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Posted by JAS on 08/27/05 01:42
I just discovered on the DVD "the Corporation" this unsuccessful (unlike
2000 and perhaps 2004) coup attempt that was eliminated from US History -
any ideas on its authenticity?
Morgan-British Fascist Coup Against FDR
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by Lonnie Wolfe
It is the winter of 1932-33. The world is in the grips of the worst economic
depression of the century. In Germany, in January 1933, a cabal of
British-allied bankers have staged a parliamentary coup to topple the von
Schleicher government to prevent it from implementing a radical economic
development program that might threaten their political and financial power;
Adolf Hitler, the choice of London and Wall Street, has been installed as
the German Chancellor to protect interests of the bankers' cabal.
Across the ocean, in the United States, the economy and the banking system
have nearly ground to a halt, as bread lines grow. A new President is about
to take office: Franklin D. Roosevelt has thrashed the hapless bankers' boy,
Herbert Hoover, in the November election, and has thus been given a mandate
by the American people to reverse their fortunes. Roosevelt, a patrician and
cousin of arch-Anglophile President Teddy Roosevelt, is viewed with distrust
by those same Wall Street interests whom TR so loyally served.
Since the 1876 Species Resumption Act, but especially since Teddy
Roosevelt's rule, the British-allied banking interests clustered around the
Houses of Morgan and Mellon have gained increasing power over the conduct of
American financial policy. Through their imposition of the Federal Reserve
System, a compact of the private bankers, the Morgan-Mellon cabal has
overseen an even further expansion of the power of the financier oligarchy
against American national and industrial interests. Along with the Warburgs,
the Meyers of Lazard Frres, Otto Kahn of Kuhn Loeb, and the Harriman
interests, the Morgan-Mellon cabal at that point constituted a ``secret
government'' more powerful than any President, while having a substantial
numbers of Congressmen and Senators on their effective payroll. A
combination of Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of Treasury, and Eugene Meyer,
as Fed chairman, have dictated financial policy to the hapless Hoover.
Together with their confederate, Montagu Norman at the Bank of England, and
other European banking interests, they have presided over the deepening
Depression collapse 1929-32[fn1].
During this century, no President had dared to challenge the power of this
financial cabal. However, FDR, with his mandate from the American people, is
now in a position to do so. As Governor of New York, and during the 1932
Presidential campaign, FDR has made clear his understanding of the use of
the power of the executive branch of government to shape policy initiatives,
and to mobilize support for them. Should Roosevelt exert the full power of
the Presidency, as defined by the U.S. Constitution, including power over
financial and economic policy, he could take away power from the financial
oligarchy, the Morgan-Mellon led cabal, restoring a balance between
financial and industrial capital.
That, for the cabal, would have been bad enough; but as 1932 became 1933,
Morgan's spies learned that Roosevelt might be considering more radical
measures, ones that could take control of America's most precious
commodity--its sovereign credit-- away from Wall Street and the London-based
financial oligarchy who controlled the Morgan interests. American credit,
and therefore government economic policy, had been held under the thumb of
the private financial markets and their banking houses, like Morgan. Should
a President Roosevelt seize control of the nation's credit, and deploy it
for a recovery program based not upon continued bankers' looting, but on
economic development, and should he rally the American people to that
program, the power of the London-based financial oligarchs might be broken.
With their power thus threatened, the financial oligarchs were ready to
choose radical action: Roosevelt had to be eliminated, and the institution
of the Presidency destroyed or weakened. Thus was set in motion here in the
U.S. a series of actions paralleling the overthrow of the von Schleicher
government in Germany, that would have led to the American equivalent of the
Hitler coup.
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II. A Hail of Bullets
On the evening of Feb. 15, 1933 Roosevelt, who had been vacationing in the
Caribbean prior to his scheduled March 4 inauguration, landed in Miami for
political meetings. He arrived aboard the yacht of Vincent Astor, of the
British-dominated Astor financial interests. A crowd of some 10,000 gathered
near the waterfront, waiting to see the President-elect. As FDR, speaking
from the seat of an open car, concluded brief remarks, several shots rang
out. Five people on or near the bandstand directly behind the
President-elect were hit, although FDR, miraculously, was not.
The man firing the shots, Giuseppe Zingara, a brickmason from New Jersey,
was immediately branded an ``anarchist.'' When Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak,
wounded in the hail of bullets, died three weeks after the attack, it fed
speculation that he, not Roosevelt, had been the target of what was called
in the press a ``mob hit.'' It was reported that Chicago mob boss Frank
Nitti had put Cermak on a ``hit list'' and that FDR ``just happened to be
there.''
But Zingara's own statements, prior and during the trial, made it clear that
he had been targetting FDR, and that the others had been hit by mistake in
the botched assassination attempt.
Contemporary newspaper accounts speak of the assassin's arm being deflected
by a woman in the crowd. Her report was that the shooter had carefully
prepositioned himself to have a clear shot at Roosevelt, and that the gun
was pointed, at a range of less than 30 feet, directly at FDR; had she not
hit his arm, FDR would have been hit, and likely killed.
