-
The Plot To
Seize The White House
- by Jules Archer
-
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PART ONE
The Plot
Perspiring on the raw-wood
platform in the broiling heat of a July day in Washington, Major General Smedley
Darlington Butler, retired, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and opened
his collar. His violent deep-set eyes surveyed ten thousand faces upturned among
the lean-tos, shanties, and tents on Anacostia Flats.
Bums, riffraff, drifters, and
troublemakers
–
those were some of the descriptions being applied to the Bonus
Army. Many of the ragged veterans who had marched on the Capital had been
sleeping in doorways and under bridges, part of the vast army of twelve million
unemployed. Some were the same men who had fought under Smedley Butler in the
Spanish-American War, the Philippines campaign, the Boxer Rebellion, the
Caribbean interventions, the Chinese intervention of 1927-1928, and World War I.
Butler had come to Washington
in 1932 at the urging of James Van Zandt, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
to lend moral support to veterans at a crucial moment. Congress had just voted
down the Patman Bonus Bill to pay veterans the two-billion-dollar bonus promised
them in bonus certificates payable in 1945. Bonus Army Commander Walter W.
Waters, a former army sergeant, and other leaders feared that their discouraged
followers would now give up and return home.
When Waters introduced Smedley
Butler to the huge crowd of veterans gathered along the Anacostia River to hear
him, he was greeted with an enthusiastic roar of acclaim that echoed through
Washington like thunder. They all knew Old Gimlet Eye, one of the most colorful
generals who had ever led troops into battle. He was even more famous and
popular among rank-and-file leathernecks, doughboys,
and bluejackets for the fierce battles he had fought against the American
military hierarchy on behalf of the enlisted men.
He was also admired,
respected, and trusted because of his one-man fight to compel Americans to
remember their tragic war casualties hidden away in isolated veterans’
hospitals.
Smedley Butler was a wiry
bantam of a man, shoulders hunched forward as though braced against the pull of
a heavy knapsack, his hawk nose prominent in the leathery face of an adventurer.
Silhouetted against a flaming sunset, he made a blazing speech of encouragement
in the blunt language that had kept him in hot water with the nation’s
highest-ranking admirals and generals, not to mention Secretaries of State and
Navy.
“If you don’t hang together,
you aren’t worth a damn!” he cried in the famous hoarse rasp that sent a thrill
through every veteran who had heard it before. He reminded them that losing
battles didn’t mean losing a war. “I ran for the Senate on a bonus ticket,” he
said, “and got the hell beat out of me.” But he didn’t intend to stop fighting
for the bonus, and neither should they, he demanded, no matter how stiff the
opposition or the names they were called.
“They may be calling you
tramps now,” he roared, “but in 1917 they didn’t call you bums! ... You are the
best-behaved group of men in this country today. I consider it an honor to be
asked to speak to you. ... Some folks say I am here after something. That’s a
lie. I don’t want anything.” All he wanted, he told the cheering veterans, was
to see that the country they had served dealt with them justly. He concluded his
exhortation by urging, “When you get home, go to the polls in November and lick
the hell out of those who are against you. You know who they are. ... No go to
it!”
Afterward he was mobbed by
veterans eager to speak to him. Until 2:30 A.M. he sat sprawled on the ground in
front of his tent, listening sympathetically to tales of lost jobs, families in
distress, and troublesome old wounds. He slept three hours, {and} then woke up
to resume talks with the veterans.
Sharing a Bonus Army breakfast
of potatoes, hard bread, and coffee, he learned that the food was running out,
and veterans were muttering about rioting against Congress if it did.
Before he left for his home in
Newtown Square, a small town outside of Philadelphia, he warned the Bonus
Marchers, “You’re all right so long as you keep your sense of humor. If you slip
over into lawlessness of any kind, you will lose the sympathy of a hundred
twenty million people in the nation.”
It was the government,
however, that unleashed the violence. Under orders from President Herbert
Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur led troops in driving the Bonus Army out of
Washington at bayonet point and burning down their shacktowns.
By August 1st rumors spreading
from the last stronghold of the veterans, an encampment at Johnstown, Virginia,
indicated that the infuriated Bonus Marchers were determined to organize a new
nonpartisan political organization of veterans and wanted General Butler to lead
it. Reporters pressed him to comment.
“I have heard nothing about it
at all, although I was in Washington about two weeks ago to address the
veterans,” he replied with a shrug. “I have neither seen nor heard from Mr.
Waters or any of the other leaders of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.”
Meanwhile he phoned the
governors of a number of states and won their agreement to provide relief for
those of their veterans who wanted to return home. He phones Waters in
Washington to urge that the remnants of the Bonus Army break camp and start back
home under this plan, and he issued a blast at the Hoover Administration as
heartless for its treatment of the veterans and its failure to help them, their
wives, and their children return home without further humiliation.
That November lifelong
Republican Smedley Butler took the stump for Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped
turn Herbert Hoover out of the White House.
On July 1st, 1933, General
Butler’s phone rang soon after he had had breakfast. Calling from Washington, an
American Legion official he had met once or twice told Butler that two veterans
were on their way from Connecticut to see him about an important matter and
urged him to make time for him.
About five hours later,
hearing a car pull up into his secluded driveway at Newtown Square, Butler
glanced out the porch window. His lips pursed speculatively as two fastidiously
dressed men got out of a chauffeur-driven Packard limousine.
At the door the visitors
introduced themselves as Bill Doyle, commander of the Massachusetts American
Legion, and Gerald C. MacGuire, whom Butler understood to have been a former
commander of the Connecticut department.
Butler led the visitors into
his study at the rear of the house, and they took chairs opposite his desk.
MacGuire, who did most of the talking, was a fat, perspiring man with rolls of
jowls, a large mouth, fleshy nose, and bright blue eyes. He began a somewhat
rambling conversation during which he revealed that he, too, had been a Marine,
with a war wound that had left a silver plate in his head. Doyle established his
combat credentials by mentioning that he also had a Purple Heart.
Butler’s compassion for
wounded veterans made him patient as MacGuire encircled the subject of their
visit in spirals that only gradually narrowed until their apex pierced the
point. The point, it seemed, was that MacGuire and Doyle, speaking for a coterie
of influential Legionnaires, were intensely dissatisfied with the current
leadership of the American Legion.
Considering it indifferent to the needs of
rank-and-file veterans, they revealed that they hoped to dislodge the regime at
a forthcoming Legion convention to be held in Chicago. They urged Butler to join
them and stampede the convention with a speech designed to oust the “Royal
Family” controlling the organization.
Their dissatisfaction with the
leadership of the American Legion did not find Butler unsympathetic. He had long
been privately critical of the organization’s close ties with big business and
its neglect of the real interests of the veterans it presumably represented.
