[CTRL] The Attempted Coup Against FDR (2 of 2)

[William Shannon]

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html What The Committee Revealed Not surprisingly, when called as a witness, MacGuire denied any plot. He claimed he was part of The Committee For Sound Dollar and Sound Currency, Inc., which was spearheading a lobbying effort on behalf of the Gold Standard. However, his contradictory testimony and his inability to satisfactorily explain the large amounts of money which were deposited in several of his accounts compromised his credibility as a witness. At one point he said he was acting as purchasing agent of securities for Clark, but he never produced any evidence that he ever purchased any securities at all.13 It was also revealed that Clark had sent MacGuire on a trip to Germany, Italy, Spain, and France allegedly to study ‘economic’ conditions. But records of the Committee for a Sound Dollar, where MacGuire filed his reports, indicated he was studying something more. In each of the countries he met with veterans in paramilitary groups. These were the types of groups that carried out coups and assassinations in Germany and Italy on behalf of Hitler and Mussolini. A similar group operated in France, the Croix de Feu, about which MacGuire wrote this glowing report: "... this French super organization is composed of about 500,000 men, and each of them was the leader of 10 others, and that is the kind of organization that we should have in the United States."14 Finally, Butler’s story was corroborated by Commander James Van Zandt of the Veterans of Foreign Wars who claimed he was also approached to lead an insurrection army. It was also alleged by Butler that MacGuire had guaranteed arms on credit from the Remington Arms Company. Investigation by the committee revealed that the DuPonts had just bought the controlling interest in Remington Arms.15 The committee stated in its final report that it found credible evidence of a contemplated plot to overthrow the elected government with a military coup. Nevertheless, some alleged co-conspirators (supposedly revealed to Butler by MacGuire) such as General Hugh Johnson, (who was head of FDR’s National Recovery Administration), former NY Governor Al Smith and General Douglas MacArthur were never subpoenaed.16 Media Treatment Of The Plot The media gave little or scant coverage to the committee’s final report. The Luce Press, which always led the charge in attacking Roosevelt and bolstering Fascism, ran a story called "A Plot Without Plotters"17 which sought to discredit Col. Butler. He was called a "hothead." Other evidence of Butler’s unsavory character, according to Luce, was that he had once given a speech in which he criticized Mussolini. His advocacy of the penniless Bonus Veteran Army was transformed into haranguing. The committee chairmen fared no better under Luce’s pen. They were accused of only seeking publicity (despite their having sought to suppress the most explosive parts of their discoveries). The New York Times showed an astonishing lack of interest. Reference to the alleged coup was relegated to two paragraphs at the bottom of page five.18 However, not every newspaper discounted the plot. The independent Philadelphia Record ran a cartoon showing big business pointing to a soapbox Communist as the threat, while General Butler marches in with evidence revealing armed Fascists hiding beneath a banker’s coat.19 References to the alleged conspiracy disappeared from the press. Nevertheless, individual reporters did attempt to pursue the story. Paul Comley French of the Philadelphia Record and investigative journalist John Spivak went to the Justice Department. They asked why no one implicated was ever questioned; and since MacGuire had perjured himself, did they intend to file criminal prosecution? The Justice Department indicated it had no plans to carry matters any further at the moment. MacGuire, the only man who could have testified against the rest, died soon after of complications from pneumonia. His physician claimed that his death was partly due to the stress of the charges made by Butler. Grayson M.P. Murphy, the Morgan banker and treasurer of the American Liberty League, died soon after.20 Aftermath And Beyond Although the coup never materialized, the unrelenting propaganda attack against Roosevelt and the New Deal reforms continued, spearheaded by the American Liberty League. The League listed as its main contributors the DuPont family, representatives of the Morgan interests, Robert Sterling Clark, the Pew Family (Sun Oil), and Rockefeller Associates. Its Treasurer was Grayson M.P. Murphy, MacGuire’s immediate boss. The League itself was ostensibly dedicated to the virtues of the Constitution, individual freedom and free market capitalism. But it claimed that all New Deal reforms were inspired by Communists within the Roosevelt administration.21 In the election of 1936, the League spent twice as