With Cermak's death, Zingara was rushed to trial and execution in less than
90 days from the time of the shooting. It was, the contemporary media
accounts claimed, an ``open-and-shut case''; after all, the FBI, under the
personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover, had conducted an ``exhaustive''
investigation, concluding that Zingara was a ``lone assassin'' acting from
an emotionally disturbed and bizarre political analysis.
No competent invesigation of the assassination attempt has ever been done.
Such an investigation would have had to proceed from the question cui bono?
(Who benefits?). From there, the trail would likely have led to the center
of the London-Wall Street cabal, whose members had been meeting for months,
in secret, to discuss how to deal with the ``Roosevelt problem.''
An even cursory examination of the evidence presented in the ``railroad
trial'' shows that the FBI report was a coverup, and that many
contradictions were left unresolved, even as the assassin was dispatched to
the Florida electric chair. For example, given his apparent meager
resources, both mental and monetary, how was it possible that Zingara was
placed in a perfect position to assassinate the President-elect? How was
this preplanning accomplished, and who if anyone might have assisted in
this, including in providing the necessary information about the rally and
the placement of the President (i.e., Zingara was aware that he was going to
speak from a car and not from the bandstand)?
There is also the ample clinical evidence that Zinagra's mental state
coheres with what would today be called a ``zombie assassin,'' with
significant memory gaps about how he came to do what he did; the methods of
creating such zombie-assassins, using political and religious belief
structures, were already known and in practice in the circles of British
Intelligence associated with the Freudians of the London Tavistock Clinic.
The FBI report merely dismissed all talk of conspiracies as out of the
question, and investigated no possible leads.
If Roosevelt had been killed, the country would have been plunged into a
Constitutional crisis. No President-elect had ever died before assuming
office; under such circumstances, there is no clearly specified succession.
It might have been the case that a new election would have been called, and
the bankers' boy Hoover might have remained in office. The paralysis and
chaos would have played directly into the Morgan cabal's hands.
For some months prior to the assassination attempt, Hoover and others in the
Morgan-Mellon-controlled Hoover administration, at the behest of former
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, had been working on ``contingency plans''
for emergency measures to be taken to preserve law and order should there be
a ``breakdown'' of government under the strains of the Depression. These
involved suspension of sections of the Constitution, by executive order,
including many provisions of the Bill of Rights, and the declaration of
martial law to deal with unrest and riots. With the Morgan interests
prepared to bankroll provocations, the absence of a viable Presidential
authority to resist them would have presented the window of opportunity to
install a Bonapartist police state in this country.
(Less than two weeks after the Miami assassination attempt on FDR, on Feb.
27, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was burned to the ground
in an arson attack. That incident was used as a pretext for a wave of terror
against Nazi opponents and rivals, and it led to the activation government
by decree, giving the Hitler police state its dictatorial powers.)
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III. The Coup Plot Takes Shape
Roosevelt assumed office March 4, 1933 and almost immediately realized the
worst fears of the Morgan-Mellon cabal. In bold actions, starting with his
declaration of a bank holiday, and removal of the dollar from the
credit-strangulation of the gold standard, he showed that he intended to
assert the primacy of Presidential power over the whims and policies of the
financial oligarchy.[fn2]
Having failed to kill him in February, some time before June 1933, a new
operation against FDR and the Presidency was set in motion. This involved,
as an option, the creation of an armed fascist ``people's militia,'' to be
led by a ``popular'' military figure, who would move on Washington and force
the resignation of the President.
On the surface, such a plot appears impractical, even impossible. However,
one must remember that in 1933, outright support for fascist ideology had
been promoted for a decade both by the media, and by such outright
pro-fascist, mass-based organizations as the Morgan-created American Legion;
thus, there were already significant numbers of armed fascist organizations.
Further, there was a large base of radicalized veterans around which to
recruit forces to such a people's militia. They included most prominently
the feeling of betrayal among veterans over the failure of the government to
pay promised bonuses to those who fought in World War I, and the fact that
Roosevelt, to battle the British effort to drain the U.S. of its gold
reserve, had ended the covertability of dollars for gold.[fn3]
There is also every reason to believe that the tiny U.S. military officer
corps, and especially the various state national guards, were rife with
Morgan-Mellon agents and, in some cases, outright proto-fascists, linked to
the Legion networks. This, along with FBI Director ``Gay'' Edgar Hoover's
treasonous persuasion, which included an expressed hatred for FDR, could
(and did) allow the coup plot to proceed.
While it is not likely that the plot that we describe below could ever have
succeeded in ``seizing power,'' under the circumstances and conditions
described, such an insurrectionary operation could create a ``Reichstag
fire''-like pretext for a Bonapartist coup against Constitutional
government, perhaps including a successful ``inside job'' assassination of
Roosevelt. The chosen hapless leader of the insurrection were himself a
likely candidate for assassination, with power then ceded to a ``coalition
of national unity,'' under the thumb of the Morgan-Mellon interests.
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IV. `The Man on the White Horse'
The man that the Morgan crowd chose for the role of ``The Man on the White
Horse,'' Smedley Butler, seems an unlikely candidate for a coup leader.
Twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, he had served with
distinction in every American military action of the 20th century to the
time. A Quaker from a prominent Pennsylvania family, he thought of himself
as a patriot who would never betray the values embodied in the Constitution.
