-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
A Man in His Times
John L. Spivak�1967
Horizon Press
New York, NY
LCCC#67-17783
--[1]--
23
THE PLOT TO SEIZE WASHINGTON
On or about the beginning of July 1933, the first overt move was made in one
of the most fantastic plots in American history. A representative of a group
of conspirators opened negotiations with a noted military man to head a
500,000-man army, seize the Government of the United States, put an end to
our democracy and supplant it with a dictatorship. The McCormack-Dickstein
House Committee, which was investigating un-American activities, turned its
attention to the plot; the probe ended abruptly. What was behind the plot was
shrouded in a silence which has not been broken to this day. Even a
generation later, those who are still alive and know all the facts have kept
their silence so well that the conspiracy is not even a footnote in American
histories. It would be regrettable if historians neglected this episode and
future generations of Americans never learned of it.
When the plot actually began or whose inspiration it was is not known, for
the Congressional Committee avoided probing into these aspects. News of the
plot, reported to have financial backing of "three million dollars on the
line and three hundred million available should it be necessary," reached the
nation in a time which saw greater changes in political systems than any
previous period in history. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first sworn in
as President, the country was teetering on the brink of economic chaos and in
the grip of a fear that almost paralyzed it. The capitalist system had
collapsed. Almost every bank in the country was closed, millions were
jobless, citizens were being dispossessed from their homes and their farms
and bankruptcies were reaching a torrential stage. There was no sign of
relief.
In desperate efforts to get the economy moving again, the President asked for
and received from the Congress more powers than any President had ever been
given in peacetime. He surrounded himself with advisers ranging from liberal
theoreticians to spokesmen for big business. The loose coalition which formed
around him soon became known as the "Brain Trust." The President assured the
people that his administration would give them a new deal. Nazi agents who
were busy trying to split Americans into snarling racial and religious groups
promptly dubbed the New Deal a "Jew Deal," because the Brain Trust was
"Packed with Jews and communists" out to destroy capitalism.
Roosevelt created Government work projects so that the unemployed would be
paid wages, their new purchasing power would enable manufacturers to produce
again and stores would once more see what customers looked like. But to the
rich this program was betrayal by a Government which in the past had always
protected them. It was interfering with the law of supply and demand; it was
taxing the rich and using their money to wreck the going wage scale in a
glutted labor market. A former high official of the du Pont Company wrote to
John J. Raskob, former Chairman of the Democratic Party and then a high du
Pont officer, a heart-wrenching complaint:
"Five Negroes on my place in South Carolina refused work this Spring . . .
saying they had easy jobs with the government. . . . A cook on my houseboat
at Fort Myers quit because the government was paying him a dollar an hour as
a painter. . . ."
Raskob, who like other rich men was genuinely perturbed by what was being
done to the way of fife the rich had known, advised his correspondent to join
with others in setting up an organization which would educate America "to the
value of encouraging people to work; encouraging people to get rich." The
tragedy in this advice was that he and others like him did not recognize that
the old homilies we had accepted and honored from schooldays on just did not
stand up when Americans were being buffeted by the greatest economic storm
that had ever swirled about them. He simply could not see that the people did
not need encouragement to work. They were wearing out their shoes in search
of work. To tell a man who cannot find a job to feed himself and his family
that he should strive to become rich was tragic for the jobless and pathetic
for the wealthy. Yet many rich men honestly believed that if only the people
adopted this outlook the devastating national problem would be solved.
Urgency was in the air; something had to be done before it was too late; and
the President accepted a Chamber of Commerce suggestion that a body be
established to direct "cooperative action among trade groups." The result was
known as the National Recovery Administration. When business urged that the
anti-trust laws be relaxed so it could function more freely, the President
listened and was willing to try. The NRA practically turned the "fair
competition codes" over to business. Price-fixing was encouraged.
The codes formulated by the NRA seemed to indicate a trend towards government
control of organized labor, which was the fascist way of handling trade
unions. Apprehension over this trend was not allayed when the NRA Advisory
Board suggested that "to have peace and equity . . . the strike and lockout
should be absolutely eliminated." The small-businessman found himself being
pushed to the wall. The sum total of the measures adopted by Roosevelt seemed
designed to strengthen monopoly capitalism. Frightened trade unionists,
liberals, the middle class and small business an saw them as moves toward
fascism, which was widely accepted as the ultimate response of a capitalist
system fighting to survive. Where fascism had taken over, it was apparently
achieving the objectives business and finance wanted. What with labor having
little to say about wage scales, 1933 and 1934 were notable for interminable
strikes. Unions wanted more money; they also wanted the right to bargain
collectively which the NRA had promised them. At the head of the NRA was a
crotchety, blustering don't-tell-me-what-to-do general named Hugh S. Johnson.
