The Plot To Seize The White House (23 page)

"Well, are you going yourself?"

I said, "Oh, I do not know. But I know one thing. Somebody is using you. You are a wounded man. You are a blue jacket. You have got a silver plate in your head. I looked you up.... You are being used by somebody, and I want know the fellows who are using you. I am not going to talk to you any more. You are only an agent. I want some of the principals."

He said, "Well, I will send one of them over to see you." I said,

"Who?" He said, "I will send Mr. Clark."

"Who is Mr. Clark?"

"Well, he is one of our people. He put up some money."

"Who is he?"

"Well, his name is R. S. Clark. He is a banker. He used to be in the Army."

"How old a man is he?" He told me.

"Would it be possible that he was a second lieutenant in the Ninth Infantry in China during the Boxer campaign?"

He said, "That is the fellow."

He was known as the "millionaire lieutenant" and was sort of batty, sort of queer, did all sorts of extravagant things. He used to go exploring around China and wrote a book on it, on explorations. He was never taken seriously by anybody. But he had a lot of money. An aunt and an uncle died and left him $10,000,000.

Having established contact with one of the plot’s principals, Butler testified, he had been visited by Clark within the week with and invited to travel in a private car to the Chicago convention with the millionaire, who revealed that he would arrange an opportunity for Butler to deliver the gold-standard speech.

BUTLER: He said, "You have got the speech?" I said, "Yes.

These fellows, Doyle and MacGuire, gave me the speech." I said,

"They wrote a hell of a good speech, too." He said, 
 

"Did those fellows say that they wrote that speech?" I said, "Yes; they did. They told me that that was their business, writing speeches." He laughed and said, "That speech cost a lot of money."

In testimony afterward censored, Butler revealed that the speech had apparently been written for the millionaire by the chief attorney for J. P. Morgan and Company, who had been the 1924 Democratic candidate for President.

† BUTLER: Now either from what he said then or from what MacGuire had said, I got the impression that the speech had been written by John W. Davis-one or the other of them told me that.

Clark had been amused, Butler testified, that MacGuire and Doyle had claimed the authorship. Butler had pointed out that a speech urging a return to the gold standard did not seem to be relevant to the reasons he was being asked to go to the convention. Clark had reiterated MacGuire's explanation that he wanted to see the soldiers' bonus paid in gold-backed currency, not in inflated paper money.

BUTLER: "Yes," I said, "but it looks as if it were a big business speech. There is something funny about that speech, Mr. 
Clark." . . .

Clark said ". . . I have got $30,000,000. I do not want to lose it. I am willing to spend half of the $30,000,000 to save the other half. If you go out and make this speech in Chicago, I am certain that they will adopt the resolution and that will be one step toward the return to gold, to have the soldiers stand up for it. We can get the soldiers to go out Having established contact with one of the plot's principals, so in great bodies to stand up for it."

This was the first beginning of the idea, you see, of having a soldiers' organization, getting them to go out in favor of the gold standard. Clark's thought was, "I do not want to lose my money."

In a censored portion of the testimony, Butler explained why Clark thought that Roosevelt would permit himself to be pressured by such tactics.

† BUTLER: He said, "You know the President is weak. He will come right along with us. He was born in this class. He was raised in this class, and he will come back. He will run true to form. In the end he will come around. But we have got to be prepared to sustain him when he does."

This blatant snobbery and fatuous assumption about the President had been too much for Butler, and he had snapped a refusal to go to Chicago.

BUTLER: He said, "Why not?"

I said, "I do not want to be mixed up in this thing at all. I tell you very frankly, Mr. Clark, I have got one interest and that is the maintenance of a democracy. That is the only thing. I took an oath to sustain the democracy, and that is what I am going to do and nothing else. I am not going to get these soldiers marching around and stirred up over the gold standard. What the hell does a soldier know about the gold standard? You are just working them, using them, just as they have been used right along, and I am going to be one of those to see that they do not use them any more except to maintain a democracy.

