The Plot To Seize The White House (25 page)

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 that this fellow [MacGuire] has been able to tell me 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 Pouts with the American Liberty League . . . but he skirted all around the idea that that was the back door; one of the Du Pouts 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.

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 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 he 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 had 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 these 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 city editor.

Butler gave the McCormack-Dickstein Committee his view that the plot might have been 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 in 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 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 he 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 is the last thing I heard from him. CHAIRMAN: The last talk you had with MacGuire was in the Bellevue 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 counted on his indignation over the conspiracy to bring about a full-scale investigation by the Department of justice.

After Butler had completed 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 had 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 the spring of 1934 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 that it would not be any trouble to 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, and not MacGuire's, expression.

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

Of course, that may or may not mean anything. That is, his reference to John W. Davis and Perkins of the National City Bank.

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 that 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 it 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 that 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 seizure of the White House. French's use of the word "brilliant" in the following portion of testimony was obviously sarcastic.

FRENCH: He had a very brilliant solution of the unemployment situation. He said that Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had 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 that a crash was inevitable and was due to come when bonds reached 5 percent. He said that 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 own 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 that 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 that 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 rather 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 then 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 home town], 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 also been summoned to testify at the executive session. MacGuire, who earned only $150 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."