These convictions were to be made dramatically public before the year was out,
but now he declined his visitors’ proposal on the grounds that he had no wish to
get involved in Legion politics and pointed out that in any event, he had not
been invited to take part in the Legion convention.
MacGuire revealed that he was
chairman of the “distinguished guest committee” of the Legion, and was on the
staff of National Commander Louis Johnson, a former Secretary of Defense. At
MacGuire’s suggestion Johnson had included Butler’s name as one of the
distinguished guests to be invited to the Chicago convention.
Johnson had then taken this
list to the White House, MacGuire said, and had shown it for approval to Louis
Howe, Roosevelt’s secretary. Howe had crossed Butler’s name off the list,
however, saying that the President was opposed to inviting Butler. MacGuire did
not know the reason, but Bill Doyle assured Butler that they had devised a plan
to have him address the convention anyhow.
Butler remained silent. He was
used to oddball visitors who called with all kinds of weird requests. Curiosity,
and the leisure afforded by retirement, often led him to hear them out in order
to fathom their motives.
He thought about his visitors’
finely tailored suits and the chauffeur-driven Packard and their claim to
represent the “plain soldiers” of the Legion. The story about the rejection of
his name on the Legion convention guest list by the White House struck him as
more than peculiar, in view of the fact that the President had gratefully
accepted his campaign help in a “Republicans for Roosevelt” drive eight months
earlier. Why should F.D.R. suddenly be so displeased with him?
It crossed his mind that the
purpose of the story, true or false, might be intended to pique him against the
Roosevelt Administration, for some obscure reason. Keeping his suspicions to
himself, he heard out his visitors in the hope of learning why they were so
anxious to use him.
They explained that they had
arranged for him to attend the convention as a delegate from Hawaii, which would
give him the right to speak. When he still declined, they asked whether he
wasn’t in sympathy with their desire to oust the “Royal Family.” He was, he
said, because the leadership had simply been using the organization to feather
their own nests, but he had absolutely no intention of attending the convention
without an invitation.
His disappointed visitors took
their leave but asked permission to return in a few weeks. A month later Doyle
and MacGuire returned. Without waiting to inquire whether Butler had changed his
mind, MacGuire quickly informed him that there had been a change of plans.
The general had been right to
object to coming to the convention as just another delegate, MacGuire
acknowledged. It would have been ineffective, and a waste of the general’s
immense prestige.
MacGuire outlined a new plan
in which Butler would gather two or three hundred Legionnaires and take them to
Chicago on a special train. They would be scattered throughout the audience at
the convention, and when Butler made an appearance in the spectators’ gallery,
they would leap to their feet applauding and cheering wildly. The proceedings
would be stampeded with cries for a speech that would not die down until Butler
was asked to the platform.
Incredulous at the audacity
with which this scheme was being unfolded to him, Butler asked what kind of
speech his visitors expected him to make. MacGuire produced some folded
typewritten pages from an inside jacket pocket. They would leave a speech with
him to read. MacGuire urged Butler to round up several hundred Legionnaires,
meanwhile, to take to Chicago with him.
Holding on to his fraying
temper, Butler pointed out that none of the Legionnaires he knew could afford
the trip or stay in Chicago. MacGuire quickly assured him that all their
expenses would be paid. But Butler, who was constantly being approached with all
kinds of wild schemes and proposals, was not prepared to take the plotters
seriously until they could prove they had financial backing.
When he challenged MacGuire on
this point, the veteran slipped a bankbook out of his pocket. Without letting
the name of the bank or the account be seen, he flipped over the pages and
showed Butler two recent deposits – one for $42,000 and a second for $64,000 –
for “expenses.”
That settled it. No wounded
soldiers Butler knew possessed $100,000 bank accounts. His instincts sharpened
by two years’ experience, on loan from the Marines, as crime-busting Director of
Public Safety for Philadelphia, warned him that there was something decidedly
unsavory about the proposition.
He decided to blend
skepticism, wariness, and interest in his responses, to suggest that he might be
induced to participate in the scheme if he could be assured that it was
foolproof. He would profess himself interested, but unconvinced as long as he
suspected that there was more to be learned about the scheme. So far they had
told him practically nothing except what was barely necessary for the role they
wanted him to play. He determined to get to the bottom of the plot, while trying
not to scare them off in the process.
After they had left, he read
over the speech MacGuire had left with him. It urged the American Legion
convention to adopt a resolution calling for the United States to return to the
gold standard, so that when veterans were paid the bonus promised to them, the
money they received would not be worthless paper. Butler was baffled. What did a
return to the gold standard have to do with the Legion? Why were MacGuire and
Doyle being paid to force this speech on the convention-and who was paying them?
Butler detected an odor of
intrigue. Some kind of outlandish scheme, he was convinced, was afoot. Knowing
little about the gold standard, why Roosevelt had taken the country off it, or
who stood to gain by its restoration and why, he began thumbing through the
financial pages of newspapers and magazines – sections of the press he had never
had any occasion to read.
The first important fact he
learned was that the government no longer had to back up every paper dollar with
a dollar’s worth of gold. This meant that the Roosevelt Administration could
increase the supply of paper money to keep its pledge of making jobs for the
unemployed, and give loans to farmers and homeowners whose property was
threatened by foreclosure. Banks would then be paid back in cheapened paper
dollars for the gold-backed dollars they had lent.
Conservative financiers were
horrified. They viewed a currency not solidly backed by gold as inflationary,
undermining both private and business fortunes and leading to national
bankruptcy. Roosevelt was damned as a socialist or Communist out to destroy
private enterprise by sapping the gold backing of wealth in order to subsidize
the poor.
Butler began to understand
that some wealthy Americans might be eager to use the American Legion as an
instrument to pressure the Roosevelt Administration into restoring the gold
standard. But who was behind MacGuire?
A short while after MacGuire’s
second visit, he returned to see Butler again, this time alone. MacGuire asked
how he was coming along in rounding up veterans to take with him to the
convention. Butler replied evasively that he had been too busy to do anything
about it. He then made it clear that he {had} no further interest in the plan
unless MacGuire was willing to be candid and disclose the sources of the funds
that were behind it. After some hesitation MacGuire revealed that they had been
provided by nine backers, the biggest contributor putting up nine thousand
dollars. Pressed to explain their motives, MacGuire insisted that they were
simply concerned about helping veterans get their bonus and a square deal.
People who could afford such
contributions, Butler reflected ironically, were hardly the type who favored a
two-billion-dollar bonus for veterans. When he prodded MacGuire further, the fat
veteran revealed that one of his chief backers was a wealthy Legionnaire he
worked for, Colonel Grayson M.P. Murphy, who operated a brokerage firm at 52
Broadway in New York City. Butler pointed out the contradiction between
MacGuire’s claim that his group was concerned with the problems of the poor
rank-and-file veteran and the fact that his backers were all obviously wealthy
men. MacGuire simply shrugged and frankly admitted that as far as he personally
was concerned, he was primarily involved in the transaction as a businessman and
was being well taken care of for his efforts. It would be equally profitable for
Butler, he hinted, if the general were disposed to cooperate.