He had been both the most distinguished serving officer in the nation, and
also its most outspoken. He had even served for two years on special
assignment as police commissioner of Philadelphia in 1920s, where he fought
the rackets while respecting constitutionally guaranteed rights, only to be
hamstrung by partisan politics.
Even more important, Butler was the loudest and most open critic of the use
of the military for purposes outside the interests of the United States, for
the bankers' debt collection and related policies.
In December 1929, speaking to veterans in Pittsburgh, he stated that in his
deployment in 1912 in Nicaragua, he had helped rig elections in favor of the
Wall Street-backed candidate. He was immediately called on the carpet by
Navy Secretary Charles Francis Adams, a man whose name was later to appear
on the Morgan preferred list of investors.
In August 1931, Butler, in a speech to the American Legion, declared: ``I
have spent 33 years ... being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for
Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism....
``I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown
Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe
for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place for the National City (Bank) boys to collect revenue in. I helped rape
half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....
In China, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.... I
had ... a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions.
I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a
racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents....''
To the dismay of the bankers who directed the Legion, Butler's remarks were
greeted with riotous applause.
Butler was an overt anti-fascist, who in 1931, openly denounced Mussolini as
a murderer and thug, and warned against signing treaties with him. When the
Italian government filed a protest, all hell broke loose: the Secretary of
State, Henry Stimson, cabled a personal apology, on behalf of Herbert
Hoover, to ``Il Duce,'' while Butler, the commandant of the Quantico Marine
base at the time, was placed under arrest and told that he was to be
court-martialed by direct order of the President of the United States, with
the full approval of Navy Secretary Adams.
The plans for the court martial provoked a tremendous outpouring of support
for Butler. The anti-fascist local press charged that the Hoover
administration was kowtowing to the ``thug'' Mussolini and throwing up for
sacrifice America's most distinguished military figure. Franklin Roosevelt,
then the governor of New York, and a friend of Butler's dating from FDR's
days as Secretary of the Navy, worked to help the General, and spoke out
against what was being done. Hoover and Adams were forced to back down: the
court martial was cancelled, and Butler was given only a mild reprimand. He
refused, however, to retract his statement.
Such credentials would seem to disqualify Butler as a coup-plot leader, but
in fact, they were precisely the kind of credible cover the plotters
required: Who would even think of linking Smedley Butler to the
Morgan-Mellon cabal, or to fascist ideas? Butler, who had some financial
difficulties, could be enticed into their web with some money, or so the
bankers' cabal thought, and with the appeal that he would be doing the
country and his beloved veterans a service. Perhaps they figured that if
Butler took their bait, he would wind up dead in the coup attempt.
But as with many of the oligarchical mindset, they failed to understand
Butler's commitment to his country and Constitution. While ignorant of many
of the forces behind the coup, Butler ``smelled a rat,'' and able to summon
forth the courage to withstand the ridicule heaped upon him for ``going
public'' with what he knew, for taking a step that he saw necessary to save
his country.
V. The First Overtures
Butler had worked aggressively for Roosevelt's 1932 election, campaigning on
FDR's behalf around the country and rallying support among veterans. He
particularly attacked the idea circulated by the Legion and others that
Roosevelt's election would pave the way for a socialist or communist
takeover.
On July 7, speaking in New York, Butler demanded that the government be
rescued from the ``clutches of the greedy and dishonest''; in remarks that
were later to echo in Roosevelt's first inaugural address, Butler stated:
``Today, with all our wealth, a deadly gloom hangs over us. Today, we appear
to be divided. There has developed, through the past few years, a new Tory
class, a group that believes that the nation, its resources and its manpower
was provided by the Almighty for its own special use and profit.... On the
other side is the great mass of the American people who still believe in the
Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States.
``This Tory group, through its wealth, its power and its influence, has
obtained a firm grip on our government, to the detriment of our people and
the well-being of our nation. We will prove to the world that we meant what
we said a century and half ago--that this government was instituted not only
to secure for our people the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, but the right to eat and to all our willing millions, the right
to work.''
Four months after FDR's inauguration, the coup plotters made their first
approach to Butler. It appears from evidence later presented to Congress,
and from Butler's own account, that they had a three-phase approach to the
recruitment of the fiery former General: first, they would win his
confidence, by appearing to stage a revolt in the Morgan-controlled American
Legion; then, they would plant doubt, using ``inside'' information about
FDR's intentions toward the nation and its veterans; and finally, they would
indicate the scope of the coup and necessity for an armed insurrectionary
action.
The first people to approach Butler, on July 1, 1933, were Bill Doyle, the
commander of the Mass. American Legion, and Gerald C. MacGuire, who was a
former commander of the Connecticut department of the Legion.[fn4]
MacGuire was in the employ of Col. Grayson M.P. Murphy, who ran a leading
New York brokerage firm that traded in stocks and international bond
syndications, working with the House of Morgan. Grayson Mallet-Prevost
Murphy, who was on Morgan's ``preferred lists,'' was a director of Morgan's
Guaranty Trust bank and several Morgan-connected corporations. He and his
banking house had played an important role in syndicating Morgan loans to
fascist Italy, for which he was decorated by Mussolini.
