The Plot To Seize The White House (31 page)

According to Spivak, upon learning that the committee had reported to Congress that it had verified the authenticity of the plot, yet no action had been taken about MacGuire's wholesale denials under oath, Butler lost control of his volatile temper.

"I'll be goddammed!" he roared. "You can be sure I'm going to say something about this!"

Spivak asked him to hold off long enough to let the tiny - 
circulation
New Masses
break the story first. Butler agreed. When the
Masses
appeared with the expose, it was a sensational news scoop, but none of the Washington correspondents dared touch it or follow it up.

"Several expressed regret," Spivak related, "that the exposes were appearing in the
New Masses;
when they quoted from one of my stories-solely on its news value-their editors cut the material out and advised them that quotes from `that magazine' might make readers say the paper was spreading Red propaganda. So great had the fear of communism and `Red propaganda' become that even editors who did not swallow all of it themselves went along because it was the popular attitude."

In his broadcast over WCAU on February 17, 1935, Butler revealed that some of the "most important" portions of his testimony had been suppressed in the McCormack-Dickstein report to Congress. The committee, he growled, had "stopped dead in its tracks when it got near the top." He added angrily:

Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren't even called to testify. Why wasn't Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy, New York broker ... called?

Why wasn't Louis Howe, Secretary to the President of the United States, called? . . . Why wasn't Al Smith called? And why wasn't Gen. 
Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, called?

And why wasn't Hanford MacNider, former American Legion commander, called? They were all mentioned in the testimony. And why was all mention of these names suppressed from the committee report?

This was no piker set-up. MacGuire, who was the agent of the Wall Street bankers and brokers who proposed this organization, told me that $3,000,000 was "on the line" and that $300,000,000-and that's a lot of money even today was in view to put over this plot to bluff the government.

He kept up a running attack on the conspirators night after night, revealing facts that had been omitted in the official committee report. In another broadcast he lashed out at the American Legion with no holds barred:

Do you think it could be hard to buy the American Legion for un-American activities? You know, the average veteran thinks the Legion is a patriotic organization to perpetuate the memories of the last war, an organization to 
promote peace, to take care of the wounded and to keep green the graves of those who gave their lives.

But is the American Legion that? No sir, not while it is controlled by the bankers. For years the bankers, by buying big club houses for various posts, by financing its beginning, and otherwise, have tried to make a strikebreaking organization of the Legion. The groups-the so-called Royal Family of the Legion-which have picked its officers for years, aren't interested in patriotism, in peace, in wounded veterans, in those who gave their lives. . . No, they are interested only in using the veterans, through their officers.

Why, even now, the commander of the American Legion is a banker-a banker who must have known what MacGuire's money was going to be used for. His name was mentioned in the testimony. Why didn't they cal] Belgrano and ask him why he contributed?

Butler was incredulous when he read that Colonel William E.

Easterwood, national vice-commander of the Legion, while visiting Italy in 1935, had pinned a Legion button on Mussolini, making him an

"honorary member," and had invited the dictator to the next Legion convention in Chicago.

Why, Butler wondered, did the Legion membership stand for such an abuse of the organization in their name? Apparently an uproar of sorts did break out, because Mussolini's honorary membership was later canceled as "unconstitutional" on grounds that the Legion had no honorary members.

Representative Dickstein was given the job of replying to Butler's radio blasts in a broadcast over the same network. The fifty-year-old congressman gave the committee's version of the censored testimony: General Smedley Butler saw fit to employ this radio network to indulge in genera] criticism of the work done by the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities and to cast aspersions on the character of such men as Alfred E. Smith, Louis Howe, General MacArthur and Hanford MacNider....

The committee felt it should hear General Butler and ... follow out the "leads" which the general furnished to the 
members of the committee. The testimony given by General Butler was kept confidential until such time as the names of the persons who were mentioned in his testimony could be checked upon and verified. The committee did not want to hear General Butler's allegations without giving itself the opportunity to verify the assertions made by him.

It did not feel like dragging into the mud of publicity names of persons who were mentioned by General Butler unless his statements could be verified, since untold damage might be caused to a person's reputation, by public discussion of testimony which could not be substantiated.

This accounts for the fact that when the results of the hearings were finally made public, references to Alfred E. Smith and others were omitted. They were wholly without consequence and public mention might be misinterpreted by the public.

The essential portions, however, of General Butler's testimony have been released to the public and his specific charges relating to the proposed organization of a "soldier's movement" have been thoroughly aired and passed upon by the committee. . . .

General Butler asks why Clark was not called before the committee. Well, the reason was that Mr. Clark has been living in France for over a year, as General Butler well knows, and naturally he could not be subpoenaed, but on the 29th of December, 1934, Mr. Clark was represented before the committee in the person of his attorney, and full information was given the committee. Mr. Butler didn't tell you this. . . .

For whatever additional light could be shed on the plot to take over the White House that he had helped to expose, I interviewed John W. 
McCormack on September 17, 1971. At seventy-nine, lean, bright, warm, and friendly, the former Speaker of the 
House revealed a sharp, clear memory that enabled him to recall spontaneously many names and details of the hearings over which he had presided as chairman thirty-four years earlier.

I reminded him that the committee had said that it wanted to hear Clark's testimony, and Clark had stated that he would return from Europe to testify, but had not done so. Yet he had not called or subpoenaed Clark to do so. Why not?

"We couldn't subpoena Clark to testify at the executive session because they were held outside of Washington," McCormack explained.