To him, use of the strike when he disapproved of it was practically
insubordination, and he threatened to outlaw the right to strike altogether.
This convinced trade unionists that establishing the NRA was really a major
maneuver towards fascism. One member of the National Recovery Review Board
resigned in protest against the NRA because, "Its development day by day
reveals more clearly a trend toward fascism in the United States." When the
President moved to give labor its promised collective bargaining right, major
industries which had kept their plants non-union by employing armies of labor
spies and strikebreakers were faced with law-supported intensive organizing
drives. The spirit spread to the farming population. In areas where farm
lands and buildings were being auctioned for non-payment of taxes or other
debts, the men who fed America joined with their neighbors to resist. When a
neighbor's place was to be auctioned publicly, they sometimes took guns in
hand and set up roadblocks to keep outsiders from taking part in the public
bidding; only those in open collusion with the farmer were permitted to bid,
and the farmer got back his property for a nominal sum.
Such collusion among farmers, the organizing drives by trade unions and the
use of tax money from the rich to pay many of the unemployed on makeshift
Government work, frightened business and the banks. The President's acts
alienated former supporters. John J. Raskob wrote to an acquaintance
complaining of "the Democratic Party being headed by such radicals as
Roosevelt, Huey Long, Hearst, McAdoo . . . " Alfred E. Smith, a man of the
people who had been an excellent Governor of New York State, was cultivated
by men like Raskob; their attentions, coupled with disappointments in his
personal political ambitions, led the former Governor away from the
President. William Randolph Hearst, an utterly cynical man who sought to use
the people for his own political advancement, denounced the President as a
dictator. While communists worked ceaselessly to persuade the people that the
answer to our economic problems was a planned society-production for use, and
not for profit-fascist and Nazi propagandists worked with almost equal fervor
to convince America that what this country needed was a strongman such as
Italy and Germany had, a man who would put an end to a decadent democracy and
replace it with the new, young and vibrant political philosophy of fascism.
Some rich men, angry at labor's demands and Roosevelt's friendly attitude
towards them, looked with favor on ending a political system which gave a man
on relief as big a voice in who should run the country as a millionaire. Many
industrialists were convinced that Roosevelt was a socialist, if not actually
a card-carrying communist, and their hatred of the President was at times
apoplectic-as when they denounced him as "that cripple in the White House."
It was in this period that the fascist plot developed.
During the depth of the Depression, the growing talk of revolution prompted
me to conduct a six-months survey of the country for a book I eventually
published as Anwrica Faces the Barricades. I went to representative areas and
talked with all classes, from those whose feet ached from the daily search
for any kind of work to big landowners, industrialists and bankers. In the
newspapers, over the radio and on street comers there was talk of revolution,
but among the people themselves, no matter where I went, I found no such
popular sentiment. Americans were in real trouble, but they did not want a
revolution; they wanted jobs. I found only three groups who talked of the
imminent revolution. One consisted of the big industrialists who were
frightened by what aggressive trade unions were doing. The second included
those pariahs of the social system who operated labor spy and strikebreaking
organizations and fed employers reports that workers were talking of seizing
the factories; when a union demanded more pay to meet rising living costs,
its leaders were accused of being communists, communist-led,
communist-dominated or communist dupes. The third group was the communists
themselves, a very small organization with a maximum membership at its most
influential period of about 80,000. These were the only groups that
actally[sic] talked of revolution.
Hundreds of thousands-perhaps millions-of bewildered, frustrated and
sometimes despairing people listened to the communists, but very few were
interested in joining them. Like poverty-stricken people everywhere,
Americans suffered in apathy. To them, communism and fascism were just words
with connotations of un-Americanism; they did not know what the words stood
for, but they knew they did not like either one. They believed in
Americanism-though very few could have told you what that word stood for.
