The Plot To Seize The White House (30 page)

The folk who want Fascism in this country are the same folk who made profit while others bled and who would rather see the veteran starve than unbalance the budget, i.e., add to the burden of taxes on great wealth. They did it in Italy. They did it in Germany.

They did it in Austria. They will try to do it in America. . . . General Butler has nipped one such movement in the bud.

John L. Spivak had shrewd observations about the reasons the conspirators had failed dismally in their treason: The takeover plot failed because though those involved had astonishing talents for making breathtaking millions of dollars, they lacked an elementary understanding of people and the moral forces that activate them. In a money-standard civilization such as ours, the universal regard for anyone who is rich tends to persuade some millionaires that they are knowledgeable in fields other than the making of money. The conspirators went about the plot as if they were hiring an office manager; all they needed was to send a messenger to the man they had selected.

And with incredible ineptitude, they had selected the wrong man.

Was it possible that MacGuire had exaggerated to both Butler and French about the powerful and influential figures involved in the plot, in order to impress Butler into accepting the leadership of the Fascist putsch that MacGuire was in charge of planning?

It is conceivable that some of those named by MacGuire as under consideration for the role of dictator or subordinate posit ions of leadership had no knowledge of this fact, although Van Zandt reported that he, for one, had been approached. It is unlikely that Douglas MacArthur, as Chief of Staff and a stiff-necked hero with patriotic credentials as unchallengeable as Butler's, would have had any unsavory dealings with the plotters, however patrician his outlook.

As for involvement of the American Legion, MacGuire had obviously been influential enough in the organization to have been made chairman of the "distinguished guest committee" of its convention, on the staff of National Commander Louis Johnson, former Secretary of Defense and head of a large law firm in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

There is solid evidence that MacGuire had been able to use the Legion to do multimillionaire Robert S. Clark's bidding and get the Legion to pass a resolution demanding a return to the gold standard.

MacGuire was certainly financed by Clark, Christmas, Walter E. 
Frew, of the Corn Exchange Bank, and others through the Committee for a Sound Dollar and Sound Currency, Inc., of which MacGuire was an official. And the McCormack-Dickstein Committee verified that he had been sent abroad to study Fascist organizations in Europe as models for creating one in America and had reported favorably to Clark and Christmas about the Croix de Feu.
 

MacGuire had outlined to Butler and French the conspirators' 
plans for a putsch, indicating it would easily succeed in just a few days because a "big fellow" organization-later identified by Butler and French as the American Liberty League-was behind it with money and arms.

He might have been boasting falsely about having had his headquarters while in Paris at the offices of Morgan and Hodges and about the involvement of the Morgan interests in the plot. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee failed to pursue this line of investigation, but a remarkable number of "coincidences" linked the Morgan interests to various facets of the plot.

Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy, MacGuire's boss who had supported his denial of Butler's charges by insisting, "I don't believe there is a word of truth in it with respect to Mr. MacGuire," was a director of a Morgan bank. Butler testified that Clark had implicated John W. Davis, attorney for J. P. Morgan and Company, as author of the speech Clark had given MacGuire to get Butler to deliver at the Legion convention. Davis was the same man from whom MacGuire had declared he could easily raise a million dollars for his Fascist army.

MacGuire had also revealed to Butler that the same financial interests who had been behind the gold-standard propaganda were financing the plot to seize the White House.

The formation of the American Liberty League had been announced precisely at the time MacGuire had predicted the emergence of an organization of "big fellows" who were in the background of the Fascist putsch. Its treasurer had been none other than Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy. One of its financial backers was Robert S. Clark. Two of the largest contributors had been the J. P. Morgan Associates and the Du Pont interests. John W. Davis was a member of the National Executive Committee. Morgan and Du Pont men were directors. And MacGuire had told French that the putsch could obtain arms and equipment from the Remington Arms Company, in which the Du Ponts held a controlling interest, on credit through the Du Ponts.

The presence of ex-Governor AI Smith in the American Liberty League baffled many Americans who could not understand what the former poor kid from the Bowery was doing mixed up with 
America's richest ultraconservatives. Few realized that following his defection from the Roosevelt camp, Smith entered private business as chairman of the board of the New York County Trust Company and joined in erecting the Empire State Building, of which he was corporation president.

His alliance with Raskob and the Du Ponts in the League brought charges that he had "forsaken the brown derby for the top hat." When he failed to stop Roosevelt's renomination in 1936, he stumped for Republican candidate Alf Landon, losing much of his former popularity in the process and speaking to dwindling, hostile audiences.

Were all the interlacing connections linking MacGuire, Clark, Colonel Murphy, and the Morgan and Du Pont interests to the plot only a series of remarkable coincidences? If so, another unique coincidence led the American Liberty League to subsidize such affiliated organizations as the openly Fascist and anti-Semitic Sentinels of the Republic and the Crusaders, who were urged by their leader, George W. 
Christians, to consider lynching Roosevelt.

One night when the President was scheduled to arrive in Chat-tanooga, Christians threatened to cut off the city's electric power and warned grimly, "Lots of things can happen in the dark!" This protege of the American Liberty League was kept under surveillance by the Secret Service.

As Donald R. McCoy observed in his book, Coming
o f Age: The
United States During the
1920's
and 1930's, ". . .
it was clear to most people that the organization [American Liberty League] was playing the same game on the Right as the radical groups were playing on the Left, to influence the [Roosevelt] administration and if unsuccessful to oppose it. As James Farley would later say, the American Liberty League. òught to be called the American Cellophane League' because, `first it's a Du Pont product and second, you can see right through it."'

