1934 Coup and Smedley Butler

[Jim Hackett II]

I could find no certain place to post this. FWIW here is piece of research unrelated to John Kennedy and his murder but relevant to what the Power Elite have done before, possibly as a template of what was to come.

====================================================================

When the new decade started on 01January, 1930 many manufactured perceptions were evidenced in the American public’s consciousness. Even the fact that the new decade wouldn’t start for another year was overlooked. That decade would see many things that portended even more ominous events fast approaching. As is nearly always is the case, manufactured perceptions were paramount over real events or the truth about known events.

The decade of the 1930s had seen the beginning of what became known as the Great Depression, but that was public knowledge. How could it be ignored except in the houses of obscene wealth of New England or Maryland? The then reigning President Herbert Hoover was of the let them eat cake variety as his class of society was shown to be all too clearly. He may not have fiddled while Rome burned, but he refused to engage in any relief for the starving American workers until his hope of re-election forced him to do something to appear to be aware of the vast need and starvation stalking the American social landscape. And then he thought his connection to the Wall Street set would be forgotten. Growling stomachs and malnourished bodies attached to them meant near nothing to the G.O.P.

What did matter to Hoover as the election approached was the “rabble” of veterans labeled the “Bonus Marchers.” They had taken up residence in parks, dumps and abandoned buildings while seeking a redress of grievance from the Congress. The veterans of World War 1 had been promised a bonus payable in the 1940s. They sought a bonus of lesser amount paid then in the times of dire need. By 1945 there would be millions more new veterans to “worry about.”

As Congress is prone to do they futzed around and delayed taking any action. They waffled in 1932 as they do today. The gates to the White House were padlocked and Herbert Hoover ate regally seemingly not even aware of an issue of hunger in his nation. But that is the way of the wealthy. Let them eat cake, until they break the gates and steal your cake. The police and U.S. Army would protect the chief executive and the seats of power in Washington D.C.

As the government played ping pong with the issue of the Bonus Marchers as they were known to the public, the “armed insurrectionists”, as Hoover and the empowered referred to them, thought the plight of their own members was obvious and the remedy was obvious. However the men having the power and means to remedy the problems were equally sure it was just as obvious that the Communists were behind this problematic mob. To have given them something for nothing would negate the impetus to seek work at the very time that the impetus to work was the cure for the over all ills of the global economy. This position was sheer stupidity bred of opulence and cultural ignorance. Blinded by the glitter of the gold.

This is not to say the community of Washington D.C. didn’t provide food, the small businesses or some of them did, sending bread and some other foods far short of the need but more than the wealthy were doing. More genuine would be the verbiage “more than the wealthy were doing publicly.” The wealthy were quite busy in the election year 1932. Not only in America but also globally and all most exclusively in secret from America’s We The People.

The machinations of the wealthy and the common man were soon to intersect in the life of one man for a moment in time.

This man was retired U.S.M.C. General Smedley Darlington Butler.

“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 man. 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 veteran’s 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 speech of encouragement [to the Bonus Marchers] in the blunt language that had kept him in hot water with the nation’s highest-ranking admirals and generals, not to mention the 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 has 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 is 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 go home, go to the polls in November and lick the hell out of those who are against you. You know who they are … Now go do 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, then woke 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 1 [1932] rumors began 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 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 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 who wanted to return home. He phone 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 a 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 him turn Herbert Hoover out of the White House. [1]

Another view of the downfall of right wing unregulated economic politics, in the person of Herbert Hoover as President is this passage:

“Hoover’s image had already suffered a crushing blow by the Depression. Industrial production was down 50 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Board; iron and steel, 85 percent; lumber, 77 percent; cement, 65 percent. Factory payrolls had been slashed 65 percent, employment 44 percent. Over 13 million workers were jobless and over 4,000 banks had failed.

But the coup de grâce to Hoover’s career was delivered in June 1932, by his own hand. A “bonus army” of thousands of tired unemployed veterans and their families arrived that month in Washington demanding a federal bonus promised them by law, but not payable until the 1940s. They had traveled thousands of miles in battered jalopies, trucks, and wagons; many had even walked. And when Hoover wouldn’t even receive them, they pitched tents, erected shacks, and slept in the capital’s parks to petition Congress. As soon as Congress adjourned after refusing to grant the marchers any relief, Hoover made a show of force. On July 28 a police attempt to evict some of the squatters resulted in the killing of two veterans. Hoover then called in the Army. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, who described the marchers as “a mob … animated by the essence of revolution,” delayed the use of troops only long enough to have his swagger stick and medal covered uniform arrive from a nearby fort.

Aided by Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower and Major George Patton, MacArthur ordered tanks, four troops of cavalry with drawn sabers, and a column of steel helmeted infantry with fixed bayonets to enter downtown Washington and advance on the unarmed veterans. From Pennsylvania Avenue, MacArthur’s proud army marched across the Anacostia bridge, thousands of veterans and their wives and children fleeing before them, and advanced on their shanty village, lobbing tear gas bombs and setting its shacks and tents afire. An infant died from the tear gas, an 11-year-old boy was blinded for life, and many veterans were wounded. MacArthur responding to a reporter’s claim of having seen a cavalryman use his saber to slash off a veteran’s ear, explained, somewhat amused, that that was quite impossible. “You don’t slash with a saber,” he told the press, “you lunge.” And striking the correct pose for photographers, he demonstrated the proper thrust.

That night, from the windows of the White House’s Lincoln Room, Hoover watched the red glow from the burning camps in the southeast and retired. The next day the press was informed “the President was pleased.”

Such crude brutality only spurred desertions already underway in Hoover’s ranks, even among leading Republicans.” [2]

The reality of the “armed insurrectionists” was far from the manufactured perceptions spread by the interests associated with the wealthy DuPont Empires and the like that Herbert Hoover represented. The newspapers knew it, the average American citizen knew it and the Elite knew it. It would seem everyone knew the reality. The elite whose interests were threatened by any unification of the “consumers”, those Americans of the non-working class were painting the propaganda presentation to be made to the gullible however.

Some room for questioning the constitutionality of Hoover sending in the U.S. Army to abuse American Veterans exists. The deployment of U.S. Armed Forces against American Citizens had been made illegal by the Constitution as a result of the abuses of the Crown heads of the British Empire and the redcoats in revolutionary and pre-Revolutionary times. But this guarantee is only a paper prohibition of little effect in determining the actions of the elite at any time. 1932 or 1970 it matters little.

The Washington police had earned Herbert Hoover’s anger by feeding the bonus marchers. It is a clear statement as to what the mindset of the elite was concerning hunger and need to be wrathful towards a police force feeding people in need. All this was before the militarization of the police forces of this nation, in the days when a policeman was respected and served as a peace officer. A friend of the citizenry, not an enforcer and protector for the gated communities of the elites and their own selfish interests as the police have become in this century.