Murphy came from a long line of traitors. The Mallet-Prevost families have
run British intelligence since the eighteenth century.[fn5]
Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy carried on his family's tradition of treason
as a high ranking officer in a private intelligence operation that reported
to the Morgan cabal, and interfaced directly with British Intelligence, with
a specialty in black operations. In February 1919, Murphy had been one of
200 elite U.S. officers who met in Paris with the guidance of Morgan &
Company operatives to found the Legion. Murphy personally underwrote that
operation to the tune of $125,000, and solicited additional funds from
allies of Morgan in the industrial and financial community.
In the first meeting with Butler, MacGuire did most of the talking, claiming
that he represented a group of ``powerful'' ``influentials'' who were
prepared to assist Butler in cleaning up the Legion. He asked Butler to
address the upcoming Legion convention, and planted the seed that Roosevelt
was blocking their efforts to get him invited. Butler declined their
invitation to speak from the floor.
Another approach was made in August by the two coup plotters, this time
proposing that there would be a staged demonstration, with Butler giving a
``rabble-rousing'' speech, on demand of the crowd.
``A speech about what?'' Butler asked. Butler was handed a speech that had
``Morgan'' written all over it: it was a defense of the British gold
standard, featuring a demand that the Roosevelt policy severing the U.S.
from gold be reversed immediately, so that the soldiers' bonuses could be
paid with ``sound money.'' Butler was later to learn that the speech had
been written by John W. Davis, the former Democratic presidential candidate
who was chief counsel to J.P. Morgan and Company, and the personal lawyer
for J.P. Morgan, himself.[fn6]
A short time later, McGuire appeared again to ask that Butler address the
convention, telling him that he had a warchest assembled from powerful
people. Butler, having long ago smelled a rat, played along, and demanded
that he be told who the ``nine men'' backing this effort were. MacGuire
would name only three, but the names were revealing: Murphy; another
financier, Robert S. Clark, a member of Morgan's ``preferred list'' and an
heir to the Singer Sewing fortune;[fn7] and John S. Mills, who married into
the Du Pont family.
Ultimately, Butler demanded, and was allowed to meet with one of the
principals. Robert S. Clark, a Morgan crony who was one of the founders of
Legion, came to see the General and asked him to attend the Legion
convention as his guest. He urged Butler to make the gold speech: ``I have
$30 million dollars,'' Clark told him. ``I don't want to lose it. I am
willing to spend half the $30 million to save the other half....'' When
Butler said that Roosevelt was not about to listen to a bunch of soldiers
about the gold standard or fiscal policy, Clark stated, ``You know the
President is weak. He will come right along with us. He was born in this
class. He was raised in this class and he will come back. He will run true
to form. In the end he will come around. But we have to be prepared to
sustain him when he does.''
When Butler exploded at being offered an outright bribe to deliver the
speech, Clark backed off, and announced that he was withdrawing his own
support from the effort. A new man was then brought in to head the Legion,
Frank N. Belgrano, Jr., a senior vice president of the bank that handled
Mussolini's business accounts in the United States and internationally,
Gianinni's Bank of Italy/Bank of America.
About this time, word was communicated to the White House that an operation
of some kind against FDR was underway. A former New York City detective, Val
O'Farrell, got wind of what was happening from informants and sent a
confidential letter to Roosevelt's personal secretary, Col. Louis Howe,
detailing the offers made to Butler and praising the General for refusing
them. O'Farrell indicated that it was his belief that a wide-ranging plot
was underway.
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VI. Putting Fascism on the Agenda
At the end of October 1933, MacGuire again approached Butler. This time he
revealed that his sponsors were interested in recruiting soldiers to an
organization that would supercede the Legion: ``a great big
superorganization to maintain democracy.''
Morgan partner Thomas Lamont chose an address before the Foreign Policy
Association to make the announcment, heaping praise on Mussolini and his
methods, and stating that fascism, as an economic and political policy,
``works.'' ``We count ourselves liberal, I suppose,'' he told the FPA. ``Are
we liberal enough to be willing for the Italian people to have the sort of
government they apparently want.'' Fascism or some variant, stated Lamont,
was not to be ruled out as policy for the United States.
Articles extolling the virtues of fascism appeared throughout the
Morgan-Mellon controlled media; for example, the entire July 1934 issue of
Henry Luce's Fortune magazine was a paean to Mussolini! In an editorial by
Laird Goldsborough, the British-linked foreign editor of the magazine,
readers were told: ``Fascism is achieving in a few years or decades such a
conquest of the spirit of man as Christianity achieved only in ten
centuries.... The good journalist must recognize in Fascism certain ancient
virtues of the race, whether or not they happen to be momentarily
fashionable in his own country. Among these are Discipline, Duty, Courage,
Glory, and Sacrifice.''
As this statement indicates, there was a sizeable section of the
Anglo-American establishment who were outright fascists. At the center of
these pro-fascist interests were the Morgans, the Mellons, and
Harrimans--the same networks who backed the Hitler coup, and who earlier had
financed Mussolini's rise to power in Italy, and continued to fund his
government. But beyond this core grouping, there were those who expressed a
preference for fascist-like government.
