1933 FASCIST COUP TO OVERTHROW FDR AND TAKEOVER THE U.S.

 

Plot to Kill FDR and Overthrow Government  (History Channel)  |  WMV file
1934 Coup to Assassinate FDR and Install Fascist Regime in America


 The Corporate Coup On The U.S.


Powerful interests on Wall Street plotted a fascist overthrow of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933
De-Fact-O.com 021408
The Business Plot, the Plot Against FDR, or the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy involving several wealthy businessmen to overthrow the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

Details of the matter came to light when retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before a Congressional committee that a group of men had attempted to recruit him to serve as the leader of a plot and to assume and wield power once the coup was successful. Butler testified before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in 1934.[1] In his testimony, Butler claimed that a group of several men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a military coup. One of the alleged plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their final report, the Congressional committee supported Butler's allegations on the existence of the plot,[2] but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten. ...

Wall Street attempted to overthrow the U.S. In 1934
TheHiddenEvil.com
The plot was investigated by the McCormack-Dickstein committee, which found General Butler to be telling the truth.(*). During his 35 years of service in ...

FDR vs. the Banks: Morgan's Fascist Plot, and How It Was Defeated
American_Almanac.tripod.com
MacGuire did not know that the investigators for the McCormack-Dickstein committee already had in their possession letters from MacGuire to Clark and ...


Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn’t understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy’s absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black’s recounting IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany—one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put a corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government’s patent on Neem was revoked.

As global individuals take back local power, a growing re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere institutional version.

Spivak's assessment in his 1967, A Man in His Time, certainly continues to hold true sixty years after the fact: "What was behind the plot was shrouded in a silence which has not been broken to this day. Even a generation later, those who are still alive and know all the facts have kept their silence so well that the conspiracy is not even a footnote in American histories."

Although a congressional committee confirmed the allegations, the findings were hushed up amid murmurs of a cover-up. No wonder. The plotters were brand-name American financiers in the Morgan and Du Pont commercial empires, right-wingers bitterly opposed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and the president's sympathies toward organized labor.

Perhaps Americans would know all too much about the plot, and even celebrate it on "President Duce Day," if it weren't for a patriotic military man, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. In the summer of 1933, the putsch plotters approached Butler, the retired commandant of the U.S. Marines and a popular war hero affectionately known as "the fighting Quaker." They offered him the job of transforming the American Legion veterans group into a 500,000-man marauding army, which was to spearhead an American coup d'etat.

Unfortunately for fascism, Butler's appeal to the plotters also turned out to be the conspiracy's downfall. The conspirators apparently chose the former general because of his enormous popularity with rank-and-file soldiers; but it was Butler's anti-elitist leanings and reputation for honesty that had made him a populist favorite. In short, the conspirators couldn't have selected a candidate more unlikely to agree to lead a fascist takeover. Shrewdly, Butler decided to play along, feigning interest in the plans in order to draw the plotters into the daylight and expose the scheme to Congress.

As he told the House of Representatives' McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which was investigating Nazi and communist activities in America, Butler was first approached by one Gerald G. MacGuire, a bond salesman and former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. As journalist Spivak described him, "MacGuire was a short stocky man tending toward three chins, with a bullet-shaped head which had a silver plate in it due to a wound received in battle."

According to the former general, MacGuire described to Butler "what was tantamount to a plot to seize the government, by force if necessary." MacGuire, said Butler, explained that he had traveled to Europe to study the role played by veterans' groups in propping up Mussolini's fascist Italy, Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the French government. MacGuire lauded France's Croix de Feu as "an organization of super-soldiers" with profound political influence. Then the man with the silver plate in his cranium announced that "our idea here in America" is to "get up an organization of this kind" because "the political setup has got to be changed a bit."

According to Butler, MacGuire elaborated on the plot: "Now, did it ever occur to you that the president is overworked? We might have an assistant president; somebody to take the blame." MacGuire called the new super Cabinet official a "secretary of general affairs." And, he said, "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the president's health is failing. Everybody can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…."

Although MacGuire denied Butler's account under oath, corroborating testimony came from Paul Comly French, a Philadelphia Record reporter. Butler had asked French to look into MacGuire's plot and shed some light on "what the hell it's all about."

After checking with Butler, the voluble MacGuire agreed to see French. French testified that MacGuire told him, "We ned a fascist government in this country…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."

French continued: MacGuire "warmed up considerably after we got under way and he said, 'We might go along with Roosevelt and then do with him what Mussolini did with the King of Italy.'" If Roosevelt played ball, French summarized, "swell; and if he did not, they would push him out."

According to French, MacGuire dropped names to give the impression that American Legion brass were involved in the plot.

To impress Butler, MacGuire had flaunted a bank book itemizing deposits of more than $100,000 available to pay for "expenses." Later, he flashed a wad of eighteen $1,000 bills and boasted of "friends" who were capable of coughing up plenty more dough where that came from.

