Kris Millegan
Wed, 24 Feb 1999 23:35:53 -0500
-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Plot to Seize the White House Jules Archer(C)1973 Hawthorne Books, Inc. New York, NY --[9]-- 13 Press coverage of what was obviously a startling story of utmost importance to the security of the nation was largely one of distortion, suppression, and omission. "In the case of the Liberty League-Legion-Wall Street conspiracy to overthrow the United States Government," George Seldes declared in his book 1000 Americans, "there was one of the most reprehensible conspiracies of silence in the long (and disgraceful) history of American journalism." In his book Facts and Fascism he wrote, "Most papers suppressed the whole story or threw it down by ridiculing it. Nor did the press later publish the McCormack-Dickstein report which stated that every charge Butler made and French corroborated had been proven true." The most sensitive revelations, as far as the press was concerned, were those touching upon connections with J. P. Morgan and Company and the powerful interests represented by the American Liberty League. Heywood Broun, the highly esteemed columnist for the New York World Telegram, once observed that the face of The New York Times was "black with the Morgan shoepolish." Speaker McCormack told me, "The Times is the most slanting newspaper in the world. I would not expect anything else from them. They brainwash the American people. It's an empire." In fairness to The New York Times of today, however, I should quote their severest critic, George Seldes, who wrote me in October, 1971, "1 find the press [today] more liberal, too, especially The New York Times. (And I have not grown mellow in my views, I think.)" If the prestigious Times had distorted the Wall Street conspiracy story in 1934-1935, class-angling the news was obviously more pronounced in the heavily anti-Roosevelt, pro-big-business press of that day, much of which derived huge advertising revenues from corporations involved in the American Liberty League. Van Zandt wrote Butler on December 26, "The next time I see you I will explain to you just how I became involved in the Nazi story. After I read your article in the paper, the Commander of North Dakota and a few others asked me to give them the lowdown which I did resulting that one of the boys carried the story to the newspaper; therefore, causing such article to appear in print, and, of course, misquoting me all around." Butler replied on January 2, 1935, "I thought your statements on the Fascist story were darn good and served to stir up the lines. However, I can guess how it came about, but it did no harm." 14 The storm of controversy over his exposure of the plot led radio station WCAU of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to urge Butler to make broadcasts for them two to four nights a week. He agreed, and beginning on January 4 took to the airwaves with hardhitting attacks on Fascist plotters. What he had to say was impressive enough to make small headlines in the back pages of newspapers sufficiently often to generate enthusiastic support from the nation's veterans. On January 7 the Miami, Oklahoma, post of V.F.W. passed a resolution: "Major General Smedley D. Butler should be commended for his high type of patriotism in exposing the alleged plot to establish a dictatorship in the United States, and . . . Franklin D. Roosevelt, President, and citizens of the United States, should express their appreciation of this exposure." A movement began within the V.F.W. to have each post reaffirm its loyalty to the President and the Constitution. "This, in my opinion, would serve notice upon all plotters against our government," wrote Henry S. Drezner, V.F.W. official of a Brooklyn post, "that the Veterans will not stand idly by while an attempt should be made to destroy our form of government." On January 31 a New Jersey veteran wrote Butler, "General, at this time I can say you have 95 percent of the New Jersey veterans in back of you in anything you do." Two weeks later Dickstein declared that he intended to seek a new congressional appropriation to press a thorough investigation into Butler's charges. "General Butler's charges were too serious to be dropped without further investigation," Dickstein insisted. "He is a man of unquestioned sincerity and integrity. Furthermore, in my opinion, his statements were not denied or refuted. I think the matter should be gone into thoroughly and completely and I intend asking Congress for funds to make such an investigation. The country should know the full truth about these reputed overtures to General Butler. If there are individuals or interests who have ideas and plans such as he testified to, they should be dragged out into the open." On February 15 McCormack submitted to the House of Representatives the committee's findings in the investigation: In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler (p. 8-114 D.C. 6 11). MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but *YOUR COMMITTE WAS ABLE TO VERIFY ALL PERTINENT STATEMENTS BY GENERAL BUTLER,* [*Italics are the author's.] with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character (p. 111 D.C. 611). There was also corroboration of this point in French's testimony. The committee then cited an excerpt from the letter MacGuire had written to Clark and Christmas from France praising the Croix de Feu as a model veterans organization. This committee asserts that any efforts based on lines as suggested in the foregoing and leading off to the extreme right, are just as had as efforts which would lead to the extreme left. Armed forces for the purpose of establisbing a dictatorship by means of Fascism or a dictatorship through the instrumentality of the proleteriat, or