Finally, one must consider the outlook of the conspirators against the background of the times. During the feverish atmosphere of the early New Deal days, big business was horrified by Roosevelt's drastic surgery on the broken-down machinery of the capitalist system. The savage hatred of "that cripple in the 
White House" represented the most bitter animosity big business had ever manifested toward any President in American history.

Their hate campaign was echoed by the vast majority of newspapers, like the Hearst press, which had originally supported the President, then denounced him as a dictator. Roosevelt had been compelled to turn to "fireside chats" over the radio in order to communicate with the American people over the heads of the press lords.

In that emotional climate it was not at all surprising that some elements of big business should have sought to emulate their counterparts in Germany and Italy, supporting a Fascist putsch to take over the government and run it under a dictator on behalf of America's bankers and industrialists.

That it did not happen here could be credited largely to the patriotism and determination of one courageous American-Major General Smedley Darlington Butler.

About seven weeks after Butler and French had testified, John Spivak asked McCormack for an interview, and it was granted. McCormack had no fear of talking to a reporter from the
New Masses,
for which Spivak was writing at the time. Communis-toriented or not, McCormack knew that the
Masses
was in the forefront of exposing Nazi and anti-Semitic activities in the United States.

Asked about the deleted testimony, McCormack at first suggested that Spivak was relying on gossip. When Spivak revealed and convinced McCormack that he had 'seen the transcript of the executive session, the congressman grew annoyed and canceled the interview. He agreed to let Spivak leave questions with him, however, and said he would reply to those he chose to answer within three days.

Writing Spivak a letter three days later, he gave no specific answers to questions about the American Liberty League, the American Legion's passage of the gold resolution, and the report that John W. Davis had written the speech that MacGuire and Clark had wanted Butler to make.

"The reason for certain portions of General Butler's testimony in executive session being deleted from the public record," he wrote, "has been clearly stated in the public record."

He went on to make a broad attack against the plotters and to suggest that the hearings had defeated them: "As a result of the investigation, and the disclosures made, this movement has been stopped, and is practically broken up. There is no question but that some of the leaders are attempting to carry on, but they 
can make no headway. Public opinion, as a result of the disclosures of the investigation, is aroused."

Spivak went to see Dickstein and asked him why Colonel Grayson M.-P. 
Murphy had not been called upon to testify. "Your committee knew," 
Spivak reminded him, "that Murphy's men are in the anti-Semitic espionage organization, Order of ’76."

"We didn't have the time," Dickstein replied. "We'd have taken care of the Wall Street groups if we had the time. I would have had no hesitation in going after the Morgans."

"You had Belgrano, commander of the American Legion, listed to testify.

Why wasn't he examined?"

"I don't know," Dickstein replied, and referred him back to McCormack for the answer.

Spivak decided to inform General Butler, who, he was sure, did not realize it, that portions of his and French's testimony had been omitted in the official report issued by the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. "If he knew and said so publicly," Spivak reasoned, "he would reach a vastly greater audience than was available to me through the
New Masses."

Telephoning the general, Spivak announced that he was from the
New Masses
and wanted to see him about his testimony. "Come on out,"

Butler said promptly. "Glad to see you." The roads had not been cleared of a heavy snowfall of the night before, and Spivak trudged to the house in Newtown Square through knee-deep snow. His spartan march appealed to Butler, who welcomed him heartily with the approval he had always shown to soldiers who disregarded the foulest weather to push on doggedly with their assigned missions.

Spivak saw a slender man with receding hair, lined and sunken 
cheeks, thick eyebrows, furrowed lines between keen eyes, generous nose, and jutting underlip. He liked Butler instantly, and the feeling was apparently mutual.

During their talk Butler revealed that he was intensely preoccupied with the corporate exploitation of the military for profit. Anxious to arouse Americans to this spoliation, he now believed it might be done by a more sophisticated book of memoirs and reflections than Old
Gimlet Eye.

"I think you're the man I've been hoping to run into to help me do an autobiography," he told Spivak. "There are things I've seen, things I've learned that should not be left unsaid. War is a racket to protect economic interests, not our country, and our soldiers are sent to die on foreign soil to protect investments by big business."

Spivak said regretfully that he felt compelled to continue investigating and exposing a more urgent and dangerous situation -Nazi activities in the United States. Butler agreed at once that this activity was more important and offered to help by opening any doors he could for Spivak.

During their discussion Spivak learned "things about big business and politics, sometimes in earthy, four-letter words, the like of which I had never heard." Butler spilled over with anger at the hypocrisy that had marked American interference in the internal affairs of other governments, behind a smoke screen of pious expressions of high-sounding purpose.

"We supervised elections in Haiti," he said wryly, "and wherever we supervised them our candidate always won."

Admiring Butler's candor, Spivak did not want to mislead him or sail under false colors. He reminded the general that he was from the
New
Masses,
and in case Butler didn't know it, added, "It's supposed to be a Communist magazine."

"So who the hell cares?" Butler shrugged. "There wouldn't be a United States if it wasn't for a bunch of radicals. I once heard of a radical named George Washington. As a matter of fact from what I read he was an extremist-a goddam revolutionist!"

Because of his fierce anti-Fascist and anti-big-business views, Butler was sometimes Red-baited. He was scarcely unique in being made a target for this kind of attack by rightists and ultraconservatives.
 

As George Seldes told me, "If you are saying anything in general about the fight against fascism in America, it seems to me that a point to emphasize is that the entire Red-baiting wave which culminated in the McCarthy era was successful in inundating the anti-Fascists by making every anti-Fascist, whether liberal, socialist, or Communist, a Red."

Butler was shocked when Spivak showed him copies of the portions of his and French's testimony that had been deleted from the official report of the hearings. His scowl deepened as Spivak revealed that Belgrano had been dismissed without being asked a single question about what had happened at the "gold-standard resolution" Legion convention in Chicago.