Therefore, the U.S. Army was the only force left, Washington D.C. had no National Guard. The supposed armed insurrectionists were quite different than the portrayed caricatures circulating in the boardrooms of the elite firms and banks.

“The bonus marchers were unarmed, had expelled radicals from their ranks, and despite their evident hunger weren’t even panhandling openly. They seemed too weak to be a menace. Drew Pearson, a thirty-four year old Baltimore Sun reporter, described them as “ragged, weary and pathetic,” with “no hope on their faces.” Increasingly the BEF [bonus Expeditionary Force] vigil had become an exercise in endurance. A health department inspector described the camp’s sanitary conditions as “extremely bad.” Makeshift commissaries depended largely upon charity. Truckloads of food arrived from friends in Des Moines and Camden, New Jersey; a hundred loaves of bread were being shipped each day from a sympathetic baker; one thousand pies came from another; the Veterans of Foreign Wars sent $500, and the bonus marchers raised another $2500 by staging boxing bouts among themselves in Griffith Stadium. The administration was doing virtually nothing – Washington police had aroused Hoover’s wrath by feeding the District’s uninvited guests bread, coffee and stew at six cents a day…”[3]

It is clear what six cents a day could do, or what the payment in advance of the $500 bonus could have done. It was not however the money or the hunger that was problematic, it was the open unification of American veterans in a common cause to exercise the guaranteed right to seek the redress of grievance that was seen as the problem. How dare the “rabble” think they could do such a thing? That is a dangerous thing, a very threatening state of affairs to the status quo empowering the wealthy.

The economic collapse that presaged all the social upheaval didn’t just destroy the political base of the wealthy conservatives, it also spurred them into legal and illegal action against their presumed opponents. Not only domestically in the U.S. but also in other empires outside America’s borders. With the advantage of hindsight from the 21st Century a more detailed explanation of why Wall Street crashed in 1929 should be taught in primary schools other than the worn lie about too much easy credit extended to buy stocks on margin. It is not and was not that simple. It is often ignored that the workers wages were falling and production was rising for years before the “crash.” Farmers and other large segments were in a depressed economic condition years before 1929. Over production had exceeded the consumer’s ability to purchase the produced good for years. It was a warning to the elite, it should have been for the “consumers” too, even though there is little the consumer can do to change the imbalance. The purchase of new automobiles had fallen for three years before the crash. General Motors and the DuPont Empire knew well of the impending problems in the domestic economy as did the House of Morgan.

Too often it is not reported in ‘history classes’ that the margin credit policies were methods to draw the “not wealthy people’s” money into the markets to be gambled with and ultimately stolen by manipulation and fraud. In 2002 the exposed fraud of the houses of Wall Street and the attending fall guys, the accounting firms is nothing new. It has all been done before. More frauds and thieves were jailed in the aftermath of the 1929 crash though.

None of the financial crisis was accidental and none was unforeseen. The financial movers and shakers knew the system was over extended, as did the Federal Reserve System that was intended to control credit and banking.

Desperation was stalking the land in 1932 and given the seemingly intentional alienation by Herbert Hoover of the American People another way had to be found. Of crucial importance was the common mood of desperation, common to both divisions of American society wealthy and powerless. The powerless were sweeping in Franklin Roosevelt in hopes of something different, part of the empowered people were also in favor of Franklin Roosevelt but for another cause. FDR was “one of their class” and would surely be able to ease the tensions of America.

There were more pressing problems for the elite though, someone was raiding the gold reserves and collapsing banks all over the nation. A crisis of finance was stalking the land and stealing savings and hope from rich and poor alike. Someone was trying very hard to subjugate the American Republic to another will.

This was raw greed and it was no respecter of the sovereignty of nations, financial empires were using the lame duck time between the election of 1932 and the March 1933 inauguration of FDR to extract as much of America’s gold reserves as they could manage.

Banks were collapsing at an unprecedented rates, less financially secure (not wealthy) Americans were watching their saving accounts disappear into a created ether. As is ALWAYS the case the money didn’t disappear into thin air, neither does missing money in the Federal Budget just disappear.

The only real disappearing act in 1932 was the “magic act” perpetrated on the depositors of the raided banks. Numbering between 4,000 and 7,000 banks “failed” actually raided in a similar maneuver to the corporate raiders of the 1980s and 1990s.

How similar? In the 1980s Corporate raiders looked for a company to take over looking not for profits or great R & D, but a pension fund of deposits in some bank. Once in control of the company the pension fund was used and “disappeared.” The Savings and Loan thefts if the 1980s were the same old game, i.e. money “disappeared”, as in the 1930s. The same kind of attack was used on banks, creditors, most often connected to either huge megalopolies of banking centers or to foreign empires called in all debt at once “on demand” on a local small bank. Poof more “disappeared money” that really wasn’t gone but like a magician’s act vanished from public view, converted to gold as that was the American currency and moved to another pigeon hole.

A bank closed, savings gone and worse still the working people have their own confidence shattered, their hope STOLEN along with their deposited money or pensions.

The failing banks number in the thousands in a matter of weeks in February 1933, the number of accounts wiped out was 9,000,000. That is to say about 9,000,000 families in a nation of 120,000,000 citizens were wiped out financially. Clearly the Banking Industry was demonstrating the need for it to be regulated as the Financial Empires of Wall Street had done in 1929. By 1932 15,000,000 Americans were unemployed and there were no prospects of jobs being created in a few years. All this was partially because of the raiding of the wealthy on the wealth of the not so wealthy.

Fear, hunger and despair were stalking the land in larger proportions than had been known in decades, if ever. In the most dire times the elite were stealing, or “disappearing” what little the others has saved or earned by their own toil.

Three years into the Depression so much had been stolen and so much hope was stolen that the question was now: “Who is to blame?” In 1929 or 1930 the question may have been: “What went wrong?” Herbert Hoover’s answer was no answer beyond, prosperity and the “great turn around” was fast approaching. In fact he never addressed the question of the people, about what went wrong.

Because the too long anticipated “great turn around” never came, it was clear that the economic system could not repair itself. The question paired with “who was to blame?” was “What to do to get things fixed?”

“A Senate investigation into the machinations of Wall Street found that investors organized raids on the stock market, pulled out all their money hoping for prices to drop, and then bought low. Insiders were also afforded the opportunity to buy securities at prices much lower than the public. Financiers were lining their pockets with fantastic bonuses, and the committee found that ‘… the Stock Exchange was no more than a glorified gambling casino where the odds were weighted heavily against the eager outsiders.’ ” [4]

The what was to be done issue can in hindsight be seen to be the creation and empowerment of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the regulation of the Wall Street house of thieves and similar legislation for the regulation of banking institutions. The revolt against the elite that was the 1932 election had swept in Democratic less business oriented Senate and House of Representative officials. Elected representatives more than willing to look behind doors and under the rugs for the criminals that were stealing the treasury and the people blind.