Butler pumped him about
Colonel Murphy’s connection with the plan. Murphy, MacGuire revealed, was one of
the founders of the Legion and had actually underwritten it with $125,000 in
1919 to pay for the organizational field work. He had been motivated by a desire
to see the soldiers “cared for.”
When Butler questioned
Murphy’s motive in wanting the gold-standard speech made at the convention,
MacGuire explained that he and the other backers simply wanted to be sure that
the veterans would be paid their bonus in sound gold-backed currency, not in
“rubber money.” He showed Butler several checks for large amounts signed by
Murphy and two other men-Robert S. Clark and John Mills. Clark’s name rang a
bell with Butler. He had known a Second Lieutenant Robert S. Clark in China
during the Boxer Campaign who had been called “the millionaire lieutenant.”
The money, MacGuire said,
would be used to open an expense account for Butler in Chicago. He hoped that
the general would now get busy rounding up veterans to take to the convention.
Butler remained noncommittal.
He intended to procrastinate as long as he could, continuing to pump MacGuire
until had enough information to make a complete report to the government. The
President, he felt, ought to know what schemes his rich opponents were up to
overturn New Deal policies.
After the visit, Butler
brooded over the implication of MacGuire’s revelation that his employer, key
founder and sponsor of the American Legion, was involved. Tall, heavyset,
Grayson Mallot-Prevost Murphy not only operated one of Wall Street’s leading
brokerage houses but was also a director of Guaranty Trust, a Morgan bank, and
had extensive industrial and financial interests as a director of Anaconda
Copper, Goodyear Tire, and Bethlehem Steel. A West Point graduate, Murphy was a
veteran of the Spanish-American War and World War I with the rank of colonel.
Butler’s bushy eyebrows rose when he also learned that the financier had been
decorated by Benito Mussolini, who had made him a Command of the Crown of Italy.
Butler found out that he had
been one of twenty American officers who had met in Paris in February, 1919,
reportedly on orders from the commanders of the A.E.F., to counter revolutionary
unrest in Europe following the end of World War I, by forming a veterans’
organization with the alleged purpose of looking after veterans’ welfare and
uniting them to defend America at home as they had abroad.
Murphy had put up $125,000 to
get the American Legion going, and it had been organized in the spring with a
caucus of about a thousand officers and men. The Legion had then solicited funds
and support from industrialists. Swift and Company executives had written other
firms, “We are all Legion, the results it will obtain, and the ultimate effect
in helping to offset radicalism.”
The average veteran who joined
the Legion in the 1920’s had been unaware that big-business men were backing it
to use it as a strikebreaking agency. When workers struck against wage cuts,
Legion posts were informed that the strikers were Communists trying to create
national chaos so that the Reds could take over. Legionnaires were given
baseball bats to break up strikes and civil rights demonstrations. The American
Civil Liberties Union later reported, “Of the forces most active in attacking
civil rights, the American Legion led the field.”
The rank and file, however,
had grown increasingly restless and impatient with the “Royal Family” that ran
the Legion, especially after the Depression had left so many jobless. Veterans
forced to sell apples on street corners were angered by a Legion leadership that
opposed the bonus and government spending as inflationary. That was why so many
thousands had bypassed the Legion to join the Bonus March on Washington.
Adding up the facts, Butler
was struck by a startling contradiction. MacGuire had claimed to speak for
rank-and-file discontent with the Legion’s bosses and professed to want to oust
them, yet he was an agent for a top founder of the Legion who was obviously one
of the powers behind the throne. MacGuire had revealed that the Legion still
owed Murphy part of the $125,000 foundation money he had provided and had
tacitly acknowledged that Murphy “makes the kings.”
MacGuire obviously had to be
lying in his claim that he-or Murphy-wanted to topple the present leadership.
Why? Perhaps it was a ruse to channel and control popular discontent in the
Legion, hopefully with Butler’s help, for the purposes of the nine wealthy men
behind MacGuire. Butler awaited MacGuire’s next move with deep interest.
In September Butler was asked
to address a convention of the Legion’s 29th Division at Newark, New Jersey. On
the Sunday morning he was in the city, the phone rang in his hotel room. It was
MacGuire, who was in the lobby and asked to see him.
Invited to Butler’s room,
MacGuire reminded the general that the time for the American Legion Convention
was rapidly approaching. Was Butler finally ready to take a contingent of
veterans to Chicago and make the gold-standard speech?
Butler displayed increasing
skepticism about the whole plan. In a gruff voice he challenged MacGuire’s
proposal as a bluff without any real money behind it. His visitor whipped a fat
wallet out of his hip pocket, extracted a mass of thousand-dollar bills, and
scattered them all over the bed. The eighteen thousand dollars, he said smugly,
would amply cover the expenses of Butler and the veterans he led to Chicago.
The gesture caught Butler by
surprise; losing his temper, he accused MacGuire of trying to give him
thousand-dollar bills whose number had been recorded, so that once he cashed
them, the plotters would have proof of his complicity. MacGuire hastily assured
him that he could have smaller denominations.
In his vexation Butler snapped
at the bond salesman to take back the money immediately, as he had no intention
of getting involved in MacGuire’s scheme. But then, as he regained control of
his anger, he sought to make it appear that he was merely indignant that he was
forced to deal with an emissary. He would negotiate, he told MacGuire firmly,
only with principals.
After some hesitation MacGuire
agreed to have him contacted by Robert S. Clark, a banker who had inherited a
large fortune from a founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
One week later Clark phoned
Butler at his home. They arranged a meeting at the railroad station. Butler
instantly recognized the tall, gangling man, hair now steel-gray, who stepped
off the train as the lieutenant he had known thirty-four years earlier.
Butler drove him home for
lunch, during which they exchanged memories of the Boxer Campaign. Afterward
they adjourned to the spacious, glassed-in porch, and Clark got down to the
business of his visit. He was going to the American Legion convention in a
private car attached to the Pennsylvania Limited, he told Butler. He planned to
have the train stop at Paoli to pick the general up, and they would continue on
to Chicago together. A suite of rooms had already been reserved for Butler at
the Palmer House.
Clark would see to it, he told
the general, that Butler was calling for a resolution demanding restoration of
the gold standard. In discussing the speech, the millionaire was induced to
reveal that the author was none other than John W. Davis, the 1924 Democratic
candidate for President, and now chief attorney for J. P. Morgan and Company.
Butler pointed out to Clark
that the speech did not seem to have anything to do with the soldiers’ bonus,
which was presumably the purpose of his trip to Chicago. Shrugging, Clark
blandly repeated MacGuire’s assurance that those supporting the speech simply
wanted to be sure that the bonus would be paid in gold-backed currency, not in
worthless paper.
