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The Plot To
Seize The White House
- by Jules Archer
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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
This is the true story of a remarkable American who, during the
early New Deal years, was sought by wealthy plotters in the United States to
lead a putsch
to overthrow the {US} government and establish an American Fascist dictatorship.
According to retired Representative John W. McCormack, former Speaker of the
House, if the late Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps had not
been a stubborn devotee of democracy, Americans today could conceivably be
living under an American Mussolini, Hitler, or Franco.
An ironic aspect of the
conspiracy General Butler unmasked is that few Americans have ever heard about
it, or even know anything about the General. As children all of us were taught
about the treason of Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold, whose betrayals were safely
cobwebbed by the distant past. But school texts that deal with the New Deal are
uniquely silent about the powerful Americans who plotted to seize the White
House with a private army, hold President Franklin D. Roosevelt prisoner, and
get rid of him if he refused to serve as their puppet in a dictatorship they
planned to impose and control.
There is strong evidence to
suggest that the conspirators may have been too important politically, socially,
and economically to be brought to justice after their scheme had been exposed
before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the House of Representatives. The
largely anti-Roosevelt press of the New Deal era scotched the story as
expeditiously as possible by outright suppression, distortion, and attempts to
ridicule General Butler’s testimony as capricious fantasy.
Smedley Butler’s whole life,
however, was proof that he was a man of incorruptible character, integrity, and
patriotism, with a deserved reputation for bluntly speaking the whole truth at
all times, regardless of the consequences. He was named by Theodore Roosevelt
“the outstanding American soldier.”
The official Marine Corps
record calls him “one of the most colorful officers in the Marine Corps’ long
history” and “one of the two Marines who received two Medals of Honor for
separate acts of outstanding heroism.” He was decorated no fewer than twenty
times.
Former Speaker McCormack told
the author, “In peace or war he was one of the outstanding Americans in our
history. I can’t emphasize too strongly the very important part he played in
exposing the Fascist plot in the early 1930’s backed by and planned by persons
possessing tremendous wealth.”
The crucial events of the plot
to seize the White House unfolded between July and November, 1933, with hearings
before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee begun in New York City on November 20th,
1934. On November 26th the committee released a statement detailing
the testimony it had heard, and its preliminary findings. On February 15th,
1935, the committee submitted to the House of Representatives its final report,
verifying completely the testimony of General Butler.
This book may help break some
of the seals of silence that have kept Americans from knowing the truth about
that conspiracy. As the first effort to tell the whole story of the plot in
sequence and full detail, it may serve as a fresh reminder of Wendell Phillips’s
warning about the price of liberty.
No American was ever more
dedicated to eternal vigilance in preserving our freedom under the Bill of
Rights than the remarkable war hero, pacifist, and Republican Democrat – Smedley
Darlington Butler.
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