a dictatorship predicated on racial and religious hatreds, have no place in this country. This total vindication of Butler did not burst like a bombshell across the front pages of America. Instead, as Seldes noted, "Most newspapers again suppressed or buried or belittled the official verdict." The New York Times made no mention of the plot in its headlines on the committee's report, emphasizing instead the committee's proposal that all foreign propagandists--Fascist, Nazi, and Communist--be compelled to register with the State Department. In the fifth and sixth paragraphs of the story the Times briefly reported: It also alleged that definite proof Had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated. The committee recalled testimony by General Butler, saying he had testified that Gerald C. MacGuire had tried to persuade him to accept the leadership of a Fascist army. And that was all. 15 John L. Spivak had been tipped off earlier by a fellow Washington correspondent that some of Butler's testimony had been deleted in the committee's November 26, 1934 report to the House of Representatives, and not for national security reasons. Spivak determined to get a look at the complete uncensored record of the testimony given at the executive session. He had asked for permission to see it, in order to follow up leads on Nazi activities in the United States, but he had been turned down on grounds that no one outside the committee and its employees could see transcripts of testimony taken in executive session. Other newsmen, however, joined him in pressing for a copy of the Butler testimony. It was then that the defunct McCormackDickstein Committee, possibly to quiet persistent rumors about why it was being hushed up, decided to publish a 125-page document containing the testimony of Butler, McGuire, and others, on February 15, 1935. It was marked "Extracts," and the last page explained why: In making public the foregoing evidence, which was taken in executive session in New York City from November 20 to 24, inclusive, the committee has ordered stricken therefrom certain immaterial and incompetent evidence, or evidence which was not pertinent to the inquiry, and which would not have been received during a public hearing. Spivak's newshawk instincts did not let him fully accept this explanation, because he knew that the committee had published hearsay evidence. Like a terrier worrying a rag doll, he persisted in trying to find out what evidence had been cut. Other questions nagged at him. Why had the committee at first announced it would subpoena all those named by Butler, only to declare later that it had no evidence on which to question them? Was the clue to this abrupt change of mind to be found in the censored testimony? A veteran Washington correspondent told Spivak that he had heard the deletions had been made at the request of a member of the President's Cabinet. The implication was that release of certain names could embarrass the Democratic party, because two had been unsuccessful Democratic candidates for the Presidency --John W. Davis, the Morgan lawyer, and Al Smith, governor of New York before Roosevelt. Davis had been named in the committee's press release, but not Al Smith, the erstwhile "happy warrior" from the slums of New York who had become codirector with Irenee du Pont in the American Liberty League, and a bitter critic of Roosevelt's liberalism and New Deal reform. Spivak tried everything to check out the story but found himself up against a brick wall at every turn. He had been tipped off earlier that the House of Representatives intended to let the McCormack-Dickstein Committee expire on January 3, 1935, rather than renew it as the committee had asked in order to continue its investigations. And die the committee did. About a week later, seeking to do a story on its accomplishments in exposing Nazi and anti-Semitic activities in the United States, Spivak won permission from Dickstein to examine the committee's official exhibits and make photostatic copies of those that had been made public. Dickstein wrote a letter to this effect to the committee's secretary, Frank P. Randolph, and added, "If necessary consult John [McCormack] about it." Randolph, flooded with work involved in closing the committee's files and records, gave Spivak stacks of documents, exhibits, and transcripts of testimony that were being sent to the Government Printing Office. To Spivak's amazement, he found among these records a full transcript of the executive session hearings in the Butler affair. Excited by this accidental stroke of luck, he compared it with the official extract of the hearings and found a number of startling omissions made from the testimony of both Butler and French, some of which could not be justified on grounds of hearsay evidence. Spivak copied down the censored material. In 1971 I asked former Speaker McCormack if he could recall, after thirty-four years, the reasons for these omissions from the official record of the testimony at the hearings. "I don't recall striking anything from the record," he told me, "but if I did, it was because I tried to be as careful as I could about hearsay evidence in open hearings. Executive hearings were different. We'd let people say anything there because we'd get lots of valuable tips to follow up that way. But in open hearings I insisted that all the evidence had to be pertinent, relevant, and germane-evidence that would stand up in a courtroom to the nth degree. I don't think all investigative committees follow this method, but they should. I wanted to be very careful about safeguarding the character of anyone who might be named, without hard evidence, by a witness in testimony at an open hearing, so if somebody gave hearsay evidence, I would say, 'Strike