"According to the law of that day, we had no power to subpoena anyone to executive sessions outside the Capital. I subsequently recommended changing the law to give congressional committees that right, and the change was in fact made."*

Asked whether he knew what the reaction of President Roosevelt or Louis Howe had been to the exposure of the plot, he replied that he did not, w
hy had the Department of justice under Attorney General Homer Cummings failed to initiate criminal proceedings against the plotters?

"The way I figure it," he replied, "we did our job in the committee by exposing the plot, and then it was up to the Department of Justice to do their job-to take it from there."

John L. Spivak was equally mystified by the lack of any action taken by the department against the conspirators. When I asked him about it, he replied, "I have no knowledge why the Attorney General did not pursue this matter except that most likely it was deemed politically inadvisable." He thought it possible that the decision might actually have been made in the White House on a basis of sheer pragmatism. As he speculated in his book
A Man in His Time:
What would be the public gain from delving deeper into a plot which was already exposed and whose principals could be kept under surveillance? Roosevelt had enough

*The hearings were probably held in New York rather than in Washington because the committee at the same time was investigating Communist infiltration in the fur unions of that city.

headaches in those troubled days without having to make a face-to-face confrontation with men of great wealth and power. Was it avoidance of such a confrontation? Was it a desire by the head of the Democratic Party to avoid going into matters which could split the party down the middle, what with Davis and Smith, two former party heads, among those named by Butler?

I asked McCormack what his own reactions had been to MacGuire's testimony denying all of Butler's allegations.

"There was no doubt that General Butler was telling the truth," he replied. "We believed his testimony one hundred percent. He was a great, patriotic American in every respect."

"In your considered judgment, Mr. Speaker, were those men Butler named as involved in the plot guilty?"

"Millions were at stake when Clark and the others got the Legion to pass that resolution on the gold standard in 1933," he answered.

"When Roosevelt refused to be pressured by it, and went even further off the gold standard, those fellows got desperate and decided to look into European methods, with the idea of introducing them into America. They sent MacGuire to Europe to study the Fascist organizations. We found the evidence that Clark and [Colonel] Grayson Murphy, who underwrote the American Legion with $125,000, were involved when we examined MacGuire's records and bank accounts."

I asked him about Colonel Murphy's role in the plot.

"Grayson Murphy was a number-one kingmaker in the Legion.

His firm had clients of great wealth. Those fellows were afraid that Roosevelt would take their money away by taxes. They were desperate and sought to take power and frighten Roosevelt into doing what they wanted. But they made the mistake of approaching the wrong man to do the job.”

"Had the plotters only wanted to take over the White House to restore the gold standard, or were they also out to destroy the New Deal and set up a Fascist dictatorship to run the country through an American Mussolini?"

McCormack reflected a moment, then said, "Well, we were in the depths of a severe depression, and we had a good man,
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The Plot to Seize the White House

Roosevelt, in the White House, and he'd revived the hopes and confidence of the American people. The plotters definitely hated the New Deal because it was for the people, not for the moneyed interests, and they were willing to spend a lot of their money to dump Mr. Roosevelt out of the White House.”

"Could you say definitely that the American Liberty League was the organization of `big fellows' that MacGuire had described as being behind the plotters?"

"I don't know anything about the Liberty League," he replied in a crisp manner that did not encourage me to pursue any further interrogation along that line.

"Mr. Speaker, why were the plotters so insistent that General Butler accept their proposal that he be the one to head the Fascist march on Washington they planned?"

"They chose Smedley Butler because they needed an ènlisted man's general,' not àgeneral's general.' They had to have a colorful figure half a million or more veterans who had been privates and noncoms would follow.

General Butler was the most popular one."

"If General Butler bad been an ambitious man like Aaron Burr and had been willing to be the Man on the White Horse for the plotters, do you think their conspiracy to take over the White House, with all that money behind it, might have succeeded?"

“Well, if General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded, having in mind the conditions existing at that time. No one can say for sure, of course, but when times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything like that could happen."

And we might have gone Fascist?"

"If the plotters had got rid of Roosevelt, there's no telling what might have taken place. They wouldn't have told the people what they were doing, of course. They were going to make it all sound constitutional, of course, with a high-sounding name for the dictator and a plan to make it all sound like a good American program. A well-organized minority can always outmaneuver an unorganized majority, as Adolf Hitler did. He failed with his
Fallout 215

beer-hall putsch, but he succeeded when he was better organized. The same thing could have happened here:'

"How did it come about that the committee first approached Butler before he approached the committee?"

"Oh, we heard something about it and asked the general if he knew anything," McCormack replied. "He said he certainly did. He was giving the plotters a come-on and trying to get the whole story from them. When he had all the information on who was behind it, and what they were up to, he wanted to come to Washington, testify before our committee, and break the whole thing wide open."

Finally I asked him, "Then in your opinion America could definitely have become a Fascist power had it not been for General Butler's patriotism in exploding the plot?"

"It certainly could have," McCormack acknowledged. "The people were in a very confused state of mind, making the nation weak and ripe for some drastic kind of extremist reaction. Mass frustration could bring about anything."

He reminded me that the international smell of fascism had been very much in the air during the hectic days of the plot and that much undercover Fascist activity had been going on in the United States that the American people knew nothing about. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee had exposed Ivy Lee, the noted public relations expert ostensibly employed by the German dye trust, but actually on the payroll of the Nazi Government to help them win favorable publicity in the American press. The committee had brought about passage of the Foreign Agents' Registration Act to smoke out hidden Nazi and Soviet agents into the limelight.