Americans no more wanted a revolution than they did in 1776. I wrote articles
on what I found for both conservative publications, such as the American
Mercury, and for communist ones. I must say this for the communist leaders
and editors: though my findings often contradicted reports sent in by their
own district organizers in the field, no attempt was made to edit or cut them
or insert anything to slant my stories to fit the "party line."
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. In this case, as recorded
in sworn testimony before the Congressional Committee, the messenger was a
bond salesman named Gerald C. MacGuire, who earned about $150 a week; I
record his wage not as proof of his competence or lack of it, but because, as
was brought out in the Congressional testimony, when he was ready for the
first overt move to get the conspiracy off the ground his bank account
flowered with cash deposits of over $100,000 for "expenses."
MacGuire was a short stocky man tending toward three chins, with a
bullet-shaped head which had a silver plate in it due to a wound received in
battle; his close-cropped hair was usually topped by a black derby, the
popular headgear of the day. A reporter described his bright blue eyes as
glittering with the sharpness of a fox about to spring. He worked for a
leading brokerage house headed by Grayson M.-P. Murphy, a West Point graduate
who had seen action in the Spanish-American War and World War I and who had
extensive industrial and financial interests as a director of Anaconda,
Goodyear Tire, Bethlehem Steel and a number of Morgan-controlled banks.
Murphys personal appearance was impressive-tall, heavy-set and giving
evidence that in his younger years he must have been quite handsome.
It was not a well concealed plot, for I beard rumors about it in Washington
more than a month before news of it broke. The talk was that the American
Legion would be the nucleus for a fascist army which would seize Washington.
Even in a city notorious as a gossip center, this sounded like something out
of a Central American "banana republic"; I dismissed the rumors as probably
stemming from the Legion's reputation as a reactionary outfit whose members
were quick to use baseball bats to break up strikes and civil rights
demonstrations. But when the talk was repeated to me by men with wide
contacts in the nation's capital, men whose judgements I respected, I made
some inquiries about the Legion to see if it were possible that this
veterans' organization could even remotely lend itself to that kind of
adventure.
The Legion seems to have been born on February 16, 1919, when some twenty
American officers met in Paris, reportedly on orders from the commanding
officers of the American Expeditionary Forces. Europe was in a revolutionary
ferment which was driving the victorious nations into a fear approaching
panic. Spray from the waves of this international political restlessness
sprinkled American servicemen, and our high command was not happy about the
effect it might have. The officers who met were wealthy men and naturally
perturbed by talk of revolution. Among those present were Major Hamilton
Fish, Jr., who, stimulated by the Whalen forgeries, was to head the first
Congressional Committee to investigate communist activities in the United
States; Grayson Murphy, for whom MacGuire worked; and Colonel Franklin
D'Olier, the Legion's first national commander. After their initial meeting,
the American Legion was formally established in Paris in the spring of 1919
at a caucus of about 1,000 officers and men. Grayson Murphy gave the new
veterans' organization $125,000 to get it moving, and by the end of 1919 the
Legion was engaged in a drive for funds aided by industrialists who solicited
contributions from other industrialists. One such solicitation, which was
sent by Swift & Company and eventually became public, called attention to the
body's potentialities: "We are all interested in the Legion, the results it
will obtain, and the ultimate effect in helping to offset radicalism."
The average veteran who joined did not know that big business was behind the
new organization; he believed that the Legion's objectives were to protect
the doughboy's welfare and defend America at home as he had defended it
abroad. When industry's efforts to reduce high wartime wage scales resulted
in many strikes, veterans in Legion posts were told that the strikers were
communists trying to create a chaotic situation so the Reds could take over.
Such patriotic appeals to save the country brought quick responses, and in
the first ten or more years of its existence the American Legion developed
the reputation of being a strikebreaking agency available to harried
industrialists. An American Civil Liberties Union report in that period
stated that, "Of the forces most active in attacking civil rights, the
American Legion led the field."
In the Depression years of the early 1930s, a group of former doughboys, some
of whom were driven to a genteel form of begging by peddling apples on
street-comers, turned against the "Royal Family," as those running the Legion
were called. These ordinary members resented the leadership's doing nothing
to alleviate the veterans' plight and help them get the bonuses Congress had
promised them. Their resentment culminated in a protest march on Washington;
it began as a small movement but it seemingly touched a sympathetic nerve,
for thousands of veterans joined in the protest. President Hoover ordered the
U.S. Army to dispel the demonstrating veterans from their encampment in the
capital, and the army did so, using tear gas and bayonets. This treatment
shocked America. Congress sensed the former soldiers' ugly mood, and it
rushed action on the bonus so that veterans could have some cash-and,
incidentally, put circulating money into an almost stagnant economy.