Butler decided to draw blood
and observe Clark’s reaction. Sharp eyes honed on his visitor’s face, he
suggested that the speech had all the earmarks of big-business propaganda. The
banker, taken aback, did not reply for a moment. He seemed to be debating with
himself whether to deny the allegation or take Butler into his confidence. Then
he astonished the general by a sudden burst of candor.
He had a personal fortune of
thirty million dollars, he revealed, and he was greatly worried about losing it
to a Roosevelt inflation-runaway government spending unbridled by the need to
back each paper dollar with gold. He was willing to spend fully half his fortune
if it would save the other half. He was confident that if Butler made the speech
at Chicago, the Legion would go on record as demanding a return to the gold
standard.
That would be an important step toward organizing the veterans of
American to put pressure on Congress and the President for such a bill.
Why, Butler asked him
curiously, did he think the President would allow himself to be pressured by
such tactics? Clark expressed confidence that Roosevelt would yield because he
belonged, after all, to the same social class that was solidly behind the gold
standard. Once he had restored it, his fellow patricians would rally around him
and defend his position against criticism.
Butler was shocked by Clark’s
blatant snobbery, but even more by the millionaire’s assumption that the wishes
of economic royalists should-and would-prevail over the democratic processes of
government. Once more his anger boiled over. In a voice that cracked with
indignation, he exploded that he wanted nothing to do with a scheme to exploit
veterans. Furthermore, he rasped, he intended to see to it that the veterans of
the country were not used to undermine democracy but to defend it.
Clark’s face turned crimson.
Chagrined, he reproached Butler for being stubborn and “different,” hinting that
such things as the mortgage on Butler’s house could be taken care of for him,
and in a fully legal fashion. This crude attempt to bribe him was too much for
the dumbfounded general. Bellowing his indignation, he roared an order at the
millionaire to follow him into the living room.
Clark meekly trailed him into
a large hall resplendent with flags, banners, decorations, plaques, scrolls,
citations, and other symbols of esteem that had been presented to the general
during his long career in the Marines. The hall was flanked at both ends by huge
canopies on tall poles – “Blessings Umbrellas” awarded by unanimous vote of the
people of Chinese cities only to their greatest benefactors.
Quivering with rage, Butler
pointed out to Clark that most of the awards in the hall had been given to him
by poor people all over the world, and he vowed that he would never betray their
faith. Ordering Clark to inspect them until he understood the enormity of his
mistake, Butler stormed off to his study, pacing back and forth in an effort to
simmer down.
In a few minutes a chastened
Clark joined him and meekly asked permission to make a phone call to MacGuire at
the Palmer House in Chicago. As Butler listened stony-faced, Clark informed
MacGuire that for “excellent” reasons the general would not be coming to the
convention.
MacGuire was reminded that
{he} had money enough to do the job alone
and could “send those telegrams.” At the completion of the call, Clark then
apologized so contritely that his host, mollified, forgave him.
To lighten the strained
atmosphere, the conversation now returned to the Boxer days until it was time
to drive Clark to the station to catch a six o’clock train from Paoli.
Butler felt ambivalent about
having revealed his true feelings. On the one hand, it made him feel better to
get them off his chest; tact and restraint and subterfuge were alien to his
nature. On the other hand, it seemed hardly likely that after his explosion the
plotters could possibly believe they could persuade or buy him. He would have no
further opportunity to ferret out their plans. A few days later he carefully
studied a newspaper account of the proceedings of the American Legion convention
I Chicago. The story revealed that a huge flood of telegrams had poured into the
convention urging delegates to endorse a return to the gold standard. A
resolution to this effect had been proposed and carried. Butler felt mingled
amusement and disgust.
To the general’s surprise
MacGuire stopped off to see him, this time in a hired limousine, on the way back
from the convention. The man said nothing about the contretemps with Clark,
although Butler was certain he must have heard about it, and his manner was as
buoyant and friendly as ever. He boasted to Butler about having put over the
gold-standard resolution.
The general pointed out wryly
that no action had been taken at the convention to endorse the soldiers’ bonus.
MacGuire airily repeated his contention that there was no point in that until
the country had sound currency. Shortly afterward MacGuire came to Newtown
Square again and surprised the general with the news that a dinner had been
arranged by Boston veterans in his honor. He was promised transportation in a
private car, and, MacGuire beamed, Butler would be paid a thousand dollars to
speak at the dinner-in favor of the gold standard, of course.
Butler was dumbfounded at
MacGuire’s incredible persistence. Surely the indefatigable bond salesman had
realized by this time that he was barking up the wrong tree! But perhaps, the
general speculated, MacGuire felt challenged to “make the sale,” in much the
same manner that he undoubtedly sought to overcome the sales resistance of
reluctant prospects for his bonds. And apparently MacGuire was convinced that
only Smedley Butler had the prestige and popularity among veterans that his
coterie needed to put over the scheme.
Irked by the new attempt to
bribe him, Butler rasped that he had never been paid a thousand dollars for any
speech and had no intention of accepting such a sum to let words be put in his
mouth. Chagrined but undiscouraged, MacGuire cheerfully promised to come up with
some other more acceptable plan to utilize the general’s talents as a public
speaker. In October a former Marine running for office in Brooklyn, New York,
begged Butler to make some campaign speeches in his behalf. Butler was hesitant
because he was about to leave on a tour of the country for Veterans of Foreign
Wars, speaking for the bonus and for membership in the V.F.W. as the best way to
get it. But loyalty to the men who had served under him took him first to
Pennsylvania Station.
To his astonishment he was met
by MacGuire. The bond salesman somehow knew where he was headed and asked to
accompany him. Butler consented, more and more intrigued by the ubiquitous
MacGuire who kept turning up everywhere he went like a bad penny. He found
himself even growing perversely fond of MacGuire for his stubborn refusal to
take “No” for an answer.
In the Marines Butler had
always had a soft spot for incorrigible rascals who brightened up monotonous
routine by their unpredictable shenanigans. Besides, he was still curious to
learn more about what the plotters in the gold scheme were up to. MacGuire now
revealed a new plan to involve the general through his impending lecture tour
for the V.F.W. Wasn’t he, MacGuire probed, going to use the opportunity to speak
out on public issues important to the veterans? Butler wasn’t sure whether this
was simply a shrewd guess or whether MacGuire somehow had eyes and ears all over
the country.
Butler declared that he
believed that democracy was in danger from growing antidemocratic forces within
the country and that he planned to appeal to the nation’s veterans to unite
against this threat. At the same time he wanted to alert them to the risk of
being dragged into another war by the propaganda of organizations camouflaged
with patriotic trappings.
MacGuire looked thoughtful.