For example, through the 1920s and 1930s, the overt fascist elements of the
establishment were funding the creation of various proto-fascist and
outright fascist paramilitary organizations. The Morgan-created American
Legion that Colonels Murphy and Clark had helped found, started out as just
such an organization. In the early 1930s, money started pouring in from
these circles to fascist organizations, recruited in part from the American
Legion and the Ku Klux Klan. Morgan operatives help insert into the
propaganda stream that fed their members a virulent hatred for the
``communist'' New Deal and the ``Red-lover'' Roosevelt, America's ``new
dictator.'' These groups included the Silver Shirts, the stormtroopers led
by the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith. Others, such as the Crusaders, spurned the
fascist epithet, but nonetheless avowed fascist policy goals to crush
organized labor and the ``Reds,'' and the Sentinels of the Republic, funded
by the Morgan-allied Pew and Pitcairn families. The Scottish Rite
Freemasons, in the tradition of the treasonous Albert Pike, helped John H.
Kirby establish the Southern Committee to Uphold the Consitution, which,
like the Klan itself, was financed with ``Northern money.''
In Hollywood, the actor Victor McLaglen, who was reputed to be an operative
of British Intelligence, established the California Light Brigade, which was
ready to march at a moment's notice against any threat to ``Americanism.''
He was rewarded for his efforts with an Academy Award for ``Best Actor'' by
pro-fascist Louis Mayer's Academy of Motion Picture Arts in 1935.[fn8]
Such organizations spawned cells throughout the country. They were in no way
impeded in their operations by the FBI, under the direction of Masonic
operative ``Gay'' Edgar Hoover.
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VI. The League of Treason
The umbrella organization for the establishment, at the heart of the coup
plot, encompassing both the hard and soft-core fascists, was the American
Liberty League. Set up in August 1934, this ``League of Treason'' included
some of the coup plotters, along with others who backed the fascist goals of
the coup; all were unified in their hatred of FDR and the New Deal.
The two people running the League were, Jouett Shouse, a protg of Du Pont
lawyer and Morgan operative, John J. Raskob. A former Congressman from
Kansas and Assistant Secretary of Treasury during the Wilson administration,
Shouse had gained the reputation of a political ``fixer,'' much like the
present day Robert Strauss. In 1928, the banker's operative Raskob, a former
director of General Motors, was moved into the chairmanship of the
Democratic National Committee, running the disastrous election campaign of
Al Smith, insuring a Hoover victory. Not wishing to give up control of the
party to the political machines, Raskob brought in Shouse as the executive
director of the national committee. As soon as Roosevelt was in a position
to do it, he moved to get rid of both of these ``inside'' men.
The League's initiating executive committee were Morgan-allied stooges:
Morgan's lawyer, John W. Davis, the former Democratic presidential
candidate; Irne Du Pont, who ran the Du Pont fortune now controlled by the
Morgan interests; Nathan Miller, the former GOP governor of New York and a
Morgan preferred list member; Rep. James Wadsworth of New York, a Republican
and supporter of the gold standard; and Al Smith, the ``happy warrior'' who
had been totally corrupted by Morgan money, and who had headed the
corporation that built and ran the Empire State Building. This group was
expanded to include additional prominent leaders of finance and business,
with a heavy emphasis on Morgan allies. On its Advisory Council, were, among
200 others: Dr. Samuel Hardin Church, who ran the Carnegie Institute in
Pittsburgh, and who was a mouthpiece for the Mellons; W.R. Perkins of
National City Bank; Alfred Sloan, the man the Morgans selected to run
General Motors; David Reed, a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, who in May
1932, said on the floor of the Senate, ``I do not often envy other countries
and their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a
Mussolini, it needs one now;'' E.T. Weir of Weirton Steel, who was also
known as a supporter of fascism. On its Executive Committee was Morgan
stooge and former New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph M. Proskauer, the
general counsel to the Consolidated Gas Company; J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil
and the funder of the openly fascist Sentinels of the Republic; and Hal
Roach, the Hollywood producer, who like many of his compatriots was an open
admirer of Mussolini, and who was later to become a partner with Mussolini's
son in a Hollywood production company, R.A.M. (``Roach and Mussolini'')
Films, Inc..
The League's treasurer was none other than Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy!
The League was active, with a high profile, attacking FDR and the New Deal,
especially through 1934-35. With the exposure and collapse of the coup plot,
it soon disappeared from the political map.
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VIII. Marching Orders
The coup plotters sent MacGuire to Europe for seven months, starting in
December 1933. There he met with fascist leaders in Italy, Germany, and
France and consulted with Morgan operatives in Paris and London. By the time
he returned, the plan for an American fascist coup was well advanced.
One month later, he approached Butler again, this time revealing details of
an elaborate strategy to take power, and effectively oust Roosevelt.
Meeting in a deserted restaurant in the Bellevue Hotel in Philadeplhia,
MacGuire told Butler that the time had come to assemble an army. In Europe,
ex-soldiers were the backbone of ``fighting'' political organizations, Here,
he said, that might not work. Instead, he proposed that an organization
mimic the French ``Fiery Cross'' which had been organized around an economic
purpose. He explained that the ``Fiery Cross'' had a core membership of
about 500,000 officers and non-commissioned officers, but that each member
was responsible for organizing at least 10 others, covertly, giving the
organization a ``fighting strength'' of more than 5 million.