A long struggle followed within the Legion between those who would use the
members for their own business and political interests and those who wanted
the organization used for the benefit of former servicemen. The latter won.
At the time of the plot, the cleavage between the rank and file and the Royal
Family seemed�as it indeed turned out to be�a permanent one. In the
generation that followed, the Legion underwent drastic changes and a
mellowing which may be attributed to the normal aging process. Members now
rarely participate in anti-labor activity. In fact, many Legionnaires are
themselves loyal union men. The veterans do not even tear hotels apart at
annual conventions, as they used to do with the ebullience of pirates sacking
a city.
Gossip about the plot persisted. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee
investigating Nazi and communist activities was said to know about the
conspiracy and to know that Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, until
his retirement a few years earlier the ranking officer in the U.S. Marines,
had been chosen to head the putsch. This was getting down to specifics; for
the first time a name was mentioned, and it was a famous name. I called on a
friend who knew a great deal about the Congressional Committee's work and
asked if the rumor about Butler was true.
"The Committee will bear him in executive session on November 20th," be said.
With the Committee having enough credence in the nowcommon rumors to take the
General's testimony, I kept asking myself why Butler had been selected to
head the putsch. Mat was there about him that made him the choice?
I knew that in 1924-25, Philadelphia, then the third largest city in the
country, had borrowed Butler from the Marine Corps because of his reputation
for honesty and integrity. Philadelphia was then reputed to be one of the
most corrupt municipalities in the land. Political machines controlled its
life, and, as in most communities with such problems, the people were
apathetic. When crime and graft mounted and corruption became a political
issue, the city fathers, either for public relations reasons or in an earnest
desire to get an incorruptible man, tapped Butler to serve as their Director
of Public Safety. The General did not last long in this job, however; the
machine was too big and too well rooted.
I knew, too, that Butler's prestige among American servicemen was greater
than that of any living military leader except perhaps General John J.
Pershing. The more I dug into the Marine's past, the more I was convinced
that the conspirators were incredibly incompetent in picking him. In many
ways the General was an extraordinary man. He was a Quaker who made war his
career. He was one of the few men in American history to be twice awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor, and be held sixteen other decorations from a
grateful nation. His ancestors were pacifists who operated an underground
station to help runaway slaves, and during the Civil War, when Confederate
soldiers approached Gettysburg, his grandfathers on both sides of the family
took up muskets.
Butler was first approached by two former state commanders of the American
Legion. One dropped out of the picture after the initial meeting. "The other
said his name was Jerry MacCuire," the General told the Congressional
Committee which investigated the plot.
McCormack: Where did MacGuire come from?
Butler: MacGuire said he had been State Commander the year before of the
department of Connecticut and was living in Connecticut....
These men, Butler later told me, eventually described "what was tantamount to
a plot to seize the Government, by force if necessary.
The General placed little stock in what his visitors said until they showed
they meant business by displaying a bank book listing cash deposits of over
$100,000 for "expenses."
McCormack: They took out a bank book and showed you what?
Butler: They took out a bank book and showed me deposits Of $42,000 on one
occasion and $64,000 on another . . . I said ... There is something in this,
Jerry MacGuire, besides what you have told me. I can see that. He said,
'Well, I am a business man . . . if you want to take my advice, you would be
a business man, too."
In the published hearings of the Congressional Committee Butler is recorded
as having testified that the first suggestion made to him was to lead a
movement to unseat the ruling group of the Legion by taking two or three
hundred Legionnaires to its annual convention in Chicago; the second was to
deliver a prepared speech to the convention urging passage of a resolution
favoring the gold standard.
Let me tell the story in the General's own words:
Butler: I said, "Listen. These friends of mine that I know around here, even
if they wanted to go [to the convention] could not afford to go. It would
cost them a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars to go out there and stay
for 5 days and come back."
They said, "Well, we will pay that."
I said, "How can you pay it? You are disabled soldiers.
How do you get the money to do that?"