The press was spouting junk about the “noble” efforts of some financiers that supposedly pumped money in huge amounts into the market in October 1929 when the crash started. In that day though it fooled no one.

The words of Franklin Roosevelt asking Congress to pass the Securities Act shed light on the view of himself and many others not to include the Houses of Morgan or DuPont.

“In the working out of a great national program seeking the primary good of the greater number, it is true that the toes of some people are being stepped on. But those toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain position or riches or both by some short cut that is harmful to the greater good.” [4]

The pressure was mounting against the comparative few FDR spoke about, further it was not going to relent. Talk was being heard in the halls of Congress about taxing the “comparative few” and even regulating and investigating the “comparative few.” The “comparative few” were not going to just let this run of events have free run.

Where the “comparative few” did nothing to correct the economic woes of the nation the new ideas and suggestions of Franklin Roosevelt were doing something. He had taken America off the sacrosanct “gold standard” and is noted above was moving to regulate the playgrounds of the “comparative few” so that if nothing else the deeds done could be exposed and maybe jail the thieves to boot.

When FDR chose Joe Kennedy to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission it had to send the worst fears into the boardrooms of the “comparative few.” Joe Kennedy knew too well for their liking the methodology of their thefts and worse was not one of the club members. Not only had Joe Kennedy been long sighted enough to get out of the market before the crash, but even FDR has reported said when he decided upon Joe Kennedy for chairman that was setting a thief to catch thieves. The pressure was building. Something had to give.

Enter the intersection of power, the “comparative few” and retired General Smedley Darlington Butler.

Had the American Fascists chosen Douglas MacArthur instead of Smedley Butler things may have been very different. MacArthur had the ego and the rightist elite view to in his own mind to countenance a take over, provided he was the American Fuhrer, even if the position was only as a figurehead to receive public adoration. The flaw in trying to use MacArthur was the Bonus Marcher debacle that sealed Hoover’s fate as well as making Doug MacArthur very unpopular with the veterans. Dugout Doug had never been popular with the men serving under his command. He was now even less well thought of by the veterans in 1934. The veterans were crucial to the plotters’ plans.

Again they would have been the public faces of the undertaking to kill the Republic and replace it with Corpocracy in the face of Fascism.

The elite are not above using veterans more than once, first in uniform and second or third in “civilian” life after. Nor are they above redefining at will the guaranteed rights to peacefully assemble and/or to seek redress of grievance. Dissent is a forbidden crime to the elite, as is organizing to exercise those presumed but non-existent rights. Single dissenters can be dealt with or disposed of at leisure, many dissenters can much more bothersome even when you control the press. In the early thirties the control of the press was much less complete than today in the dawn of the 21st Century.

“In 1932 the General [MacArthur] was invited to address the graduating class at the University of Pittsburgh. He seized the occasion to argue that demonstrators protesting the government’s ineffectual responses to the spreading Depression were “organizing the forces of unrest and undermining the morals of the working man.” Some three hundred students jeered, three of their leaders were arrested and fined, and the university’s business manger, telling reporters that “we want right-minded students here,” announced that incoming freshmen would be required to sign loyalty oaths. It seemed MacArthur had won. He hadn’t. An appeals court reversed the conviction of the three, and the press was sharply critical of the General. He said: “It was bitter as gall and I knew something of that gall would be with me always.”

He had not, however, changed his mind. Returning from Pittsburgh, he instructed officers commanding the country’s nine corps areas to send him information on any agitators posing as veterans. In the summer of 1932 that order has special significance. Some twenty-five thousand vets and their families were already encamped in Washington, and more were on the way. Penniless in these hard times, they were petitioning the government to pay them a cash “bonus.” They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or BEF. A Veteran’s Administration survey would later shoe that 94 percent of the bonus marchers had army or navy records, 67 percent had served overseas, and 20 percent had been disabled. MacArthur refused to believe it. He thought 90 percent of them were fakes. And he never changed his mind. Long afterward Major General Courtney Whitney, his most noisome advocate, reflected the General’s view when he wrote that BEF ranks were swollen with “a heavy percentage of criminals, men with prison records for such crimes as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, burglary, blackmail, and assault.” Whitney charged: “A secret document which was captured later disclosed that the Communist plan covered even details as the public trial and hanging in front of the Capitol of high government officials. At the very top of the list was the name of Army Chief of Staff MacArthur.”

There was no secret document; there were only hungry Americans. But as Eisenhower observed of his chief, the General “had an obsession that a high commander must protect his image at all costs and must never admit his wrongs.” In addition he felt an ideological bond to Hoover, and on July 28, when Hurley told him that the President wanted the BEF evicted, he proceeded with enthusiasm. What was really needed was tact.” [5]

Having used up the respect of veterans by killing or maiming them, Doug MacArthur would not be available to the Fascist conspirators. Franklin Roosevelt was wise enough to reappoint him to the Chief of Staff of the Army position to keep him under watch and under control. This was the first time a Chief of Staff had succeeded himself.

The divide between political perspectives can be seen by the contrast between the views of the two generals, Butler and MacArthur. Butler pronounced the BEF as the best-behaved group of hungry men, MacArthur saw only that 90 percent of them were fakes. This issue in vague terms would define the politics of the time: For the great majority of Americans that were hungry, or opposed to them.

It is and will become clear that the BEF was not organized by the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, nor any other pre-existing veteran’s fraternal organization.

History records that the “Bonus Army” had its roots on Portland Oregon, from a small group of veterans headed by a former U.S. Army sergeant a Mr. Walter W. Waters.

It is worthwhile to examine the origins of the two establishment “veterans fraternal organizations,” the V.F.W. and particularly the American Legion.

First the V.F.W., as it was not the V.F.W. that approached Smedley Butler to be front man for the Fascist Coup attempt on 1934. The V.F.W. had a very different history than the American Legion.

From the V.F.W.’s own web site: this summarized history is found:

“The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States traces its roots back to 1899 when veterans of the Spanish-American War (189 and the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902) founded local organizations to secure rights and benefits for their service: Many arrived home wounded or sick.

There was no medical care or veterans' pension for them,

and they were left to care for themselves. In their misery, some of these veterans banded together and formed organizations with what would become known as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. After chapters were formed in Ohio, Colorado and Pennsylvania, the movement quickly gained momentum. By 1915, membership grew to 5,000; by 1936, membership was almost 200,000.