Then he asserted that the group he represented really had the identical
objectives. He urged Butler to let him go along on the tour. He would stay in
the background, enlisting veterans in “a great big super-organization to
maintain our democracy.”
Butler lost no time in
squelching that idea. He admitted that he couldn’t keep MacGuire off any train
he rode, but made it firmly clear that he would not be associated with the plans
of MacGuire and his rich friends in any way. He softened the reprimand by saying
that he did not want to hurt the feelings of a wounded veteran, but MacGuire
would have to understand that he could not be used to aid money schemes.
MacGuire said peevishly that
he couldn’t understand why Butler refused to be a businessman like himself. The
general expressed blunt suspicions of MacGuire’s real reasons for wanting to
trail in the wake of this V.F.W. tour. MacGuire protested that he had no
intention of doing anything subversive. Then he made the general a new offer. If
Butler would merely insert in each of his V.F.W. speeches a short reference to
the need for returning to the gold standard in order to benefit veterans when a
bonus bill was passed, MacGuire and his backers would pay him $750 per speech –
three times what the V.F.W. was paying him. Butler replied emphatically that he
would refuse to abuse the veterans’ trust in him even if the offer were for
$100,000.
Frustrated, MacGuire took his
departure abruptly.
Soon afterward Butler began
his swing around the country for the V.F.W. He was no longer bothered – for the
moment – by the persistent attentions of Jerry MacGuire, who left for Europe on
December 1, on a mission for his backers.
MacGuire took his departure
against the background of a steadily rising chorus of hatred for “that cripple
in the White House” by big-business leaders. It was reflected in the
anti-Roosevelt slant of both news and editorials in the business-oriented press.
In the eyes of America’s industrialists and bankers, the President, if not an
actual secret Communist, was dedicated to destroying the nation’s capitalist
economy by the New Deal, which they labeled “creeping socialism.”
Many believed that unless
F.D.R. {was} stopped, he would soon take America down the same road that the
Russians had traveled. They were horrified by his recognition of the Soviet
Union on November
16th, 1933, seeing it as a sinister omen. They were equally
appalled by his speech six weeks later promising that the United States would
send no more armed forces to Latin America to protect private investments.
Some business leaders envied
their counterparts in Italy, who had financed Mussolini’s rise to power. Il
Duce’s efficiency in “making the trains run on time” was highly lauded, along
with the dictatorial control of labor unions by his corporate state.
Thomas Lamont, a J. P. Morgan
partner, praised the dictator for his methods of providing low-paying jobs,
cutting the public debt, and ending inflation. “We all count ourselves liberal,
I suppose,” Lamont told the Foreign Policy Association. “Are we liberal enough
to be willing for the Italian people to have the sort of government they
apparently want?”
Butler, who had not known that
MacGuire had left for Europe, received a postcard from him from the French
Riviera, reporting only that he and his family were having a wonderful time.
Another card came from MacGuire in June, 1934, this time from Berlin. Butler
surmised that the bond salesman’s long stay in Europe had to be on business,
paid for by his boss or all his backers. But what kind of business? More
shenanigans in connection with the gold standard?
Continuing his tour for the
V.F.W., Butler observed more and more storm signals flying in the United States
as he traveled around the country. The nation was rapidly becoming polarized
between the forces of Left and Right. Demagogues with apparently inexhaustible
funds for propaganda and agitation led “patriotic” crusades against Communists,
Jews, and “Jewish bankers,” who were alleged to be behind the New Deal.
That June, Roosevelt further
inflamed big business by a whole new series of New Deal acts that crippled stock
speculation, set up watchdog agencies over the telephone, telegraph, and radio
industries, stopped farm foreclosures, prevented employers from hindering
unionization and compelled them to accept collective bargaining. As an epidemic
of turbulent strikes broke out, the orchestration of Roosevelt hatred in the
nation’s press rose to a fresh crescendo.
To Herbert Hoover the New Deal
represented “class hatred . . . preached from the White House,” “despotism,” and
“universal bankruptcy.” Butler was intrigued by the July, 1934 issue of
Fortune, the Luce magazine read by America’s leading industrialists and
bankers, which devoted a whole edition to glorifying Italian fascism.
It was produced by Laird S.
Goldsborough, foreign editor for Time, who asked Fortune’s wealthy readers
“whether Fascism is achieving in a few years or decades such a conquest of the
spirit of man as Christianity achieved only in ten centuries.” He concluded,
“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, Sacrifice.”
In that summer of 1934 it was
not difficult to detect the acrid smell of incipient fascism in the corporate
air. Smedley Butler's large hawk nose was soon to detect more than a mere whiff of
it.
Resting at home after his
exhausting V.F.W. tour, which had included emotionally draining visits to the
casualties hidden away in eighteen veterans’ hospitals, Butler received a phone
call from a familiar voice. Jerry MacGuire insisted that he had to see the
general immediately because he had “something of the utmost importance” to
impart.
Butler and his wife had
planned to drive into Philadelphia that afternoon, so, curiosity aroused, he
agreed to meet MacGuire at the Bellevue Hotel. It was August
22nd, 1934; three
days after a German plebiscite had approved vesting sole executive power in
Adolf Hitler as füehrer of Nazi Germany.
Shortly before three o’clock,
Butler entered the empty hotel lobby where he found the pudgy bond salesman
waiting for him. MacGuire wrung his hand enthusiastically as though they were
long-lost comrades from Butler’s old 4th Battalion in Panama. Leading the way to
the rear of the lobby, MacGuire took him into the hotel’s empty restaurant,
which was not operating for the summer.
They took a table in a
secluded corner of the room, and MacGuire began describing how enjoyable his
trip to Europe had been. Butler patiently waited for him to get down to
business. He wondered, not without sympathy, whether it was the silver plate in
MacGuire’s head that made him so prolix.
MacGuire finally asked whether
the general planned to attend the forthcoming American Legion convention in
Miami. Butler replied curtly that he did not. He felt irritated by MacGuire’s
arrogant assumption that the stale scheme of using the Legion for his gold
clique’s propaganda was a matter of the “utmost importance” to Butler.
MacGuire then insinuated that
it was time to “get the soldiers together.” Butler agreed grimly, but his
cryptic tone, he was sure, implied a considerably different purpose for
organizing the veterans than MacGuire had in mind.
MacGuire revealed what he had
been up to on the Continent {during} the previous seven months. His backers had
sent him abroad to study the role that veterans’ organizations had played in
working for and bringing about dictatorships. In Italy MacGuire had found that
Mussolini’s real power stemmed from veterans organized in his Black Shirts; they
had made him dictator and were the chief protectors of his regime.
Beginning to suspect what
MacGuire had in mind, Butler tried to seem matter-of-fact as he asked whether
MacGuire thought Mussolini’s form of government was a good example for American
veterans to work toward. MacGuire didn’t think so.