"Oh, we have friends. We will get the money."
Then I began to smell a rat for fair. I said, "I do not believe you have got
this money."
It was either then or the next time, or one of the times, they hauled out a
bank deposit book. . . .
The next time I saw him [MacGuire] was about the first of September, in a
hotel in Newark. I went over to the convention of the Twenty-ninth Division.
Sunday morning he walked into my room and he asked me if I was getting ready
now to take these men to Chicago, that the convention was pretty close.... I
said, "You people are bluffing. You have not got the money," whereupon he
took out a big wallet, out of his hip pocket, and a great, big mass of
thousand dollar bills and threw them on the bed.
I said, "What's all this?"
He said, "This is for you, for expenses. You will need some money to pay
them."
"How much money have you got there?"
He said, "$18,000". . . .
I said, "Don't you try to give me any thousand dollar bills. Remember, I was
a cop once. Every one of the numbers on these bills has been taken. I know
you people and what you are trying to do. You are just trying to get me by
the neck. If I try to cash one of those thousand dollar bills, you will have
me by the neck.... I know one thing. Somebody is using you. You are a wounded
man. You are a bluejacket. You have got a silver plate in your head. I looked
you up. You were wounded. You are being used by somebody, and I want to know
the fellows who are using you. I am not going to talk to you any more. You
are only an agent. I want some of the principals." He said, "Well, I will
send one of them over to see you." I said "Who?" He said, "I will send Mr.
Clark . . . his name is R. S. Clark. He is a banker. . . ."
I thought no more about it until the end of the week, when Clark called up
and asked if he might spend Sunday with me . . .
[The two lunched at the General's home. Butler continued: ]
He [Clark] said, "You have got the speech?' I said, "Yes. . . . They wrote a
hell of a good speech, too." He said, "Did those fellows say they wrote that
speech?" I said, "Yes, they did. They told me that was their business,
writing speeches." He laughed and said, "That speech cost a lot of money". .
. . He thought it was a big joke that these fellows were claiming authorship
of that speech . . .
Clark said, "You understand just how we are fixed. I have got $30,000,000. I
do not want to lose it. I am willing to spend half of the $30,000,000 to save
the other half' . . .
[Butler informed the Congressional Committee that he told Clark he wanted no
part of the scheme and that the multimillionaire telephoned MacGuire at the
Palmer House in Chicago from the General's home and in Butler's presence told
MacGuire:]
"General Butler is not coming to the convention. . . . You can put this thing
across. You have got $45,000. You can send those telegrams. You will have to
do it that way. . . . You have got enough money to go through with it". . . .
[The gold standard resolution was in fact endorsed by the convention. Butler
continued: ]
He [MacGuire] said, "I went abroad to study the part that the veteran plays
in the various setups of the governments that they have abroad. I went to
Italy for 2 or 3 months and studied the position that the veterans of Italy
occupy in the fascist setup of government, and I discovered that they are the
background of Mussolini. They keep them on the payrolls in various ways and
keep them contented and happy; and they are his real backbone, the force on
which he may depend, in case of trouble, to sustain him. But that setup would
not suit us at all. The soldiers of America would not like that. I then went
to Germany to see what Hitler was doing, and his whole strength lies in
organizations of soldiers, too. But that would not do. I looked into the
Russian business. I found that the use of the soldiers over there would never
appeal to our men. Then I went to France, and I found just exactly the
organization we are going to have. It is an organization of super-soldiers."
He gave me the French name for it but I do not recall what it is. . . . He
told me they had about 500,000 and that each one was a leader of 10 others,
so that it gave them 5,000,000 votes. And he said, "Now, this is our idea
here in America-to get up an organization of this kind . . . to support the
President ... . . .
I said, "The President has got the whole American people. Why does he want
them?"
He said, "Don't you understand the setup has got to be changed a bit? Now, we
have got him�we have got the President". . . .
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". . . .
He said, "Now, did it ever occur to you that the President is overworked? We
might have an Assistant President; somebody to take the blame; and if things
do not work out, he can drop him."
He went on to say that it did not take any Constitutional change 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 super-secretary.
McCormack: A secretary of general affairs?
Butler: That is the term used by him-or a secretary of general welfare�I
cannot recall which. . . . They both talked about the same kind of relief
that ought to be given the President and he [MacCuire] said: "You know the
American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. 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". .
