I'm most pleased to join this forum by sharing a point of information and an observation on the Butler/Roosevelt affair.
1. While Jules Archer's "The Plot to Seize the White House" remains the only book-length analysis of the coup attempt extant (albeit out of print), I'm told that Joseph Trento completed a volume on the same subject. Indeed, "The Last President," which he allegedly co-authored with William Corson, was coveted by Oliver Stone in 2000 as the basis for, as they say, a major motion picture.
Perhaps Mr. Trento will be moved to enlighten us on the status of the project. So too Mr. Stone.
2. I was morbidly gratified when I read in Dick Russell's extraordinary "The Man Who Knew Too Much" of how the author was tipped off to the probable involvement of Charles Willoughby and an unnamed American military hero in the Kennedy hit. The latter could only be the Old Fading Soldier himself.
For some time I had considered the possibility that Douglas MacArthur, having experienced first-hand the problematic nature of bloodless coups, subsequently made a "no more Mister Nice Guy" pledge to himself. So if he had been confronted in his retirment by serving flag officers bearing "evidence" of JFK's unsuitability for office, he would have given his blessing to executive action.
As a writer of fiction, I was intrigued by such a scenario -- one for which meaningful empirical evidence is all but absent. I bring it to the forum's attention only as an exercise in creative visualization. Sometimes -- not often -- intuition leads.
Charles Drago