A Century of Accomplishments

Planned establishment of the Veterans Administration

Led development of the national cemetery system

Fought for compensation for Vietnam vets exposed to Agent Orange

Encouraged elevation of the Veterans Administration to the president's cabinet

Protected and enhanced the VA budget

Raised $500,000 to provide 300,000 care packages to Desert Storm troops

Matched funds for the creation of the World War II Memorial”

Before one gets to mushy about veteran services rendered to the veterans, the reality is far different from the presented picture. Witness the constant cutting of the G.I. Bill of 1946 until it was finally eliminated completely and that “service turned over to the Veteran’s Administration to be constantly reduced as the G.I. Bill was.

More crucial to the issue of the 1934 Coup though is the corruption and abuse of veterans’ organizations by the “comparative few.”

“The Morgan family, along with their allies also bankrolled the formation of the American Legion in 1919, and crafted it into a union busting organization of thugs. The initial operating officers of the Legion were bankers, stockbrokers and the like. Throughout the 1920s, the Legion was employed as a union busting organization.

The Legion took on a fascist character almost from its birth, and would play a prominent role in the fascist plot against Roosevelt in the 1930s. In 1923, Commander in Chief of the Legion Alvin Owsley openly embraced Mussolini, and endorsed fascism as a viable policy for the United States. Quoted in the Journal of the National Education Association, Owsley equated the Legion to America as the Fascisti were to Italy.

“...the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy... The American Legion is fighting every element that threatens our democratic government - soviets, anarchists, I.W.W., revolutionary socialists and every other red... Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.” [7]

As reported in Jules Archer’s book, The Plot to Seize the White House, Smedley Butler had under gone a transformation in the times of 1930 – 32. He had made such public statements supporting ideas that the young men that would have to fight a war should be the only ones able to vote on the declaration of war, and that the owners and workers in armament plants be paid no more than the service men.

Both ideas can be seen as threats to the Morgan Empire Banks habit of profiting by financing wars, but particularly to the DuPont Empires century old addiction to profit from other men’s shed blood by manufacturing and selling the weapons of war while making sure they and their family’s progeny were never at risk in those wars.

It would be unthinkable for the DuPont family to be paid only what a Dog Face or Gyrene would be paid for applying their weapons, at the time: “$37.50 a day once a month.” Even by World War Two $50.00 a month.

General Butler had become a pacifist as his Quaker upbringing would have dictated. The veterans that have fought wars know something often forgotten by others and even by some veterans of the REMF variety: War is a terrible thing holding no glory only death and horror and victory or defeat for the mud Grunts fighting it, but the “REMFers” and the overseers can only see the Empire and profit views.

There are few more conspicuous contrasts in American History than General Smedley Butler and U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. One was loved and held in highest regard by his own men, the other was reviled and hated by his men but held high by the people back home.

Both were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor. Butler won two.

One was of the common cloth and never forgot the men he served with, the other served for personal glory and fame and the troops were only commodities to be consumed as pawns for personal gain.

One camped with the Bonus March Veterans, the other aligned himself with the Elite and ignored orders to restrain himself in his eviction methods from the President concerning the same veterans. That is self-assurance that even the President could not do anything to him. Harry Truman proved Presidents could and do reign in the commanders, as Presidents are the Commander in Chief. The forced submission to authority was a pair of decades too late.

When MacArthur was removed from position he spoke to Congress and the People to lament “Old Soldiers Never Die They Just Fade Away.” He relished the spotlight of fame and acclaim.

On October 1, 1932 Smedley Butler retired and was a civilian. A well earned rest. He did so at Quantico speaking to his esteemed Marines.

“In his farewell speech to his beloved leathernecks his voice was more than customarily hoarse, and tears misted his fierce glare.

‘It has been a privilege to scrap for you just as you have scraped for me,’ he told them. ‘When I leave I mean to give every one of you a map showing you exactly where I live. I want you to come around and see me, especially if you ever get into trouble, and I will help you if I can. I can give you a square meal and a place to sleep even if I cannot guarantee you a political job.’

He meant every word, gave out the maps, and kept his promise for as long as he lived.” [1]

Mr. Archer worked with the family when he wrote this book. He knows what he wrote of.

This is esprit de corps, this is the Semper Fidelis, the motto of the Corp.

I find it impossible to think MacArthur could or would do something like this. The man simply was not that popular or identified with the G.I. in the enlisted ranks.

General MacArthur and in particular member of his staff later will be central to the Elite's plans.

General Butler was also to be involved in those plans but he was not cooperative. Mr. Butler for example had to sell off the land around his home to pay off the mortgage later. He spoke and toured not changing the things he promoted: Always this Republic and the veterans that had paid the price. In 1932 he made public his own decision to vote Democratic for the first time in his life, IF the right man were nominated. He thought the right man were Franklin Roosevelt.

He managed to get the money for his sons to go to college, not by influence of the "comparative few" but by writing and lecturing as he was quite in demand.

The mortgage was a picking point in the approach of the Morgan Dupont Empires by proxy of the American Legion.

He never forgot his beloved Corps and it's people. He blasted the U.S. Navy after the Corp quietly submitted to being made a department of the U.S. Navy. An article titled "To Hell With the Admirals" in Liberty Magazine of December 5 1931 got his tablet erected in his honor removed from the Navy Building.

The times of 1932 polarized the nation, Butler predictably becoming more anti-big business. As opposed to the lies of the Empire cults, Butler said:

"I've about come to the conclusion that some American corporations abroad are, in a measure, responsible for trouble with the natives because of the way they treat them. ... I've seen hundreds of boys from the cities and farms of the United States die in Central American countries just to protect the investments of our large corporations." How could Washington criticize Japan for its takeover in Manchuria, he demanded, when we ourselves has been just as imperialistic?" [1]

It should have been clear that General Butler was not the right choice for front man of a Fascist Coup.

Not every man has a price measured in dollars, some do value integrity and honor and fidelity.

Butler having been a Marine since age 15, lived the code now so antiquated as to be ridiculed in some quarters in this country today. Particularly in the college campuses populated by the sons and daughters of parents and fathers never knowing of such a code, they equate a frat house code and hazing to induction into the brotherhood of the Marine Corps.

BULLxxxx I say.

Or foreign service in the Peace Corp to active duty in the Corp as a Yuppie once did to my face. I just laughed and replied, 'not by a damn sight young foolish one.'

Indicative of the divide in those that know and those that don't in America today, I was once told that "anyone that went to Vietnam got what they deserved," also words uttered by a son of wealth on a major campus. They know nothing so well as false superiority over others.

This may seem as a digression from the 1934 Coup, but it is not, the same division of society and the same delusions of the "comparative few" were in play in 1934.

When an assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt failed shortly before his inauguration Butler wondered if the bullets had been inspired by the “comparative few” that so violently opposed Franklin Roosevelt, his “New Deal?”

Early on July 1, 1933 the phone rang in General Butler’s home. An official of the American Legion that had met General Butler told him that two “veterans” were coming to see him about an important matter later that day. It was the beginning of an ordeal by treasonous approaches.