And then I will go out with them any time to do that."

At this point, Butler testified, Clark had offered him an outright bribe to win his cooperation.

BUTLER: He said, "Why do you want to be stubborn? Why do you want to be different from other people? We can take care of you.

You have got a mortgage on this house," waving his hand, pointing to the house. "That can all be taken care of. It is perfectly legal, perfectly proper."

"Yes," I said, "but I just do not want to do it, that's all." Finally I said, "Do you know what you are trying to do? You are trying to bribe me in my own house. You are very polite about it and I can hardly call it that, but it looks kind of funny to me, making that kind of proposition. You come out into the hall, I want to show you something."

We went out there. I have all the flags and banners and medals of honor, and things of that kind. . . . They have been given me by the Chinese and the Nicaraguans and the Haitians-by the poor people. I said to him, "You come out here. Look at that and see what you are trying to do. You are trying to buy me away from my own kind. When you have made up your mind that I will not go with you, then you come on and tell me.”

After being left in the hall to inspect the trophies and think about their significance, Butler testified, Clark had joined him in the office at the back of the house. The millionaire had then asked permission to make a long-distance call.

BUTLER: He called up Chicago and got hold of MacGuire at the Palmer House and lie said to MacGuire, "General Butler is not coming to the convention. He has given me his reasons and they are excellent ones, and I apologize to him for my connection with it. I am not coming either. You can put this thing across. You have got $45,000. You can send those telegrams. You will have to do it in that way. The general is not coming. I can see why. I am going to Canada to rest. If you want me, you know where you can find me. You have got enough money to go through with it."

. . . The convention came off and the gold standard was endorsed by the convention. I read about it with a great deal of interest.

There was some talk about a flood of telegrams that came in and influenced them and I was so much amused, because it all happened right in my room.

Then MacGuire stopped to see me on his way back from the convention. This time he came in a hired limousine . . . and told me that they had been successful in putting over their move. I said, "Yes, but you did not endorse the soldier's bonus."

He said, "Well, we have got to get sound currency before it is worth while to endorse the bonus."

Not long afterward, Butler testified, MacGuire had called again to ask him to go to Boston for a soldier's dinner that was being given in the general's honor.

BUTLER: He said, "We will have a private car for you on the end of the train. You will make a speech at this dinner and it will he worth a thousand dollars to you."

I said, "I never got a thousand dollars for making a speech."

He said, "You will get it this time."

"Who is going to pay for this dinner and this ride up in the private car?"

"Oh, we will pay for it out of our funds."

"I am not going to Boston. If the soldiers of Massachusetts want to give a dinner and want me to come, I will come. But there is no thousand dollars in it."

So he said, "Well, then, we will think of something else."

He had next seen MacGuire, Butler testified, while in New York to make an election speech on behalf of a former Marine running for local office in a municipal campaign. MacGuire had then sought to draw Butler out on his subsequent plans.

BUTLER: He said, "You are going on a trip for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. You are going around recruiting them, aren't you?" I said,

"Yes; I am going to start as soon as this campaign is over."

CHAIRMAN: When was this campaign?

BUTLER: This was in November, 1933. All of this happened between July and November, everything I told you.... He said, "You are going out to speak for the veterans." I said, "Yes. . . . You know I believe that sooner or later there is going to be a test of our democracy, a test of this democratic form of government. The soldiers are the only people in this country who have ever taken an oath to sustain it. I believe that I can appeal to them by the millions to stand up for a democracy, because they have more stake in a democracy than any other class of our citizens, because they have fought for it. I am going out to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They are my kind, overseas people, old regulars, and see if I cannot get a half a million of those fellows and preach this to them, that we have got to stand up against war. I have got an object in doing it.

I believe that sooner or later we are going to have a showdown, because I have had so many invitations to head societies and to join societies, all of them with a camouflaged patriotic intent. They are rackets, all of them."