His investigations on the
Continent, he revealed, had convinced him that neither Mussolini nor Hitler, nor
the kind of paramilitary organizations they had built, could be made attractive
to the American veteran. But he had discovered an organization that could be, he
revealed in elation.
He had been in France during a
national crisis brought about by nationwide wage slashes. Riots had erupted in
Paris early in February, ending in the calling of a general strike that had
paralyzed the country. Civil war had been averted only by the formation of a
National Union ministry made up of all parties except Socialists, Communists,
and Royalists.
A key role in ending the
crisis had been played by a rightwing veterans’ organization called the Croix
de Feu.
It was a super-organization, MacGuire explained, an amalgamation of all other
French veteran organizations, and was composed of officers and noncoms. The
Croix de Feu had 500,000 members, and each was a leader of ten others, so that
their voting strength amounted to 5,000,000.
It occurred to Butler that if
MacGuire’s description was accurate, the Croix de Feu was an elitist outfit
minus the democratic voice of the greatest majority of veterans-the buck
privates, who were expected only to follow and obey, exactly as they had been
ordered to do in wartime. MacGuire now told Butler that his group planned to
build an American version of the Croix de Feu. Asked its purpose, the fat man
hesitated, {and} then replied that it was intended to “support” the President.
Butler asked wryly why Roosevelt should need the support of 500,000 “super
soldiers” when he had the whole American people behind him.
Looking petulant and
impatient, MacGuire ignored the question, pointing out that the crux of the
matter was Roosevelt’s dilemma in not having enough money to finance the New
Deal and the danger that he might disrupt the American system of finance to get
it. MacGuire and his group were firmly determined that the President would not
be allowed to do it.
Despite MacGuire’s
exasperating circumlocution and the twists in his logic, a fresh pattern was
becoming clear to Butler. Far from “supporting” Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
MacGuire and the interests behind him were obviously planning to compel the
President to yield to their demands about American finances.
The American version of the
Croix de Feu was intended to be a powerful paramilitary organization to
enforce those demands. But when Butler pressed him on its purpose, MacGuire
denied emphatically any intention to frighten the President.
In fact, he explained, the
whole idea was really to support and help Roosevelt, who was obviously
overworked, by providing him with an “Assistant President” to take details of
the office off his shoulders. It was quite constitutional, MacGuire insisted.
The aide would be called a Secretary of General Affairs.
According to MacGuire, the
President himself had been grooming an aide for such a role-General Hugh S.
Johnson, controversial administrator of the National Recovery Administration
(N.R.A.). But, MacGuire confided, Johnson had been too loose-lipped to suit
Roosevelt, and as a result was slated to be fired within three or four weeks.
Pressed to explain how he
acquired this information, MacGuire assured Butler that his group was close to
the White House and had advance information on all such secret matters.
Confused, Butler didn’t know quite what to
make of these oddly faceted revelations, but he was subsequently reminded of
MacGuire’s prediction when Johnson resigned in pique from the peace
administration soon afterward and began attacking Roosevelt and the New Deal in
a syndicated column for the Scripps Howard press.
Butler did not have to feign
new interest in MacGuire’s proposals; obviously much more was now involved than
simply lobbying efforts for restoration of the gold standard. MacGuire,
interpreting the general’s absorption as an omen of cooperation, grew more
candid about the plan of his group.
They would work up public
sympathy for the overburdened President, he explained eagerly, by a campaign
explaining that Roosevelt’s health was failing. The “dumb” public would accept
the need to give him “relief” by having a Cabinet official take the chores of
patronage and other routine worries of the office off his shoulders. Then the
President’s status would become like that of the President of France, a
ceremonial figurehead, while the Secretary of General Affairs ran the country.
Thus, at one stroke, the
country would be rid of Roosevelt’s misrule and would be put back on the gold
standard. And now, MacGuire concluded triumphantly, how did the general feel
about heading the new “super-organization” that would be the power behind
bringing about these sweeping changes?
Unable to contain himself any
longer, Butler exploded that if MacGuire and his backers tried to mount a
Fascist putsch,
he would raise another army of 500,000 veterans to oppose them and the nation
would be plunged into a new civil war. Upset, MacGuire hastily assured the
general that he and his group had no such intentions, but only sought to ease
the burdens of the Presidency. Butler sarcastically expressed doubt that
Roosevelt would appreciate their concern and turn his executive power over to
their “Secretary of General Affairs,” while limiting himself to ceremonial
functions. Besides, Butler pointed out tersely, any attempt to build a huge
paramilitary army of half a million men would require enormous funds.
MacGuire revealed that he now had $3
million in working funds and could get $300 million if it were needed. He added
that in about a year Butler would be able to assemble 500,000 veterans, with the
expectation that such a show of force would enable the movement to gain control
of the government fully in just a few days.
Butler was stunned. Either
MacGuire was a madman, psychotic, or fantastic liar, or what he was describing
was a treasonous plot to end democracy in the United States. He demanded to know
who was going to put up all the money.
MacGuire replied that Clark
was good for $15 million and that the rest would come from the same people who
had financed the “Chicago propaganda” about the gold standard at the American
Legion convention, and who were now behind the planned march on Washington.
What plans, Butler wanted to
know, did they have to take care of the veterans? The “super-organization,”
MacGuire said, would pay privates ten dollars and captains thirty-five dollars a
month for one year, and after that it would no longer be necessary. But how did
the plotters plan to manage the legal aspects of setting up an Assistant
President in the White House?
MacGuire explained that the
President would be induced to resign because of bad health. Vice-President Nance
Garner, who didn’t want to be President, would refuse the office. By the rule of
succession, Secretary of State Cordell Hull was next in line, but he was far too
old and could easily be set aside to make way for a Secretary of General Affairs
to take Roosevelt’s place as President.
MacGuire again urged Butler to
head the paramilitary army. The scale of the plot, as it was unfolding to him,
took Butler’s breath away. It occurred to him now that MacGuire’s backers had
been contemplating the creation of a Fascist veterans’ army at the time MacGuire
had first approached him to “get the soldiers together” behind their
gold-standard campaign. That explained why MacGuire had wooed him so
persistently, despite the general’s obvious reluctance and outbursts of temper
when patriotic indignation overcame his attempts to play along and learn what
the plotters were up to.
No false modesty prevented
Butler from recognizing that he was perhaps the best-known, and certainly the
most popular and charismatic military figure in the United States.
He also suited the plotters’
plans perfectly because he was noted for a brilliant, hard-hitting style of
oratory that, they undoubtedly reasoned, could be put to the service of
demagoguery
in the same spellbinding way Hitler and Mussolini had magnetized millions into
following them. His rasping voice and fiery spirit captured audiences and held
them hypnotized.