The men that came to see him were not the “veterans” they were said to have been, they arrived at Butler’s home by chauffeured limousine. Dressed well and introduced as Bill Doyle (commander of the Massachusetts American Legion) and Gerald C. MacGuire. Butler thought the second man was a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion.

MacGuire claimed to have been a Marine with a combat wound. Doyle didn’t claim Marine membership but also attempted to establish bone fides by having a purple heart.

From that July to the next December Butler was pursued by MacGuire to engage him in schemes of the financial group MacGuire represented. Mr. MacGuire was a bond salesman for Grayson M–P Murphy and Company.

I would suspect that this was an attempt to compromise Butler to gain control of his persona and public presentations.

It speaks highly to me that Butler was again speaking to the American people touring the country for the V.F.W. He attacked the American Legion as selling out the veterans and the working people as they had done.

He spoke of “taking Wall Street by the throat.” He urged the veterans to organize to get the bonuses they has been promised. He repeated his claims that the American Legion had sold out the veterans. He opposed dictatorship, he told V.F.W. groups that he came out of retirement to “educate the soldiers out of the sucker class.”

I have to wonder when did the Morgan-DuPont plotters figure out that he was never going to support a Fascist Veterans March on Washington to force the abdication from real power of Franklin Roosevelt?

Notes:

1. Archer, Jules. The Plot To Seize The White House, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973

2. Zilg, Gerard Colby. DuPont Behind the Nylon Curtain, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc. , 1974

3. Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream, Boston – Toronto: Little Brown and Company., 1973-4

4. LaMonica, Barbara. “The Attempted Coup Against FDR.” PROBE, March-April 1999, pp. 8 – 12

5. Manchester, William. American Caesar, Boston – Toronto: Little Brown and Company., 1978

6. V.F.W. web site www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=...ld&did=224

7. Glen Yeadon “The Nazi Hydra in America,” The 1930s: Nazis Parading on Main Street Part 1: The Plot Against Roosevelt, www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930s.html

========================================

[Jim Hackett II]

Part 2

=====================================================================

The 34 Coup had been ignored and debunked in the “controlled press”, the propaganda nature of the UnFree Press is nothing new to the 21st Century. Neither is it anything new to the 20th Century. However, the press cannot bear all the blame for the manufactured picture of the Morgan and DuPont Empires actions given to the people. Even the Congress shaped the recording of the deeds in it’s Report of the Dickstein-McCormick Committee – more formally known as the “Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Public Hearings Before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy Third Congress, Second Session, at Washington D.C., December 29, 1934, Hearings No. 73-D.C.-6, Part 1.”

This Report was edited. Specifically it was edited to eliminate some of the most inflammatory parts of General Smedley Butler’s testimony of the conduct and declarations of the men that approached him for the Morgan-DuPont Empires. In spite of the fact that his testimony was corroborated by the reporter, Mr. Paul Comly French. The excuse for excising parts of General Butler’s testimony was that his reporting the events was “hearsay”. In that the Committee had already published “hearsay” testimony in press releases from sessions taking place in New York City. This reasoning seems lame as hell to me in light of the very serious nature of the threat to the American Republic.

Consider: Does this sound like testimony that needed to be deleted from a U.S. Congressional Report concerning a fascist plot to depose the U.S. Government and the Constitution?

page 158 – 170 from The Plot to Seize the White House

[CAPITALS NAMED HEADING PARAGRAPHS DENOTE WITNESS TESTIMONY SEGMENTS FROM THE McCORMACK-DICKSTEIN COMMITTEE REPORT – SOME IF NOT MOST OF THE FOLLOWING SEGMENTS WERE DELETED FROM THE ***** E*D*I*T*E*D ***** RELEASED AND PUBLIC COPY]

“Seeking to persuade him to change his mind, Butler testified, MacGuire had sought to impress him with the importance of the interests who were involved in the plot.

BUTLER: He said, “When I was in Paris, my headquarters were in Morgan & Hodges. We had a meeting over there. I might as well tell you, for the head of this organization. Morgan & Hodges are against you. The Morgan interests say you cannot be trusted, that you will be too radical, and so forth, that you are too much on the side of the little fellow; you cannot be trusted. They do not want you. But our group tells them that you are the only fellow in America who can get the soldiers together. They say, ‘Yes, but he will get them together and go in the wrong way.’ That is what they say if you take charge of them.”

According to MacGuire, Butler testified, the Morgan interests preferred other noted military figures as head of the projected veteran’s army. Discussion of those choices was also eliminated from the published version of the hearings.

BUTLER: [MacGuire said,] “They are for Douglas MacArthur as the head of it. Douglas MacArthur’s term expires in November, and if he is not reappointed it is presumed he will be disappointed and sore and they are for getting him to head it.”

I said: “I do not think that you will get the soldiers to follow him, Jerry…. His is in bad odor, because he put on a uniform with medals to march down the street in Washington, I know the soldiers.”

“Well then, we will get Hanford MacNider. They want either MacArthur or MacNider….”

I said, “MacNider won’t do either. He will not get the soldiers to follow him, because he has been opposed to the bonus.”

“Yes, but we will have him in change [charge?].”

And it is interesting to note that three weeks after this conversation MacNider changed and turned around for the bonus. It is interesting to note that.

He [MacGuire] said: “There is going to be a big quarrel over the reappointment of MacArthur…. you watch the President reappoint him. He is going to go right and if he doesn’t reappoint him, he is going left.”

I have been watching with a great deal of interest this quarrel over his reappointment to see how it comes out. He [MacGuire] said, “You know as well as I do that MacArthur is Stotesbury’s son in law in Philadelphia. You just see how it goes and if I am not telling the truth.”

I noticed that MacNider turned around for the bonus, and there is a row over the reappointment of MacArthur.

Convinced by now of the seriousness of the plot, and its magnitude, Butler had endeavored to learn how far along the conspirators were in the creation of the new superorganization that would control the proposed veteran’s army. MacGuire gave him some tips on recognizing its appearance.

BUTLER: Now there is one point … which I think is the most important of all. I said: “What are you going to call this organization?”

He said: “Well I do not know.”

I said: “Is there anything stirring about it yet?”

“Yes,” he says; you watch; in two or three weeks you will see it come out in the paper. There will be big fellows in it. This is to be the background of it. These are to be the villagers in the opera. The papers will come out with it.” He did not give me the name of it, but he said it would all be made public; a society to maintain the Constitution, and so forth. They had a lot of talk this time about maintaining the Constitution. I said, “I do not see that the Constitution is in any danger.”

Butler’s next observation, possibly the most significant in all his testimony, was missing from the published version of his testimony. It was the link between the conspiracy and the powerful interests Butler had good reason to believe were the “big fellows” in the background.

BUTLER: “… and in about two weeks the American Liberty League appeared, which was just about what he described it to be.”