. .
There was something said in one of the conversations that I had, that the
President's health was bad, and that he might resign, and that [Vice
President John N.] 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 the President. That was the idea. I said,
"Is there anything stirring about it yet?"
"Yes," he said; "You watch; in 2 or 3 weeks you will see it come out in the
papers. 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 be said it would all be made
public; a society to maintain the Constitution, and so forth. . . .
Formation of the American Liberty League, set up "to combat radicalism" and
"defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States" was announced
shortly afterward. Heading and directing this organization were du Pont and
J.P. Morgan & Company men.
It is common for public officials to develop close friendships with certain
newsmen who become their confidants. As Philadelphia's top cop, Butler had
learned to trust Paul Comly French, a reporter for the Philadelphia Record
and the New York Post. Butler testified that after several meetings with
MacGuire, the General told French about the propositions put to him and asked
him to check on the bond salesman and find out "what the hell it's all
about."
When Butler completed his story to the Committee, French was sworn in. He
told of calling on MacGuire on September 13, 1934, in his office on the
twelfth floor Of 52 Broadway. The entire floor was occupied by Grayson M.-P.
Murphy & Company. Before the bond salesman would talk with French, he
telephoned Butler to be sure the General had sent him. Said French to the
Congressional Committee:
French: I have here direct quotes from him. As soon as I left his office I
got to a typewriter and made a memorandum of everything he told me.
We need a fascist government in this country, he insisted, 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 the patriotism to do it are the soldiers
and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men
overnight.
During the conversation he told me he had been in Italy and Germany during
the summer of IL934 and had made an intensive study of the background of the
Nazi and Fascist movements and how the veterans had played a part in them. He
said be had obtained enough information on the Fascist and Nazi movements and
the part played by the veterans, to properly set up one in this country. . . .
He warmed up considerably after we got under way and be said, 'We might go
along with Roosevelt and then do with him what Mussolini did with the King of
Italy."
It fits in with what he told the General, that we would have a Secretary of
General Affairs, and if Roosevelt played ball, swell; and if he did not, they
would push him out. . . .
During the conversation.... he brought in the names of former national
commanders of the American Legion, to give me the impression that, whether
justly or unjustly, a group in the American Legion were actively interested
in this proposition....
French knew what Butler and he would testify to and wrote the story before
they entered the hearing room, including the names of very prominent
Americans Butler gave. By the time they had finished, the sensational story
was on the newsstands. This was no violation of newspaper ethics; it is
common practice when a reporter has an exclusive.
Newsmen in different parts of the country immediately went after follow-ups.
The General's reputation for honesty and patriotism made what he had said
under oath impossible to ignore. The Secretary of War and the Secretary of
the Navy, U.S. Senators and Representatives urged that the Committee get to
the bottom of the conspiracy. McCormack himself assured newsmen that his
Committee would go into it thoroughly. He said, "We have been in possession
of certain information for about five weeks and have been investigating it.
We will call all the men mentioned in the story. . . ." Co-chairman Dickstein
said: "From present indications Butler has the evidence. He's not going to
make any serious charges unless he has something to back them up. We'll have
men here with bigger names than his."
Dispatches from Philadelphia reported that the former Marine Corps head had
told friends that General Johnson, the former NRA administrator, had been
picked for the role of dictator if Butler turned it down; also considered was
General Douglas MacArthur. The reactions from those named in French's story
ranged from amusement to anger.
MacArthur said, "It's the best laugh in years."
General Johnson barked, "He'd better be pretty damn careful. Nobody said a
word to me about anything of this kind, and if they did Id throw them out the
window. I know nothing about it."
Colonel Grayson Murphy said he had never heard of the plot and certainly
never financed it. "A fantasy! I can't imagine how anyone could produce it or
any sane person believe it. It is absolutely false so far as it relates to
me, and I dont believe there is a word of truth in it with respect to Mr.
MacGuire."
MacGuire himself said, "It's a joke a publicity stunt. I know nothing about
it. The matter is made out of whole cloth. I deny the story completely."
In Paris, Robert Sterling Clark said he was completely bewildered by his name
being mentioned by Butler and that he would return to testify if the
Committee wished.
When told what these men said, Butler said, "Hell, you're not surprised they
deny it, are you?"