MacGuire revealed that Wall Street was about to cut off credit to the New
Deal. ``There is not any more money to give him,'' MacGuire now claimed.
``Eighty percent of the money is now in government bonds, and he can't keep
this racket up much longer.... He has either got to get more money out of us
or he has got to change the method of financing the government, and we are
going to see that he does not change that method. He will not change it.''
This will force a collapse of the New Deal programs; the new fighting
organization would ``sustain'' the President when he abandoned the New Deal,
MacGuire stated. When Butler questioned such logic, MacGuire responded:
``Did it ever occur to you that the President is overworked?'' MacGuire
asked. He said that the ``overworked President'' needed help and that an
``Assistant President'' was needed. This ``assistant President'' would take
over much of Roosevelt's job and could take the blame for the change of
policy. MacGuire said that it ``wouldn't take any constitutional change to
authorize another cabinet official, somebody to take over the details of the
office--to take them off the President's shoulders.'' He mentioned that the
position would be sort of a ``super Secretary'' or what he referred to as a
``Secretary of General Affairs.'' MacGuire claimed that the American people
would be more than willing to swallow this: ``We have got all the
newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing.
Everybody can tell by looking at him and the dumb American people will fall
for it in a second.''
MacGuire then indicated that Roosevelt was already surrounded by allies of
the Morgan coup plotters. He said that they had hoped that the pro-fascist
Gen. Hugh Johnson, who Roosevelt had put in charge of the National Recovery
Administration and who had expressed admiration for Mussolini, was the man
the Morgan group would have preferred as this General Secretary. But
according to MacGuire, Roosevelt was going to fire him because he ``talked
too damn much.''
MacGuire told Butler that, within a year following this discussion, the coup
plotters wanted him to march his army of 500,000 people into Washington. He
stressed that there would be no revolution, that everything would be
``Constitutional'': It had all been worked out, in advance. The Secretary of
State, Cordell Hull, would resign, as would Vice President John Nance
Garner; the sense given was that both these figures were ``in'' on the plot,
or minimally, that Morgan and their allies had enough ``chits'' to call in
that they could be counted on to do what they were instructed. According to
MacGuire, Roosevelt would allow the plotters to appoint a new Secretary of
State. If Roosevelt, with 500,000 men occupying Washington, was willing to
``return to his class,'' he would be allowed to remain on as President.
``We'd do with him what Mussolini did to the King of Italy,'' MacGuire told
Butler, saying that the President's function would become ceremonial much
like the then President of France. But, if Roosevelt refused to go along,
MacGuire insisted, he ``would be forced to resign, whereupon under the
Constitution, the Presidential succession would place the Secretary of State
in the White House.'' Butler was to tell a Congressional committee that
MacGuire thought that all this could take place bloodlessly--a ``cold
coup.'' All that was needed was a ``show of force in Washington'' and that
he, Butler, would be ``the man on the white horse'' who would ``ride to the
rescue of capitalism.'' An armed show of force was the ``only way to save
the capitalist system,'' MacGuire asserted.
Butler, playing along with MacGuire to discover who was behind this plot,
said that what was being proposed would cost a great deal of money. He was
told not to worry. MacGuire already had ``$3,000,000 to start with, on the
line, and we can get $300,000,000 if we need it.'' He reminded Butler that
the banker Clark had told the General that he was personally willing to
commit as much as $15 million.
He then told Butler that even more powerful people than Clark stood directly
behind the plan. When he was in Europe, he reported, he had held meetings at
the Paris office of Morgan & Hodges, Morgan's Paris operation. He claimed
that the Morgan group had strong reservations about Butler, fearing that he
might try to double-cross them. He stressed that the others involved,
however, had gotten the Morgan interests to agree that Butler was the best
man to ``get the soldiers together,'' implying that Grayson Murphy, Clark,
and himself had backed the General.
Butler tried to probe further, asking when there would be signs of the
coming together of a larger and more powerful organization which would
provide public backing for this plot. He was astonished when he was told
that ``within a few weeks'' there would be an organization of some of the
most powerful people in the land who would come together to ``defend the
Constitution.'' MacGuire explained the manner in which this organization,
which he would not name, would function using a musical analogy: It was to
serve the purpose of ``the villagers or chorus in an opera,'' establishing
the setting and the scene, for the great action to take place. That
organization was the American Liberty League.
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IX. Exposing the Plot
When the Liberty League appeared on the scene some two weeks later, just as
MacGuire had promised, Butler believed it urgent to expose the plot.
Realizing that the Morgan interests would slander him and try to deny their
influence over events, he now sought help in gaining some independent
collaboration of what he had been told.
Butler turned to Tom O'Neill, the city editor of the Philadelphia Record,
who assigned his star reporter, Paul Comley French, to investigate the
story. French, who also wrote for the New York Evening Post, was set up by
Butler to talk to MacGuire, posing as an intermediary to discuss the
General's further participation in Macguire's plans.
In early September 1934, French went to see MacGuire at his offices on the
premises of Grayson M.P. Murphy and Company in New York. In the meeting,
French was able to substantiate every allegation about the plot that Butler
had attributed to MacGuire.
``We need a fascist government,'' French was to quote MacGuire as saying in
his testimony before a Congressional committee, ``to save the nation from
the Communists....'' MacGuire repeated this theme several times during his
conversation with French.