The American Liberty League, which had brokerage head Grayson M.-P. Murphy as its treasurer and Robert S. Clark ass one of its financiers, also had John W. Davis, alleged writer of the gold-standard speech for Clark, as a member of the National Executive Committee. Its contributors included representatives of the Morgan, DuPont, Rockefeller, Pew and Mellon interests. Directors of the League included Al Smith and John J. Raskob. The League later formed affiliations with pro-Fascist, antilabor, and anti-Semetic organizations.

It astonished Butler that former New York Governor Al Smith who had lost the 1928 presidential race to Hoover as the Democratic candidate, could be involved in a Fascist plot backed by wealthy men. But the “happy warrior” who had grown up on New York’s East Side had traded his brown derby for a black one. He was now a business associate of the powerful Du Pont family, who had cultivated him through Du Pont official John J. Raskob, former chairman of the Democratic Party. Under their influence Smith had grown more and more politically conservative following his defeat.

Butler’s query about Smith, and MacGuire’s reply, were both deleted from the official testimony of the hearings.

BUTLER: I said, “What is the idea of Al Smith in this?”

“Well,” he said, “Al Smith is getting ready to assault the Administration in his magazine. It will appear in a month or so. He is going to take a shot at the money question. He has definitely broken with the President.’

I was interested to note that about a month later he did, and the New Outlook took the shot that he told me a month before they were going to take. Let me say this fellow [MacGuire] has been able to tell me about a month or six weeks ahead of time everything that happened. That made him interesting. I wanted to see if he was going to come out right….

In testimony that was also censored, Paul Comly French revealed that MacGuire had implicated the Du Ponts to him, indicating the role they would play in equipping the superarmy being planned by the plotters.

FRENCH: We discussed the question of arms and equipment, and he suggested that they could be obtained from the Remington Arms Co. on credit through the Du Ponts.

I do not think at that time he mentioned the connections of Du Ponts with the American Liberty League … but he skirted all around the idea that that was the back door; one of the Du Ponts is on the board of directors of the American Liberty League and they own a controlling interest in the Remington Arms Co. … He said that the General would not have any trouble enlisting 500,000 men.

In a story it ran on November 21, 1934, The New York Times noted, “According to General Butler … he was to assemble his 500,000 men in Washington, possibly a year from now, with the expectation that such a show of force would enable it to take over the government peacefully in a few days.”

During his last talk with MacGuire, Butler had once more pressured him to explain the persistent bond salesman’s personal stake in the conspiracy.

BUTLER: I asked him again, “Why are you in this thing?” He said, “I am a business man. I have got a wife and children.”

In other words, he had had a nice trip to Europe with his family for nine months, and he said that cost plenty, too…

So he left me saying, I am going down to Miami and I will get in touch with you after the convention is over, and we are going to make a fight down there for the gold standard, and we are going to organize.”

After had been urged over forty times to accept the leadership of the Fascist coup d’etat being planned, while he gathered as much information about it as he could, Butler then sought to gather corroborative evidence through reporter Paul Comly French.

BUTLER: … in talking to Paul French here – I had not said anything about this other thing, it did not make any difference about fiddling with the gold standard resolution, but this [the Fascist plot] looked to me as though it might be getting near that they were going to stir some of the soldiers up to hurt our Government. I did not know anything about this committee [the American Liberty League], so I told Paul to let his newspaper see what they could find out about the background of these fellows.

Although Butler recalled having induced French to check into the case, former Philadelphia Record city editor Tom O’Neil gave the author his recollection that Butler had approached him and told him the whole story. O’Neil recalled that he had agreed to assign French to investigate. Probably Butler first approached French, who had referred him to the cit editor.

Butler gave the McCormack-Dickstein Committee his view that the plot might have hatched out of a racket that MacGuire had been working as a moneymaking scheme.

BUTLER: I felt that it was just a racket, that these fellows were working one another and getting money out of the rich, selling them gold bricks. I have been to 752 different towns in the United States in three years and one month, and I made 1,022 speeches. I have seen absolutely no sign of anything showing a trend for a change of our form of Government. So it has never appealed to me at all. But as long as there was a lot of money stirring around – and I had noticed some of them with money to whom I have talked were dissatisfied and talking about having dictators – I thought that perhaps they might be tempted to put up money.

Butler testified that his last encounter with MacGuire had been with reference to French’s attempt to talk to him.

CHAIRMAN: Did you have any further talks with him?

BUTLER: No. The only other time I saw or heard from him was when I wanted Paul to uncover him. He talked to me and telephoned Paul, saying he wanted to see him. He called me up and asked if Paul was a reputable person, and I said he was. That was the last time I heard from him.

CHAIRMAN: The last talk you had with MacGuire was in the Belleview in August of this year?

BUTLER: August 22; yes. The date can be identified.

He concluded his testimony by urging the committee to question several persons about the plot in addition to MacGuire – notably Murphy, Doyle, and Legion Commander Frank N. Belgrano. This request was also stricken from the official record.

Butler was aware that Chairman McCormack was himself a Legionnaire and that the revelations of the plot implicating Legion officials might be painful to him. But Butler also knew that McCormack was a determined foe of Nazi propaganda and a staunch supporter of New Deal measures. Butler had counted on his indignation over the conspiracy to bring about a full-scale investigation by the Department of Justice.

After Butler had complete his testimony, Paul Comly French took the witness chair to report on his own investigation of the plot, in which a candid two-hour conversation with MacGuire at the latter’s office figured prominently.

Describing these talks on the premises of Grayson M.-P. Murphy and Company, French verified every allegation about the plot the General had attributed to MacGuire. In addition French reported the more open statements MacGuire had made to him about the nature of the conspiracy and how it would work. More frank with French, apparently, than he dared to be with the general, MacGuire made little attempt to disguise the Fascist nature of the proposed putsch with euphemistic phrases about “supporting the President.”

FRENCH: We need a Fascist government in this country, he insisted, to save the nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.

During the conversation he told me he had been in Italy and Germany during the summer of 1934 and spring of 1935 and had made an intensive study of the background of the Nazi and Fascist movements and how the veterans had played a part in them. He said he had obtained enough information on the Fascist and Nazi movements and of the part played by the veterans, to properly set up one in this country.

He emphasized throughout his conversation with me that the whole thing was tremendously patriotic, that it was saving the Nation from Communists, and that the men they deal with have that crackbrained idea that the Communists are going to take it apart. He said the only safeguard would be the soldiers. At first he suggested that the General organize this outfit himself and ask a dollar a year dues from everybody. We discussed that, and then he came around to the point of getting outside financial funds, and he said he could raise a million dollars.

French’s use of the phrase “crackbrained idea” to describe the notion by financiers and captains of industry that the country needed to be saved from communism was obviously his own, not MacGuire’s expression.