MacGuire had then exposed the forward edge of a new plan to use the general, startling Butler by a proposal to join him in his travels around the country.

BUTLER: He said, "Well, that is what we are for. . . . I want to go around with you . . . and talk to the soldiers in the background and see if we cannot get them to join a great big superorganization to maintain the democracy.

I said, "I do not know about you going along, Jerry. Of course, I cannot keep you off of the train. But there is something funny about all this that you are doing and I am not going to be responsible for it and I do not want any more to do with it. You are a wounded soldier and I am not going to hurt you, but you must lay off this business with me, because there is too much money in it."

"Well, I am a business man," he said. . . . "I do not see why you will not be a business man, too."

I said, "If fiddling with this form of government is business, I am out of it; if that is your business."

"Oh," he said, "I would not disturb this form of government."

I said, "You have got some reason for getting at these soldiers other than to maintain a democracy."

Although Butler did not testify to having been offered, and turning down, $750 for every speech he made to veterans groups during his tour in which he inserted a short reference favoring the gold standard, a special tribute was paid to him on this score by a secret report he did not know of that reached the White House.

It had been written by Val O'Farrell, a former New York City detective who had become one of the city's leading criminal and civil investigators. On December 11, 1933, O'Farrell had written to presidential secretary Louis Howe:

My dear Colonel:

. . . Before he [Butler] left for Atlanta, he was approached by a representative of the bankers gold group system, and offered the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars 
for each speech if he would insert some short reference in favor of continuing the bankers gold standard. This would have meant an additional ten thousand dollars to General Butler, but he told the representative of the gold group that even if he were offered a hundred thousand dollars to do this, his answer would be "no."

Notwithstanding the fact that I do not know General Butler, who has been occasionally subject to harsh criticism for the things he has done or failed to do, I felt it my duty to report this incident to you as it shows him to be a man of exceptional character. You can probably obtain the name of the representative of this gold group from General Butler, or if you are interested, I may be able to get it for you.

Butler found himself fascinated by MacGuire, suspecting that the bond salesman might be playing some kind of shrewd con game with Clark, using his contact with Butler as a lever with which to pry money out of the alarmed millionaire.

BUTLER: I began to get the idea that he was using Clark-to pull money out of Clark by frightening him about his $30,000,000-and then he was coming to me; and then he would go back and tell Clark, "I have been to see Butler, and he will go along if you will get me $5,000

more." In other words, I could see him working both ends against the middle and making a sucker out of Clark. However, if Clark wanted to get rid of his money, it was none of my business. . . .

Now, he [MacGuire] is a very cagey individual. He always approaches everything from afar. He is really a very nice, plausible fellow. But I gather, after this association with him, that due to this wound in his head, he is a little inconsistent, a little flighty. He is being used, too, but I do 
not think Clark is using him. My impression is that Murphy uses him; and he uses Clark, because Clark has the money.

During MacGuire's trip to Europe, Butler testified, the bond salesman had sent him a postcard from Nice in February, 1934, and a short note later from Berlin, both of the "having wonderful time" variety.

Then after MacGuire's return, upon his urging to see Butler on a matter of the utmost importance, they had met in the empty restaurant of Philadelphia's Bellevue Hotel, on August 22, 1934.

BUTLER: He told me all about his trip to Europe.... He said, "I went abroad to study the part that the veteran plays in the various set-ups of the governments that they have abroad. I went to Italy for two or three months and studied the position that the veterans of Italy occupy in the Fascist set-up of government, and I discovered that they are the background of Mussolini. They keep them on the pay rolls in various ways and keep them contented and happy; and they are his real backbone, the force on which he may depend, in case of trouble, to sustain him. But that set-up would not suit us at all. The soldiers of America would not like that. I then went to Germany to see what Hitler was doing, and his whole strength lies in organizations of soldiers, too.