The Committee subpoenaed MacGuire and placed him under oath:
McCormack: Did you leave a speech with him [Butler] �a speech that he was to
make to the convention if he went out there?
MacGuire: No, sir.
McCormack: Was anything said about weakening the influence of the
administration with the soldier?
MacGuire: No, sir; I do not believe the administration was mentioned, as far
as President Roosevelt or anybody down there are concerned. . . .
McCormack: Was there some talk about his [Butlers] going out as an individual
Legionnaire and having two or three hundred other Legionnaires go out to
Chicago, too?
MacGuire. No, sir. . . .
McCormack: At any time did you take out a bank book and show him deposits
in it?
MacGuire: No, sir. . . .
McCormack: Did he [Butler] at any time ask you where you got the money?
MacGuire: I never had any money, and he never asked me if I had any. .
. .
McCormack: Did you know that Mr. Clark had a personal talk with General
Butler?
MacGuire: It seems to me that be mentioned it to me, but I am not
sure....
McCormack: Did you know that Mr. Clark talked with him about going to
the convention?
MacGuire: No, sir; I do not....
McCormack: Did Mr. Clark call you up in Chicago at any time?
MacGuire: Mr. Clark? No, sir....
McCormack: Did he ever call you up in Chicago from General Butler's home? . .
.
MacGuire: No, sir; to my recollection he did not. . . .
McCormack: Did you tell him [Butler] at that time that you went abroad to
study the part that the veterans played abroad in the set-up of the
governments of the countries abroad?
MacGuire: No, sir. . . .
McCormack: Did you tell him that you went abroad and looked into the setups
of the governments there and the part that the veterans played in Italy?
MacGuire: No, sir. . . .
McCormack: Did you talk with him [Butler] about the forming of an
organization of that kind here?
MacGuire: No, sir. . . .
McCormack: You previously testified that you only had one transaction in the
swapping of checks with [Albert Grant] Christmas [Clark's attorney] Of
$20,000 and until later, when you paid him back the balance?
MacGuire: No; I believe that was paid back to Christmas in cash.
McCormack: What have you got to show that?
MacGuire: I haven't got anything to show it.
McCormack: Did you receive a receipt from Christmas?
MacGuire: No, sir; not necessarily; as far as that goes, he is an old friend
of mine....
[McCormack then adduced subpoenaed bank records showing that MacGuire had
cashed letters of credit in the amount of $30,300.1
McCormack: What did you do with that $30,300 in Chicago?
MacGuire: I kept that money in cash and put it in a safe deposit box with the
First National Bank. . . .
McCormack: What became of that money?
MacGuire: That money was brought back and returned to Mr. Christmas.
McCormack: In cash?
MacGuire: Yes.
McCormack: When did you return this $30,300 to Mr. Christmas?
MacGuire: I do not remember the date....
McCormack: Did you get a receipt for it?
MacGuire: No, I did not get a receipt for it....
McCormack: Let me ask you this: why should you have cashed the letters of
credit in Chicago and put that money in a safe deposit box?
MacGuire: Because I felt that if I had a chance to buy the bonds [he had
previously said he had the considerable sum in Chicago to buy bonds if a good
buy showed up] I could buy them right off for cash.
McCormack: Wouldn't letters of credit be accepted just as cash?
MacGuire: They probably would.
McCormack: Wouldn't they be safer than cash on your person?
MacGuire: They probably would, yes; but there is no objection to getting the
cash, is there? . . .
McCormack: Now, then, you also took the money along for the purpose of buying
bonds?
MacGuire: That is right.
McCormack: Did you buy any bonds?
MacGuire: No, sir.
McCormack: What bonds did you want to buy?
MacGuire: They had several items in mind.
McCormack: What is the name of those bonds?
MacGuire: I think Chicago Sanitary District 4's
McCormack: Whom did you talk to about buying the Chicago Sanitary District
4's?
MacGuire: I did not talk to anybody.
McCormack: Whom did you speak to about it?
MacGuire: I didn't speak to anybody....
[The committee had subpoenaed reports MacGuire sent from Europe, some
addressed "My dear Sir" and others to "Gentlemen."]
McCormack: Now, in your report dated May 6, 1934, from Paris, addressed
"Gentlemen"�and there is no other named used-on page 4 You say that the
French organization, the Croix de Feu�
"Is getting a great number of new recruits, and I recently attended a meeting
of this organization and was quite impressed with the type of men belonging.