Censored in French’s testimony was his revelation of the sources to which MacGuire had said that he could turn to for the funds to finance the veteran’s army.

FRENCH: He said he could go to John W. Davis [attorney for J.P. Morgan and Company] or Perkins of the National City Bank, and any number of persons to get it.

French testified that MacGuire had sought to impress him by indicating high-level support for the conspiracy from important movers and shakers of the American Legion.

FRENCH: He then pushed a letter across the desk and said it was from Louis Johnson, a former national commander of the American Legion.

Chairman: Did he show you the letter?

FRENCH: I did not read it. He just passed it over so I could see it, but he did not show it to me. He said that he had discussed the matter with him along the lines of what we were now discussing, and I took him to mean that he had talked of this Fascist proposition with Johnson, and Johnson was in sympathy with it.

.

During the conversation he also mentioned Henry Stevens, of Warsaw, N.C., a former national commander of the American Legion, and said he was interested in the program. Several times he brought in the names of various former national commanders of the American Legion, to give me the impression that, whether justly or unjustly, a group in the American Legion were actively interested in this proposition.

CHAIRMAN: In other words, he mentioned a lot of prominent names, and whether they are interested or not, you do not know, except that he seemed to try to convey to you that they were, to impress on you the significance of this movement?

FRENCH: That is precisely the impression I gained from him.

As MacGuire had grown increasingly comfortable with him, French testified, the plotter had grown candid and enthusiastic about the Fascist rewards that would follow the seizure of the White House. French’s use of the word “brilliant” in the following portion of his testimony was obviously sarcastic.

FRENCH: He had a very brilliant solution of the unemployment situation. He said the Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks – enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do; that that was the ideal plan.

He had another suggestion to register all persons all over the country, like they do in Europe. He said that would stop a lot of these Communist agitators who were running around the country.

He said a crash was inevitable and was due to come when bonds reached 5 percent. He said the soldiers must prepare to save the Nation.

If Roosevelt went along with the dictatorship as the King had done in Italy, MacGuire had suggested, Butler could have the proposed labor camps put under his control.

FRENCH: … he suggested that Roosevelt would be in sympathy with us and proposed the idea that Butler would be named as the head of the C.C.C. [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps by the President as a means of building up the organization. …

French then testified that MacGuire had told him the plotters could obtain arms and equipment from the Remington Arms Company, on credit through the Du Ponts. His testimony also implicated the American Liberty League.

FRENCH: I do not think at that time he mentioned the connection of Du Ponts with the American Liberty League, but he skirted all around it. That is, I do not think he mentioned the Liberty League, but he skirted all around the idea that that was the back door; one of the Du Ponts is on the board of directors of the American Liberty League and they own a controlling interest in the Remington Arms Co. … He said the General would not have any trouble enlisting 500,000 men.

It was because MacGuire saw the general as the indispensable man of the putsch, French testified, that he persisted in his efforts to win Butler’s adherence to the scheme.

FRENCH: When I left him he said he planned to get in touch with the general and again try to persuade him to accept the leadership of this organization; that he was going to Miami in a couple of weeks for the national convention to do a little work.

CHAIRMAN: To beat the bonus?

FRENCH: Yes.

CHAIRMAN: I thought he was for the bonus?

FRENCH: He was at first.

BUTLER (interposing): He wants it paid in gold. Clark told me he had been for the bonus or that he would be for the bonus if we could get the gold standard restored.

FRENCH: Then he said he would be in Miami. I told him that the general was going out on a lengthy speaking tour and did not know how to get to him. He said that he would either see him before he went to Miami or, if he could not, after he came back from Miami. But he did not see him and in a couple of days the general went out West.

Then I went back to see MacGuire on the 27th of September and talked to him for only a few minutes this time. In the meantime I had tried to get in touch with him once when I was in New York, but he was in Miami and could not. At this time he said that he was extremely sorry that he could not get to Newtown Square [butler’s hometown], but hoped to do so soon, that things were moving nicely. Everything is coming our way, is the way he expressed it.

That same afternoon the committee grilled Jerry MacGuire, who had been summoned to testify at the executive session. MacGuire, who earned only $150.00 a week as a bond salesman, contradicted himself on the amount of money he had received from sponsors and what he had done with it. He denied Butler’s allegation that he had thrown eighteen thousand-dollar bills on the bed at the Newark hotel during the 29th Division convention to bribe Butler into going to the Legion convention in Chicago.

But he could not explain what he had done with at least thirty thousand in letters of credit, funds advanced to him by either Clark or Clark’s attorney, Albert Grant Christmas, and which MacGuire had had with him at the Legion convention in Chicago the following October, at which he had been both a delegate and a member of the “distinguished guest committee.”

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee found five significant facts that lent validity to Butler’s testimony. Clark who wanted the Legion to pass a gold standard resolution, had given MacGuire those funds. In the long-distance call Clark had allegedly made to Chicago while Butler was listening, he had instructed MacGuire, “You can put this thing across alone. You’ve got $45,000. You can send those telegrams.” MacGuire could not explain how he had spent those funds. But telegrams had, indeed flooded the convention, and the Legion had passed the resolution.

Corroboration of Butler’s testimony about MacGuire’s mission in Europe was borne out by the committee’s finding that he had spent large sums of money on that trip to study Fascist movements in Italy, Germany, and France. The committee found, too, that he and Clark had handled large sums of money for various organizations, that he had been active in organizations mentioned by Butler, and that he had acted as cashier for one organization. His accounts of some financial transactions failed to satisfy the committee, and he was curtly instructed to appear the following day for further questioning.

Interviewed by reporters afterward, MacGuire declared that he was a personal friend of General Butler’s and had last seen him six months earlier when he had gone to Philadelphia to sell some bonds. They had talked about an adequate military force for the nation, MacGuire insisted, and about world affairs in general, but he denied ever discussing a Fascist army or movement. A little desperately MacGuire suggested that “General Butler must be seeking publicity,” and called the general’s testimony “a publicity stunt.” His attorney, Norman L. Marks, called it “a joke and publicity stunt for General Butler.”

Smedley Butler’s reputation as an honest patriot made what he had testified to under oath impossible for the press to ignore. On November 21, 1934, in the center of its front page, The New York Times carried a two-column headline:

Gen. Butler Bares Fascist Plot’

To Seize Government by Force

-------------------

Says Bond Salesman as Representative of Wall Street Group, Asked Him to Lead Army of 500,000 in March on Capital - - Those Named Make Angry Denials - - Dickstein Gets Charge

Reading the Times’s account of the secret hearings, Butler was struck by a unique arrangement of the facts in the story. Instead of beginning with a full account of his charges, there was only a brief paragraph restating the facts of the headline. This was followed by a whole string of denials, or ridicule of the charges, by prominent people implicated. Extensive space was given to their attempt to brand Butler a xxxx or lunatic. Only at the tail of the story, buried inside the paper, did the Times wind up its account with a few paragraphs mentioning some of the allegations.