it out."' Omissions from the official record of some revelations from the testimony of Butler and French gave the American press, with a few minor exceptions, a legitimate excuse to keep silent about them. It was significant that none of the biggest newspaper chains or wire services saw fit to assign crack reporters to dig into what was obviously one of the biggest news stories of the decade. John L. Spivak could not help wondering why MacGuire, the key to the plot, had not been compelled to testify on where and how he had obtained his advance inside information about Al Smith's plans, Hugh Johnson's firing, and the appearance of the American Liberty League; or why he had not been asked to reveal the sources of his information about the Morgan and Du Pont interests' involvement in the plot. Worst of all, no one involved in the plot had been prosecuted. Spivak went to the Department of justice and pointed out that MacGuire had denied essential parts of Butler's testimony, which the committee itself reported it had proved by documents, bank records, and letters. Did the department intend to file a criminal prosecution against MacGuire for perjury or involvement in the plot? "I was told," Spivak reported, "it had no plans to prosecute." Roger Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued an angry statement on the curious apathy of the Justice Department in punishing any of the miscreants: The Congressional Committee investigating un-American activities has just reported that the Fascist plot to seize the government . . . was proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the perfectly plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Communists! Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence, even to the seizure of government, is excusable on the part of those whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system.... Powerful influences had obviously been brought to bear to cut -short the hearings, stop subpoenas from being issued to all the important figures involved, and end the life of the committee. The Philadelphia Record, which broke the story by French, had these observations in an editorial: General Butler deserves the highest praise for recognizing the significance of the offers made to him, and the menace they represent. "I'm a democrat, not a Fascist," General Butler says, "and I was sick and tired of being linked by rumor to this Fascist movement and that one. I believe in the right to vote, the right to speak freely and the right to write whatever one believes. . . . I am certainly not going to lead a movement to destroy the very principles in which I believe." General Butler performed a great public service and showed himself a true American by taking his information to the McCormack committee. The Record condemned phony "popular" movements like the National Economy League, a front for big business, and added: Some of the same interests behind the League, according to General Butler, are behind this effort to use him and his soldier following in defense of special privilege in America. The same people who succeeded in slashing aid to veterans would like to use those same veterans as their pawns in a war on democracy. The folk who want Fascism in this country are the same folk who made profit while others bled and who would rather see the veteran starve than unbalance the budget, i.e., add -to the burden of taxes on great wealth. They did it in Italy. They did it in Germany. They did it in Austria. They will try to do it in America.... General Butler has nipped one such movement in the bud. John L. Spivak had shrewd observations about the reasons the conspirators had failed dismally in their treason: The takeover plot failed because though those involved had astonishing talents for making breathtaking millions of dollars, they lacked an elementary understanding of people and the moral forces that activate them. In a money- standard civilization such as ours, the universal regard for anyone who is rich tends to persuade some millionaires that they are knowledgeable in fields other than the making of money. The conspirators went about the plot as if they were hiring an office manager; all they needed was to send a messenger to the man they had selected. And with incredible ineptitude, they had selected the wrong man. 16 Was it possible that MacGuire had exaggerated to both Butler and French about the powerful and influential figures involved in the plot, in order to impress Butler into accepting the leadership of the Fascist putsch that MacGuire was in charge of planning? It is conceivable that some of those named by MacGuire as under consideration for the role of dictator or subordinate positions of leadership had no knowledge of this fact, although Van Zandt reported that he, for one, had been approached. It is unlikely that Douglas MacArthur, as Chief of Staff and a stiffnecked hero with patriotic credentials as unchallengeable as Butler's, would have had any unsavory dealings with the plotters, however patrician his outlook. As for involvement of the American Legion, MacGuire had obviously been influential enough in the organization to have been made chairman of the "distinguished guest committee" of its convention, on the staff of National Commander Louis Johnson, former Secretary of Defense and head of, a large law firm in Clarksburg, West Virginia. There is solid evidence that MacGuire had been able to use the Legion to do mutimillionaire Robert S. Clark's bidding and get the Legion to pass a resolution demanding a return to the gold standard. MacGuire was certainly financed by Clark, Christmas, Walter E. Frew, of the Corn Exchange Bank, and others through the Committee for a Sound Dollar and Sound Currency, Inc., of which MacGuire was an official. And the McCormack- Dickstein Committee verified that he had been sent abroad to study Fascist organizations in Europe as models for creating one in America and had reported favorably to Clark and Christmas about the Croix de Feu. MacGuire had outlined to Butler and French the conspirators' plans for a putsch, indicating it would easily succeed in just a few days because a "big fellow" organization-later identified by Butler and French as the American Liberty League-was behind it with money and arms. He might have been boasting falsely about having had his headquarters while in Paris at the offices of Morgan and Hodges and about the involvement of the Morgan interests in the plot. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee failed to pursue this line of investigation, but a remarkable number of "coincidences" linked the Morgan interests to various facets of the plot. Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy, MacGuire's boss who had supported his denial of Butler's charges by insisting, "I don't believe there is a word of truth in it with respect to Mr. MacGuire," was a director of a Morgan bank. Butler testified that Clark had implicated John W. Davis, attorney for J. P. Morgan and Company, as author of the speech Clark had given MacGuire to get Butler to deliver at the Legion convention. Davis was the same man from whom MacGuire had declared he could easily raise a million dollars for his Fascist army. MacGuire had also revealed to Butler that the same financial interests who had been behind the gold-standard propaganda were financing the plot to seize the White House. The formation of the American Liberty League had been announced precisely at the time MacGuire had predicted the emergence of an organization of "big fellows" who were in the background of the Fascist putsch. Its treasurer had been none other than Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy. One of its financial backers was Robert S. Clark. Two of the largest contributors had been the J. P. Morgan Associates and the Du Pont interests. John W. Davis was a member of the National Executive Committee. Morgan and Du Pont men were directors. And MacGuire had told French that the putsch could obtain arms and equipment from the Remington Arms Company, in which the Du Ponts held a controlling interest, on credit through the Du Ponts. The presence of ex-Governor Al Smith in the American Liberty League baffled many Americans who could not understand what the former poor kid from the Bowery was doing mixed up with America's richest ultraconservatives. Few realized that following his defection from the Roosevelt camp, Smith entered private business as chairman of the board of the New York County Trust Company and joined in erecting the Empire State Building, of which he was corporation president. His alliance with Raskob and the Du Ponts in the League brought charges that he had "forsaken the brown derby for the top hat." When he failed to stop Roosevelt's renomination in 1936, he stumped for Republican candidate Alf Landon, losing much of his former popularity in the process and speaking to dwindling, hostile audiences. Were all the interlacing connections linking MacGuire, Clark, Colonel Murphy, and the Morgan and Du Pont interests to the plot only a series of remarkable coincidences? If so, another unique coincidence led the American Liberty League to subsidize such affiliated organizations as the openly Fascist and anti-Semitic Sentinels of the Republic and the Crusaders, who were urged by their leader, George W. Christians, to consider lynching Roosevelt. One night when the President was scheduled to arrive in Chattanooga, Christians threatened to cut off the city's electric power and warned grimly, "Lots of things can happen in the dark!" This protege of the American Liberty League was kept under surveillance by the Secret Service. As Donald R. McCoy observed in his book, Coming of Age: The United States During the 1920's and 1930's, ". . . it was clear to most people that the organization [American Liberty League] was playing the same game on the Right as the radical groups were playing on the Left, to influence the [Roosevelt] administration and if unsuccessful to oppose it. As James Farley would later say, the American Liberty League 'ought to be called the American Cellophane League' because 'first it's a Du Pont product and second, you can see right through it.'" Finally, one must consider the outlook of the conspirators against the background of the times. During the feverish atmosphere of the early New Deal days, big business was horrified by Roosevelt's drastic surgery on the broken- down machinery of the capitalist system. The savage hatred of "that cripple in the White House" represented the most bitter animosity big business had ever manifested toward any President in American history. Their hate campaign was echoed by the vast majority of newspapers, like the Hearst press, which had originally supported the President, then denounced him as a dictator. Roosevelt had been compelled to turn to "fireside chats" over the radio in order to communicate with the American people over the heads of the press lords. In that emotional climate it was not at all surprising that some elements of big business should have sought to emulate their counterparts in Germany and Italy, supporting a Fascist putsch to take over the government and run it under a dictator on behalf of America's bankers and industrialists. That it did not happen here could be credited largely to the patriotism and determination of one courageous AmericanMajor General Smedley Darlington Butler. pp. 190-202 --[next-- PART F0UR Fallout ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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