These fellows are interested only in the salvation of France, and I feel sure
that the country could not be in better bands because they are not
politicians, they are a cross section of the best people of the country from
all walks of life, people who gave their 'all' between 1914 and 1918 that
France might be saved, and I feel sure that if a crucial test ever comes to
the Republic that these men will be the bulwark upon which France will be
saved" . . . . .
[Referring to another report sent by the witness, McCormack continued: ]
And in this report you also said:
"I was informed that there is a Fascist Party springing up in Holland under
the leadership of a man named Mussait who is an engineer by profession, and
who has approximately 50,000 followers at the present time, ranging in age
from 18 to 25 years. It is said that this man is in close touch with Berlin
and is modeling his entire program along the lines followed by Hitler in
Germany". . . .
So you studied this Fascist Party when you were in Holland, did you?
MacGuire: No, sir; I did not. It was a matter of public information in the
press and was reported so in the letter....
When days passed after French published his story, there was a noticeable
sense of public uneasiness when not one of those named was called to testify,
despite assurances by the chairman and cochairman that the Committee would
get to the bottom of the scandal. The talk was that those named in Butler's
testimony were too powerful, and thus nothing would be done about the plot.
In the hectic days after the story broke, I was in Washington to see what I
could learn. I found that the only person known to have been called to
testify was a California banker named Frank N. Belgrano, who was very
influential in the American Legion. Then I heard that without being asked one
single question, be was abruptly told to go home. Why his name was removed
from the list of witnesses to appear before the Committee was never made
public, but rumor had it that the deletion was made after Belgrano met with
the President at the White House. I was never able to verify this, and
Congressman McCormack refused to answer questions about him. Co-chairman
Dickstein told me be did not know why Belgrano was sent home without being
questioned.
As speculation grew that those named by Butler were too powerful to be
questioned, some explanation had to be made, and the Congressional Committee
issued a long press release which stated in part:
The Committee did not ask Robert Sterling Clark to return to testify. None of
the prominent persons named in Butler's testimony were questioned. Sending
Belgrano home without asking him a question and timing Christmas's testimony
for the very end of the Committee's life were disturbing facts. Why these
inexplicable acts? Had the Committee found that the plot was too hot to
handle?
This committee has had no evidence before it that would in the slightest
degree warrant calling before it such men as John W. Davis, Gen. Hugh
Johnson, General Harbord, Admiral Sims, or Hanford MacNider.
The committee will not take cognizance of names brought into the testimony
which constitutes mere hearsay.
This committee is not concerned with premature newspaper accounts, especially
when given and published prior to the taking of testimony. . . .
On December 17 McCormack announced that Albert Christmas, Clark's attorney,
had returned from Europe and would testify in two or three days. The
Committee questioned him in executive session. Though national concern about
the plot was keen, the attorney was not questioned publicly until, for all
practical purposes, the Committee was dead and could do nothing about what
the witness said. Christmas was heard on the last day of the Committee's life
and then the questions were limited only to money given MacGuire by the
lawyer and Clark. Presumably because of the sacredness of lawyer-client
confidences, no questions were asked about conversations or correspondence
between an alleged principal in the plot and his attorney. In explaining the
large sums of money given to the go-between, there was an item of some
$65,000 which MacGuire had testified he had used for traveling and
entertaining in Europe.
McCormack: So the way you want to leave it is there is $65,000 or $66,000
that Mr. MacGuire received from either you, or Mr. Clark, which he spent in
the period between June and December of 1933 for traveling and entertainment
expenses?
Christmas: Yes, sir.
McCormack: Did he return to you some time in August approximately $30,000 in
cash?
Christmas: No.
McCormack: Do you know he testified he did?
Christmas: The Committee gave me some indication of such testimony at a
previous session.
McCormack: Assuming he has testified to that, that is not so?
Christmas: I would say he is in error. He is mistaken.
The Committee did not ask Robert Sterling Clark to return to testify.
None of the prominent persons named in Butler's testimony were questioned.
Sending Belgrano home without asking him a question and timing Christmas's
testimony for the very end of the Committee's life were disturbing facts. Why
these inexplicable acts? Had the Committee found that the plot was too hot to
handle?
pps. 294-313
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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