Many papers that picked up the story dropped the tail carrying even those cursory details of the plot. Newspaper publishers had little reason to be fond of the firebrand general who, in his speech to veterans in Atlanta almost a year earlier, had warned them not to believe the capitalist controlled press, which, Butler charged, suppressed facts unfavorable to America’s powerful corporations.”

It is now known that the released Report, the “Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Public Hearings Before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy Third Congress, Second Session, at Washington D.C., December 29, 1934, Hearings No. 73-D.C.-6, Part 1” was rewritten from historical fact to present a safer picture of events to the public. So ended the hope of and U.S. Government of the Fascist element in the wealthy and corporate bloodlines of America

The press would now set out to reinforce this perception by reporting the “story” surrounding the Fascist Plot as much ado about nothing meaningful when the facts demonstrate exactly the opposite. The UnFree Press would complete the minimization of the history. This article excerpt details how the press refused to report the story.

EXCERPTED From PROBE March-April 1999, (pp. 8 –12) an article by Barbara LaMonica: The Attempted Coup Against FDR

“The media gave little or scant coverage to the committee’s final report. The Luce Press, which always led the charge in attacking Roosevelt and bolstering Fascism, ran a story called “A Plot Without Plotters” which sought to discredit Col. Butler. He was called a “hothead”. Other evidence of Butler’s unsavory character, according to Luce, was that he had once given a speech in which he criticized Mussolini. His advocacy of the penniless Bonus Veterans Army was transformed into haranguing. The committee chairmen fared no better under Luce’s pen. They were accused of only seeking publicity (despite their having sought to suppress the most explosive parts of their discoveries). The New York Times showed an astonishing lack of interest. Reference to the alleged coup was relegated to two paragraphs at the bottom of page five. However, not every newspaper discounted the plot. The independent Philadelphia Record ran a cartoon showing big business pointing to a soapbox Communist as the threat, while General Butler marches in with evidence revealing armed Fascists hiding beneath a banker’s coat. References to the alleged conspiracy disappeared from the press. Nevertheless, individual reporters did attempt to pursue the story. Paul Comley French of the Philadelphia Record and investigative journalist John Spivak went to the Justice Department. They asked why no one implicated was ever questioned; and since MacGuire had perjured himself, did they intend to file criminal prosecution? The Justice Department indicated it had no plans to carry matters any further at the moment. MacGuire, the only man who could have testified against the rest, died soon after of complications from pneumonia. His physician claimed his death was partly due to the stress of the charges made by Butler. Grayson M.-P. Murphy, the Morgan banker and treasurer of the American Liberty League, died soon after.”

After all the cover-up by deletion and omission for the committee’s report and the continuation of the efforts of the press to deny and make light of the coup, it can be no surprise that the effects of the Fascist power centers and the schemes of the Fascists still haunt the American Political landscape.

This is from the same article continued at the same place above:

Aftermath And Beyond

Although the coup never materialized, the unrelenting propaganda attack against Roosevelt and the New Deal reforms continued, spearheaded by the American Liberty League. The League listed as its main contributors the Du Pont family, representatives of the Morgan interests, Robert Sterling Clark, the Pew Family (Sun Oil) and Rockefeller Associates. Its treasurer was Grayson M.-P. Murphy, MacGuire’s immediate boss. The League itself was ostensibly dedicated to the virtues of the Constitution, individual freedom and free market capitalism. But it claimed all New Deal reforms were inspired by Communists within the Roosevelt administration. In the election of 1936, the League spent twice as much money as the Republican Party in trying to defeat Roosevelt. Although the League disbanded after Roosevelt won his second term, it spawned a series of extreme right-wing groups and paramilitary bands which constituted a network that endured through the 1960s, and whose descendants are with us today. Their propaganda was anti-Communist and anti-Semitic; their tactic was violence. Some groups which the League financed were the Sentinels of the Republic (which labeled the New Deal “Jewish Communism”), the Minutemen and the Minutewomen. Another group, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, was associated with the Silver Shirt Squad of the American Storm Troopers. The goals of this organization, headed by a Texas oil magnate, were to create a mass movement of whites in the South to dilute Roosevelt’s Dixie vote, and to stir up anti-black racism in order to attack organizing drives by the unions from the North. Significantly, these same hate sentiments were being stirred up against JFK, and for the same reasons. These groups formed the dark underside to the League, which tried to present a polite public face. But some industrialists, like Henry Ford, had no qualms about explicitness. American Fascist groups hawked his anti-Semitic tracts like “The international Jew.”

The main function of these hate groups was to enforce the will of right-wing corporate America, seeking to regain the political power it lost in the 1932 election. On the grassroots level, this intention translated into supporting the efforts of management to stop workers from unionizing. The most glaring example of this was the struggle at the General Motors plants. (General Motors was owned by the DuPonts). The Du Ponts employed the Black Legion, a sort of Northern Ku Klux Klan, which would terrorize workers, bomb union halls, and torture and murder organizers. The Legion was organized into arson squads, execution squads, and anti-Communist squads. Discipline within its own ranks was maintained with the weapons of torture or death and was strictly enforced. The LaFollette Committee found that the Legion had penetrated police departments, high government offices, and the Michigan Republican Party.

These groups also acted as intelligence networks. They infiltrated unions, leftwing groups, and universities, and sold their information to industry. One example of such an intelligence agency was the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, headquartered in Chicago and operated by Harry Jung. Jung later relocated to New Orleans where he was an associate of Guy Banister, who also hailed from Chicago. Banister’s Detective Agency was spying for right-wing businesses as well. Some believe it may have been Jung’s hotel in New Orleans that the famous Congress of Freedom meeting took place in the Spring of 1963. At this meeting, with Edwin Walker and Joseph Milteer in attendance, a police informant reported there was talk of murdering national leaders.

In the Thirties, corporate America’s fear of government regulation threatened by Roosevelt’s New Deal, (“Socialism” in their minds), gave them a reason to embrace Fascism. It justified their financing of paramilitary hate groups to carry out violent, anti-government and anti-union campaigns exploiting the vehicles of racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism. By the Sixties these groups had become entrenched in the grassroots landscape.

The institutionalization of the military industrial complex and the national security state, with which corporate America would meld, developed after World War II and its aftermath. The DuPonts, as well as other industrialists, implicated in the attempted coup against FDR played a major role in these developments.”

It is very clear this observation is true.

So demonstrable in fact that it is clear why the history of the Coup of 1934 is so hidden by the “The institutionalization of the military industrial complex and the national security state, with which corporate America would meld,…”.

If not hidden this history would destroy the façade of respectability of the National Security State and the Government that fronts for the state.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------