much money as the Republican Party in trying to defeat Roosevelt. Although the League disbanded after Roosevelt won his second term, it spawned a series of extreme right-wing groups and paramilitary bands which constituted a network that endured through the 1960s, and whose descendants are with us today. Their propaganda was anti-Communist and anti-Semitic; their tactic was violence. Some groups which the League financed were the Sentinels of the Republic (which labeled the New Deal "Jewish Communism"), the Minutemen and the Minutewomen. Another group, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, was associated with the Silver Shirt Squad of the American Storm Troopers. The goals of this organization, headed by a Texas oil magnate, were to create a mass movement of whites in the South to dilute Roosevelt’s Dixie vote, and to stir up anti-black racism in order to attack organizing drives by the unions from the North. Significantly, these same hate sentiments were being stirred up against JFK, and for the same reasons. These groups formed the dark underside to the League, which tried to present a polite public face.22 But some industrialists, like Henry Ford, had no qualms about explicitness. American Fascists groups hawked his anti-Semitic tracts like "The International Jew." The main function of these hate groups was to enforce the will of right-wing corporate America, seeking to regain the political power it lost in the 1932 election. On the grassroots level, this intention translated into supporting the efforts of management to stop workers from unionizing. The most glaring example of this is the struggle at the General Motors plants (General Motors was owned by the DuPonts). The DuPonts employed the Black Legion, a sort of Northern Klux Klux Klan, which would terrorize workers, bomb union halls, and torture and murder organizers. The Legion was organized into arson squads, execution squads, and anti-Communist squads. Discipline within its own ranks was maintained with the weapons of torture or death and was strictly enforced. The LaFollette Committee found that the Legion had penetrated police departments, high government offices, and the Michigan Republican Party.23 These groups also acted as intelligence networks. They infiltrated unions, leftwing groups, and universities, and they sold their information to industry. One example of such an intelligence agency was the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, headquartered in Chicago and operated by Harry Jung.24 Jung later relocated to New Orleans where he was an associate of Guy Bannister, who also hailed from Chicago. Banister’s Detective Agency was spying for right-wing businesses as well. Some believe it may have been in Jung’s hotel in New Orleans that the famous Congress of Freedom meeting took place in the Spring of 1963. At this meeting, with Edwin Walker and Joseph Milteer in attendance, a police informant reported there was talk of murdering national leaders. In the Thirties, corporate America’s fear of government regulation threatened by Roosevelt’s New Deal, ("Socialism" in their minds), gave them a reason to embrace Fascism. It justified their financing of paramilitary hate groups to carry out violent, anti-government and anti-union campaigns exploiting the vehicles of racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism. By the Sixties these groups had become entrenched in the grassroots landscape. The institutionalization of the military industrial complex and the national security state, with which corporate America would meld, developed during World War II and its aftermath. The DuPonts, as well as other industrialists, implicated in the attempted coup against FDR played a major role in these developments. The Nye Committee Hearings to investigate the munitions industry were finally held in 1935. Committee findings revealed that the DuPonts were heavily invested in fascist Italy, and had played a major role in the rearming of Germany.25 According to the Versailles Treaty, which ended WWI, it was illegal to sell arms to Germany, but the DuPonts lobbied State Department delegates to the Paris Peace Conference. They finally obtained assurance from one of the delegates that their business with Germany would be "winked at." That delegate was Wall Street lawyer Allen Dulles. In addition, the Wall Street lawyer who represented the DuPonts at the hearings was William Donovan, who went on to head the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS was the forerunner of the CIA) during WWII. In spite of the DuPonts’ illegal dealings, no prosecutions were forthcoming as a result of the Nye committee either. The DuPont family interests represented the largest holdings in the military industrial complex. DuPont built and operated the plant for the Manhattan project. They built all the facilities for atomic bomb production including the facility at Oak Ridge Tennessee. DuPont technicians and engineers ran the show; and by the Sixties the DuPonts effectively had control of the whole atomic energy industry.26 The JFK Presidency and the New Deal Legacy The post war economic boom, coupled with the Democratic Party’s advocacy for civil rights, encouraged the Republicans to try to win back the voting coalition of urban ethnic groups, the Dixie vote and the Catholic vote that Roosevelt had captured.27 But when John F. Kennedy was elected, that chance evaporated. Kennedy had stopped the Catholic vote on its way back to the right. In spite of the controversy at the time, the Democrats needed a Catholic candidate, not a Mafia Don, to secure the election. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, it was payback time. For it was Joseph Kennedy as chair of the Roosevelt election committee who helped put together that winning "Roosevelt coalition" of urban ethnic groups and the Catholic votes of the Northeast. Kennedy and his family had a powerful legacy in the urban political wards and could deliver that vote. They also elicited the support of some businessmen who were otherwise suspicious of FDR (Kennedy even managed to get William Randolph Hearst to support FDR’s first bid for the Presidency). The Roosevelts and the Kennedys cooperated on other levels as well. James Roosevelt, the President’s son, was instrumental in securing British liquor franchises for Joseph Kennedy. Elliot Roosevelt, another son, served alongside Joseph Kennedy Jr. in WWII. In fact, he was flying the escort plane when Joseph was shot down.28 The relationship between Kennedy and Roosevelt was not always cordial, but Kennedy’s isolationism vs. Roosevelt’s internationalism is beyond the scope of this article.29 Kennedy nevertheless remained a loyal Roosevelt supporter even after most businessmen abandoned the New Deal ship. By the time Roosevelt sought his third term, Kennedy had become more critical of FDR, fostering hope in the business community that he might endorse Wendel Wilkie. Robert E. Woods of the right-wing America First Committee encouraged Kennedy to support Wilkie. Kennedy apparently led Woods, and the Luces, to believe he would shift allegiances. Remember, in 1940 Kennedy was a well-known public figure, and the nation anxiously awaited his radio address to announce whom he supported for President. In spite of his contrary posturing, Kennedy finally supported Roosevelt. Years later, he told Claire Booth Luce, "I simply made a deal with Roosevelt. We agreed that if I would endorse him for President in 1940, then he would support my son Joe for Governor of Massachusetts in 1942."30 So Joseph Kennedy gained the enmity of FDR’s enemies; he was perceived as a traitor. In the 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy consciously welded himself to the FDR legacy. The New Frontier was to be the fulfillment of the New Deal. Franklin Roosevelt Jr., later to become JFK’s Undersecretary of Commerce, campaigned with Kennedy throughout states such as West Virginia, where memories of the Great Depression were still vivid. Certainly this campaign, as well as Kennedy’s proactive policies, gained the ire of FDR’s New Deal enemies. In his book Battling Wall Street, Donald Gibson convincingly shows that JFK did come up against the same business interests that opposed FDR. 31 For example, in his confrontation with U.S. Steel (a company in which DuPont owned a significant share of stock) over price increases Kennedy railed against "a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profits exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interest of 185 million Americans." Recall the FDR speech about Wall Street bankers harming the greater good. In closing I would say the attempted coup against FDR and the power struggles surrounding it will not give us a smoking gun to the Kennedy assassination. But it will allow us to draw some important implications about the assassination. 1. The coup attempt against FDR gives us an historical precedent to conclude that powerful interests will consider using every available means including political murder in order to pursue their personal wealth. 2. The Kennedy assassination was domestic in nature. 3. The assassination was carried out by two groups created by corporate interests: The national security state and right-wing paramilitary organizations. 4. Although foreign policy issues such as Cuba and Vietnam were important, JFK’s domestic policies and vision of an activist government mediating for the interests of all segments of society precipitated his assassination. 5. Since the assassination was domestic in nature the cover- up that followed was not to avoid an international nuclear war, but to avoid a domestic civil strife. 6. Finally, if nothing else, studying the anti-FDR coup attempt and what it represents allows us to break the seals on a chapter of our history which, like the JFK case, vested interests would like to keep hidden.