His reputation for fearless honesty, for
speaking his mind bluntly no matter whose corns he trod on, also made him the
ideal candidate to sell the plotters’ propaganda to the nation’s veterans, if he
could be persuaded to view their scheme as ultrapatriotic. A combination of
these reasons had unquestionably inspired Jerry MacGuire’s insistent campaign to
win him as the head of the putsch. It explained why MacGuire had refused to
take
'No' for an answer, counting on his persuasive powers as a bond salesman to
break down Butler’s sales resistance by camouflaging the raw nature of the
conspiracy, and tempting him into the plot with the biggest bribe ever offered
to any American – The opportunity to become the first dictator of the United
States. In a word, MacGuire was convinced that with Smedley Butler as their Man
on the White Horse, the plotters would have their greatest chance of success.
Increasingly uneasy and on guard, Butler
now resolved to play along carefully until he had penetrated the full secret
blueprint of the conspiracy. Keeping his voice cordial, he expressed interest in
MacGuire’s scheme, but exhibited enough doubts to induce him to reveal more in
the effort to reassure Butler and win him over.
Butler became convinced that
if MacGuire was telling the truth, far richer and more powerful men than just
Robert S. Clark had to be involved. Clark had told Butler that he had been
willing to spend $15 million of his fortune in the plotters’ schemes to restore
the gold standard. But MacGuire had revealed that the people behind him could,
and would if necessary; raise $300 million for the putsch.
Butler determined to find out
who they were. He demanded assurances from MacGuire that reputable and important
people were really behind the plan to create an American Croix de Feu,
pointing out that he could not afford to risk his reputation by getting involved
in any second-rate adventure.
Convinced that at last he was
on the verge of winning the general’s support, MacGuire eagerly sought to
impress him with the caliber of the influential movers and shakers of America
who were involved in the plot. He revealed that in Paris he had made his
headquarters at the offices of Morgan and Hodges. Butler tried to conceal his
astonishment.
There was only one Morgan in
the financial world – J. P. Morgan and Company. MacGuire left no doubt in his
mind that the nation’s biggest financiers were, indeed, involved. According to
the bond salesman, there had been a meeting in Paris to decide upon the
selection of the man to head the super-organization. MacGuire and his group had
held out for Butler, but the Morgan interests distrusted the general as “too
radical,” preferring Douglas MacArthur instead.
MacArthur’s term as Chief of
Staff expired in November, and the Morgan interests felt that if Roosevelt
failed to reappoint him, he would be bitter enough to accept their offer. Butler
observed that MacArthur would be likely to have difficulty in lining up veterans
behind him, because his dispersion of the Bonus Army had made him highly
unpopular.
MacGuire indicated that the
Morgan coterie’s second choice was Hanford MacNider, an Iowa manufacturer who
was a former commander of the American Legion. But MacGuire emphasized that his
own group was still insisting that Butler was the only military leader in the
country capable of rallying the veterans behind him. The Morgan interests had
acknowledged Butler’s immense prestige and popularity, he revealed, but were
apprehensive that as head of the paramilitary force, Butler might lead it in the
“wrong direction.”
Butler observed that MacNider
would have no more popular appeal than MacArthur because he had gone on record
as opposing the bonus.
MacGuire then revealed that
MacNider would be cued to change his stand, and would do so. Butler remembered
this prediction when, three weeks later, MacNider suddenly reversed his position
and came out in support of the bonus. If Butler could not be persuaded to head
the new super-organization, MacGuire said, the offer would definitely be made to
MacArthur, whether or not the latter was reappointed Chief of Staff. He confided
that there would be an administration fight over MacArthur’s reappointment, but
he would get it because he was the son-in-law of Philadelphian Edward T.
Stotesbury, a Morgan partner.
It was a bold prediction,
since never before in American history had a Chief of Staff been allowed to
succeed himself. Butler was all the more startled and impressed with MacGuire’s
sources of information when his prediction came true several months later.
MacGuire also informed Butler
that James Van Zandt, the national commander of the V.F.W., would be one of
those asked to serve as a leader of the new super-organization. He would be
approached by one of MacGuire’s envoys at the forthcoming V.F.W. convention in
Louisville, Kentucky.
Butler asked when the new
super-organization would surface and begin functioning, and what it would be
called. MacGuire said that he didn’t know the name of it yet, but that the press
would announce its formation in two or three weeks and that the roster of its
founders would include some of the most important men in America. One of them,
MacGuire revealed, would be none other than former New York Governor Al Smith,
who had lost the 1928 presidential race to Hoover as the candidate of the
Democratic Party.
Butler raised his bushy
eyebrows in astonishment. It seemed incredible that the derby-hatted “happy
warrior,” who had grown up in New York’s East Side slums, could be involved in a
Fascist plot backed by wealthy men. But he knew that Smith was now a business
associate of the powerful DuPont family, who had cultivated him through DuPont
official John J. Raskob, former chairman of the Democratic Party. Under their
influence Smith had grown more and more politically conservative following his
defeat, while still remaining a Democrat.
Could it really be possible
that a leading standard-bearer of the Democrats was committed to help overthrow
the chief Democrat in the White House? In slight shock Butler asked MacGuire why
Smith was involved. MacGuire replied that Smith had decided to break with the
Roosevelt Administration and was preparing a public blast against it which would
be published in about a month.
Pressed for more information
about the new super-organization, MacGuire told Butler that it would be
described publicly as a society “to maintain the Constitution.” Butler observed
dryly that the Constitution did not seem to be in any grave danger, {and} then
he bluntly asked what MacGuire’s stake was in the enterprise. MacGuire shrugged
that he was a businessman, and besides, he, his wife, and his children had
enjoyed a long, expensive stay in Europe, courtesy of his backers.
Taking his leave, MacGuire
said that he was going to Miami to agitate again for the gold standard, as well
as to get the new paramilitary organization rolling. He promised to contact
Butler again after the Legion convention. After he had gone, the bemused general
was almost tempted to dismiss the whole plot as the product of a disordered
imagination – his or MacGuire’s. But a grim sense of foreboding told him that he
was in the eye of a gathering storm.
There were too many things
that MacGuire had told him that rang true, and could not possibly have been
invented. Even as Butler brooded over the affair and wondered what to do about
it, another of MacGuire’s uncannily accurate predictions materialized two weeks
after their talk.
In September, 1934, the press
announced the formation of a new organization, the American Liberty League, by
discontented captains of industry and finance. They announced their objectives
as “to combat radicalism, to teach the necessity of respect for the rights of
persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.”
Denouncing the New Deal, they
attacked Roosevelt for “fomenting class hatred” by using such terms as
“unscrupulous money changers,” “economic royalists,” and “the privileged princes
of these new economic dynasties.”
Butler’s eyes widened when he read that the treasurer of the
American Liberty League was none other than MacGuire’s own boss, Grayson M.P.