MacGuire, seeing that French was more interested in questions of policy than
the crusty General, informed French that his backers had already devised a
plan to end unemployment: ``It was the plan that Hitler had used in putting
all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks--enforced labor. That would
solve it [the unemployment problem] overnight.'' He also claimed that they
would force all people in the nation to ``register'' and carry
identification papers. ``He said that would stop a lot of these communist
agitators who were running around the country,'' French later told the
Congressional committee.
MacGuire reported that those behind him were going to create a deliberate
financial crisis for the administration. They were prepared to choke off
credit to the New Deal programs, force interest rates higher, and force the
rates that the government would have to pay to borrow up towards the then
astronomical levels of 5% or more. This, MacGuire said would produce a ``new
crash.'' He then described how the crash would unleash the ``left,''
creating new agitation and disruptions, especially among the growing numbers
of new unemployed. With the nation consumed in chaos, the time would be
right for the ``man on the white horse'' to ride into Washington, force the
overturning of the elected government, the end of ``Presidential rule'' and
the start of a new, fascist era for the nation.
MacGuire told French that it would be no problem getting the soldiers' army
weapons from the Du Pont-controlled Remington Arms Company; the Du Pont
interests were fully in support of the plans, MacGuire stated.
With corroboration in hand, Butler felt it now was necessary to go public.
Before he could make his decision on how to proceed, he was approached by
investigators for the Special House Committee to Investigate Nazi Activities
in the United States. The committee had, through their own sources, heard of
a plot to overthrow the government that had involved the General. It was
arranged for General Butler to testify in executive session on Nov. 20, when
the committee was in New York.
Three days before Butler was to testify, French broke the coup story
simultaneously in the Record and the Post, under the banner headline
``$3,000,000 Bid for Fascist Army Bared;'' the story featured direct
statements from Butler, naming most of the names he was later to reveal in
his testimony.
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X. The General Names the Names
As the hearing opened, Butler thought it necessary to make a brief statement
concerning his involvement in the plot: ``May I preface my remarks, by
saying sir, that I have one interest in all of this and that is to try to do
my best to see that democracy is maintained in this country?''
Cutting him short, committee co-chair Rep. John McCormack, Democrat of
Massachusetts, who was later to become Speaker of House, stated, ``Nobody
who has either read or known about General Butler would have anything but
that understanding.''
Butler then proceeded to tell the story, in great detail, that we have
described above. As he proceeded, he was asked for clarification on several
points. The General provided what additional details he could, but never
ventured into speculation, sticking to the statements made directly to him
by those involved in the conspiracy.
He was followed as a witness by Paul Comley French, who from his own direct
contact with MacGuire, was able to corroborate all the pertinent details of
the fascist plot, and added additional details revealed by MacGuire,
including the fascist policies preferred by the coup's backers. In all,
their testimony lasted approximately two hours.
Butler and French were followed in the afternoon by Gerald MacGuire, who
meekly claimed that he was merely a $150 a week bond salesman, and denied
that there was any plot. He told the committee that he had merely gone to
talk to the General about buying some bonds.
Several times, under direct examination, MacGuire denied asking Butler to
lead any organization of soldiers or of discussing any plans to march such
``troops'' on Washington.
The New York Times led a furious campaign to ridicule the charges, quoting a
string of denials from the prominent people the General named.
The next day, MacGuire entered the committee room with his lawyer, and the
doors were closed once again. Once again he denied all charges that he had
approached General Butler with plans for a fascist coup, or that he had
asked him to lead an army of ex-soliders to march on Washington.
Emerging from the hearing room, Committee co-chair Rep. Samuel Dickstein
(D-N.Y.) told reporters, supposedly off the record, after MacGuire's
testimony that the bond salesman was ``hanging himself'' by contradictions
in his account of events and by forced admissions when confronted with
evidence developed by investigators.
The Times and those who dictated its policy were clearly upset by what was
occurring and didn't think it sufficient to merely mangle and manage the
news. Its lead editorial the following day was entitled, ``Credulity
Unlimited,'' and began: ``A Washington correspondent asked: `What can we
believe?' Apparently, anything, to judge by the number of people who lend a
credulous ear to the story of General Butler's 500,000 Fascists in buckram
marching on Washington to seize the government. Details are lacking to lend
verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.... The whole
story sounds like a gigantic hoax. General Butler himself does not appear to
more than half credit it. He and some others, however, ask us to follow the
famous saying of Tertullian: `I believe it because it is impossible.' It
does not merit serious discussion, but if the army and the navy authorities,
or the Congressional committee can develop any `facts' about, let them do so
quickly, so as to prevent this nation from appearing as gullible as were the
Germans in the case of the Hauptmann von Kopenick [the innocent person the
Nazis blamed for the Reichstag fire].''
MacGuire returned for a third and final time as a witness on Nov. 23.
MacGuire now claimed that he had only spoken to Butler about financial
backing for a contracting concern. In the face of overwhelming evidence to
the contrary, MacGuire maintained his complete innocence of all charges made
by Butler. He denied anything and everything that he could, and then feigned
loss of memory on what couldn't be denied.
