER. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. Did he tell you who was the head of the organization?
Captain GLAZIER. Yes; he was the man.
The CHAIRMAN. He said he was the man ?
Captain GLAZIER. Yes. He was doing all of this.
The CHAIRMAN. Did he say anything about having an office anywhere outside of New York?
Captain GLAZIER. Yes. lie said that he had men all over the United States, and particularly I saw on this News Letter this office in Cincinnati.
The CHAIRMAN. In connection with this organization or this movement ?
Captain GLASSIER. Nothing except in this News Letter that he publishes.
The CHAIRMAN. That is all, captain; thank you.
We will hear General Butler.
[edit] Testimony of Maj. Gen. S. D. Butler (Retired)
[edit] Page 8.....
Deleted Text
^ ^ Text in BOLD is deleted excerpts.
"Suppression by the House Un-American Activities Committee took the form of deleting extensive excerpts relating to Wall Street financiers including Guaranty Trust director Grayson Murphy, J.P. Morgan, the Du Pont interests, Remington Arms, and others allegedly involved in the plot attempt. Even today, in 1975, a full transcript of the hearings cannot be traced."[1]
"Journalist John L. Spivak, researching Nazism and anti-Semitism for New Masses magazine, got permission from Dickstein to examine HUAC's public documents and was (it seems unwittingly) given the unexpurgated testimony amid stacks of other papers",[2] which he printed.
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Butler in his own words, describing the plot, at 1:45 min. into this video:
Last edited by host; 02-03-2008 at 09:20 PM..
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