Murphy
and one of its financiers was Robert S. Clark.
Heading and directing the
organization were DuPont and J. P. Morgan and Company men. Morgan attorney John
W. Davis was a member of the National Executive Committee – the same Davis that
Clark had identified as author of the gold-standard speech MacGuire had tried to
get Butler to make to the American Legion convention in Chicago.
Heavy contributors to the
American Liberty League included the Pitcairn family (Pittsburgh Plate Glass),
Andrew W. Mellon Associates, Rockefeller Associates, E. F. Hutton Associates,
William S. Knudsen (General Motors), and the Pew family (Sun Oil Associates). J.
Howard Pew, longtime friend and supporter of Robert Welch, who later founded the
John Birch Society, was a generous patron, along with other members of the Pew
family, of extremist right-wing causes. Other directors of the league included
Al Smith and John J. Raskob.
Two organizations affiliated
with the league were openly Fascist and anti-labor. One was the Sentinels of the
Republic, financed chiefly by the Pitcairn family and J. Howard Pew. Its members
labeled the New Deal “Jewish Communism” and insisted “the old line of Americans
of $1,200 a year want a Hitler.” The other was the Southern Committee to Uphold
the Constitution, which the conservative Baltimore Sun described as “a hybrid
organization financed by northern money, but playing on the Ku Klux Klan
prejudices of the south.” Its sponsor, John H. Kirby, collaborated in
anti-Semitic drives against the New Deal with the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith,
leader of the first Silver Shirt Squad of American storm troopers.
“The brood of anti-New Deal
organizations spawned by the Liberty League,” the New York Post subsequently
charged, “are in turn spawning Fascism.” Butler was stunned by this fulfillment
of MacGuire’s prediction. As he later testified, just at the time MacGuire had
said it would, the American Liberty League had appeared and was all that
MacGuire had said it would be.
And it was obviously no
coincidence that Grayson M.P. Murphy, Robert S. Clark, and the Morgan interests
were deeply involved.
Even yet another of MacGuire’s
predictions came true a fortnight later, when A1 Smith published a scathing
attack on the New Deal in the New Outlook, breaking publicly with the President
over economic policies.
If Butler had had any
lingering doubts about the authenticity of MacGuire’s claim to have inside
knowledge of what American big-business leaders were up to, the appearance of
the American Liberty League on schedule, and A1 Smith’s break with the White
House, convinced him that MacGuire’s revelations of a plot to seize the White
House were no crackpot’s fantasy. MacGuire had called the shots every time.
Butler was now genuinely
alarmed. For the first time it dawned upon him that if the American Liberty
League was, indeed, the “super-organization” behind the plot that it seemed to
be, the country’s freedom was in genuine peril. Such money and power as the men
behind the League possessed could easily mobilize a thinly disguised Fascist
army from the ranks of jobless, embittered veterans and do what Mussolini had
done in Italy with the financial support of the Italian plutocracy.
Getting in touch with Van
Zandt, Butler told the V.F.W. commander that he had been approached to lead a
coup as head of a veterans’ army. He warned that the conspirators intended
to try to involve Van Zandt, too, at the V.F.W, convention in Louisville.
Thanking him for the warning, Van Zandt assured Butler that he would have
nothing to do with the plotters.
Butler was tempted to leave
for Washington immediately to warn the President or his advisers. He now knew
enough to expose the whole plot. But he was pragmatist enough to realize that on
his unsupported word, without the slightest shred of evidence, he was likely to
be greeted with polite skepticism, if not ridicule. Heads would shake.
Poor Smedley Butler! How sad!
– A fine, brave Marine general like that, losing touch with reality. Too many
campaigns, too many tropical fevers.
At best they might believe
that MacGuire had, indeed, told him all those fantastic things, but then
MacGuire, obviously, had to be some kind of psychotic nut. And Butler would have
to be an idiot to have taken him seriously, to have believed that many of the
nation’s greatest leaders of the business and financial world would get involved
in a conspiracy to depose the President and take over the White House!
MacGuire, of course, would
deny everything; so would Robert S. Clark; so would everyone connected with the
American Liberty League – if this was, indeed, the super-organization MacGuire
had revealed was behind the plot.
The enemies Butler had made
among the military brass during his colorful career would help the press
ridicule his revelation. “Old Gimlet Eye,” they would scoff, “is at it again –
stirring up a storm, making headlines. Worst publicity hound that ever wore a
uniform!”
But Smedley Butler had never
in his life backed off from his duty as he saw it. Convinced that the democracy
he cherished was in genuine danger, he steeled himself for the ordeal of public
mockery and humiliating attacks that he knew would follow his exposure of the
conspiracy. He was enough of an expert tactician, however, to know that he
couldn’t win his battle without supporting troops. He would need corroborative
testimony by someone whose word, when combined with his own, would have to be
respected and a full-scale investigation {would begin}.
Butler confided in Tom O’Neil,
city editor of the Philadelphia Record. Observing that the whole affair smacked
of outright treason to him, he asked O’Neil to assign his star reporter to dig
into the story. O’Neil agreed, and reporter Paul Comly French, whose news
features also appeared in the New York Post, was instructed to seek confirmation
of the plot.
Butler knew and respected
French, who had done an intelligent and honest job of covering his fight against
crime and corruption in Philadelphia ten years earlier.
French set about determining
whether MacGuire and his group were operating some kind of racket to extort
money out of the rich by selling them political gold bricks, or whether a cabal
of rich men, enraged by the President and his policies, was putting up big money
to overthrow F.D.R. with a putsch.
In view of the powerful people
the general had named in connection with the plot, French knew that his
assignment was a keg of dynamite. Even if he could somehow confirm the existence
of the plot and identify the conspirators, he and the general were bound to meet
with incredulity when they sought to expose the blueprint for treason and the
traitors. Much would depend upon establishing and documenting the credibility of
Smedley Butler, the chief witness. If the general’s career showed him to be
given to gross exaggeration or chronic lying, or to be an officer of dubious
character whose word could not be trusted, then his sworn testimony against
those he charged with treason would be held {as} worthless.
If, on the other hand, an
examination of his life and career proved that he was a man of incorruptible
character, integrity, and patriotism, then his testimony would have to be given
the gravest consideration, especially when supported and corroborated by the
findings of French’s investigation.
Whatever the outcome, the
reporter knew that the denouement would be a stormy one. To Butler’s enemies he
was a highly controversial, unorthodox fighting man whose irrepressible temper
and tongue kept him in the headlines. To his friends he was a patriotic war hero
with strong convictions about democracy and a deserved reputation for bluntly
speaking out the truth, regardless of consequences.
What kind of man, actually,
was the Marine general who was accusing many of America’s leading financiers and
industrialists of seeking him as the indispensable man for their Fascist plot to
seize the White House?
 
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