On Nov. 26, the Committee released an 8,000 word statement summarizing the
testimony and providing details of the plot. In discussing the evidence, it
showed that MacGuire swore several times his denial of the details of Butler
testimony about the expenditure of monies for purposes described in the
General's testimony, only to have committee investigators substantiate each
of the General's claims.
Rep. Dickstein had sent Roosevelt a copy of the report, and FDR sent the
Congressman a reply on Nov. 30: ``I am very interested in having it,'' wrote
the President. ``I take it that the Committee will proceed further.''
The plotters ordered an intensification of the ridicule of General Butler.
The vehicle chosen was Time magazine, the Luce interest's mass circulation
``current events'' rag. Under the headline, ``Plot without Plotters,'' the
December 3 Time ran an artfully crafted parody of Butler's testimony as its
lead article. After mocking the details of the plot and the Morgan
involvement, Time opined, ``Such was the nightmarish page of future United
States history pictured last week in Manhattan by General Butler himself to
the Special House Committee investigating un-American Activities. No
military officer of the United States since the late tempestuous George
Custer has succeeded in floundering in so much hot water as Smedley
Darlington Butler.''
Interviewed 27 years later by author Jules Archer, the still-feisty Rep.
McCormack commented: ``Time has always been about as filthy a publication as
ever existed. I've said it publicly many times. The truth gets no coverage
at all....''
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XI. Damage Control
The Morgan interests now turned their efforts to make sure that the charge
of the Committee would not be renewed and the investigation shut down. It
would have taken direct intervention from the White House to force the
issue, but no such intervention was forthcoming.
On Feb. 15, 1935, the Committee published its findings in a report submitted
to the House on its full investigation. The section dealing with the Butler
testimony began with the following paragraphs:
``In the last few weeks of the Committee's official life, it received
evidence 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
expedient.
``The committee received evidence from Major General Smedley D. Butler
(ret.), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified
before the committee of 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.
``MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able
to verify all the pertinent statements of General Butler, 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, while MacGuire was abroad
studying various forms of organizations of fascist character....''
The committee had thus stated that it had confirmed a plot to seize the
government of the United States by force, organized by interests whose
control by Morgan and allied circles was already widely established.
The Morgan-controlled media proceeded to ``bury'' the story. It would have
stayed buried had not the journalist John L. Spivak, who wrote for the
Communist-linked magazine New Masses, been ``inadvertently'' given the full
transcript of the closed hearings, which he proceeded to publish in an
expose of at least part of the treasonous plot. Through such efforts, and
through the speaking and radio appearances of Butler, the ``Morgan Fascist
Coup Plot'' was kept before the American people, such that despite the
censorship of the Morgan controlled media, its broad outline is remembered
by many an FDR supporter who lived through that troubled time.
When Butler died in 1940, Roosevelt led the nation in mourning. ``I grieve
to hear of Smedley's passing....'' he wrote to his widow. ``My heart goes
out to you and the family in this great sorrow.''[fn9]
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XII. Conclusion
In the darkest days of the Depression, the London-financial interests
attempted two coups. The one in Germany succeeded in installing Adolf Hitler
and his Nazi police state as their instrumentality. The one in the United
States failed in its design for a fascist police state. The courageous
actions of the republican patriot Smedley Butler brought the plot to the
light of day; from the moment of its exposure, it could not take place as
planned.
In so doing, Butler had given the greatest American President of this
century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the time needed to make America ``coup
proof,'' despite the fascist intent of the financier interests centered
around the House of Morgan and its allies. Where the Hitler coup plotters
used the weaknesses of the Weimar Constitution to destroy Germany[fn10],
Roosevelt used the strengths of the U.S. republican Constitution, in the
powers given the President, to launch a revolution against the power of the
financial oligarchy.
While stopping short of destroying the power of the Morgan interests and
their allies, FDR was able to hold them in check, through various banking
reform measures, such as the Glass-Steagall Act and the creation of the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Most importantly, Roosevelt
revolutionized the Democratic Party, making it the bulwork for defense of
such policies by bringing in labor, minorities, and others, around the
principle that government has the responsibility to act to preserve the
General Welfare of each of its citizens, leaving as his legacy a social
safety net that includes the minimum wage and social security.
If Roosevelt had been eliminated, as the plotters desired, who knows what
would have been possible. In 1971, the former Speaker of the House, John
McCormack told Jules Archer that Roosevelt and the nation owed General
Butler a debt of gratitude for his exposure of the Morgan plot: ``If General
Butler had not been the patriot that he was, and if they [the plotters] had
been able to maintain their secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have
succeeded, having in mind the conditions existing at the time.... If the
plotters had gotten rid of Roosevelt, there is no telling what might have
taken place....''
Today, once again in the middle of a global financial crisis, a new coup is
in progress, one that would destroy the Presidency, the social policy that
is the legacy of FDR, and the consitutuency-based Democratic Party, which
represents the political bulwork against a banker's dictatorship. Through
deregulation, they have already ripped away many of the fetters that
Roosevelt put on the bankers' power. As Lyndon LaRouche has warned, that
coup must be defeated to defend our republic from a fate even worse than
envisioned by Morgan coup plotters back in 1933. To accomplish this, we
must, as LaRouche calls for, rally the forces to rebuild the Democratic
Party in the image of the party of FDR.
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