One of those friends was Robert Sterling Clark, a prominent Wall Street banker and stockbroker. When Butler demanded that MacGuire produce his superiors, the tubby intermediary made the introductions. According to Butler's testimony, Clark spoke of spending half his $60 million fortune in order to save the other half. What's more, Clark purportedly waxed ominous about the misguided FDR: "You know the president is weak. He will come right along with us. He was born 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."

Amazingly, the McCormack-Dickstein Committee (a forerunner of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee) never bothered to haul Clark in for questioning. And the committee's members - who exhibited considerably more zeal ferreting out two-bit commies than they did big-shot American fascists - failed to frill a half-dozen other suspects named by Butler and French. In fact, the committee suppressed many of the names, even though French's newspaper articles caused a stir by naming the well-heeled conspirators (at the height of the Depression).

In addition to MacGuire and Clark, the leading plotters included:

Grayson Murphy, a director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, and a panoply of Morgan banks. Murphy was the original bankroller of the American Legion, which he and other wealthy military officers formed after World War I to "offset radicalism." He was also MacGuire's boss at the New York brokerage firm.
William Doyle, former state commander of the Legion and purportedly the architect of the coup idea.

John W. Davis, former Democratic candidate for president of the United States and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan and Company.

Al Smith, former governor of New York, a Roosevelt foe, and co-director of the newly founded American Liberty League, an organization described by MacGuire as the matrix on which the plot would by executed.

Other prominent businessmen lurked in the background, including Smith's codirector at the American Livery League, John J. Raskob, who was a former chairman of the Democratic Party, a high-ranking Du Pont officer, and a bitter enemy of FDR, whom he classified among dangerous "radicals." And in even deeper shadows was right-wing industrialist Irenee Du Pont, who established the American Liberty League. Grayson Murphy - MacGuire's boss - was treasurer of the same group. Clearly, this was no penny-ante whiner's club. Most astonishing was the presence among the plotters of heavy-hitting politicos from FDR's own party.

Mysteriously, though, the congressional probe expired with a whimper. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee released heavily edited excerpts from Butler's testimony but claimed it had uncovered "no evidence" other than "hearsay" linking prominent Americans to a fascist plot.

Had the committee backed down rather than take on a klatch of power-drunk millionaires? Did high-ranking Democrats - possibly one in the White House, as some reports had it - put the kibosh on the investigation for similar reasons, or to stave off political embarrassment, or to protect Democratic muckamucks who were in on the scheme?

All of the above would seem likely, for in fact the McCormack-Dickstein Committee's public report was utterly contradicted by its internal summation to the House. That document might have been lost to history had Spivak not somehow managed to liberate a copy. Contrary to the public whitewash, privately the committee acknowledged Butler's accuracy and MacGuire's lying. The report concluded:

In the last few weeks of the committee's life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country….
There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient….

MacGuire denied [Butler's] allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made to General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various form of veterans' organizations of Fascist character.

Alas, as is so often the case, when truth finally emerged it was greeted as yesterday's news - or worse, as last year's outmoded fashion, which clashed with the committee's public dismissal of the charges. Spivak's reporting appeared in a small left-wing publication where it went largely unnoticed. After all, Time magazine - hardly what you would call antagonistic toward right-wing industrialists - had already dismissed the allegations as a joke.

"The fighting Quaker" went on national radio to denounce the committee's deletions of key points in his testimony, but history's loaded die had already been cast.

Ultimately, the plot's failure owes as much a debt to Butler as it does to the Hubris of the super-Wealthy. Lacking a Mussolini-caliber proxy, but swimming in ample cash to buy one, America's elite fascists dispatched the man with a plate in his head to build a better Duce. Of course, the revolution went south when, in an act of inspired stupidity, they decided to buy a dictator who happened to be a notorious democrat with a small D.


 


Armageddon Explained (or the Education of an Atheist )

It is in the nature of the powerful and wealthy that they want to sustain their wealth and achieve the best possible circumstances for future wealth accumulation, often without concern for the human suffering they cause. The business establishment of the U.S. was in despair when FDR turned left in order to combat the Great Depression and within a short few months organized a coup attempt aimed at overthrowing FDR in favor of a fascist government, a little known fact that has escaped the notice of school book publishers. The Morgan and DuPont business empires were the instigators. They attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. Butler had been selected because of his status as a war hero from WWI, and he was popular with the troops which would come in handy in the coup attempt. Unfortunately for the plotters, Butler had no intention of cooperating. He pretended to go along with the plan in order to gain evidence later to be turned over to Congress. What the business men proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs", to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. The plotters confidence was relayed to Butler: "You know the American people will swallow that. We have the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second..."

At the appropriate moment Butler revealed the details of the coup before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of Congress, but it turned out that the businessmen were correct. They did have the newspapers, and the power to make sure that the final report was white-washed and suppressed. The elite media failed to pick up on what had happened. Butler, appalled by the cover-up, tried to get the story out but with little success.

Here we have the early template of what the establishment would so successfully implement after WWll; the use of public relations, deception and censorship to achieve their goals. The American business tycoons of the '20s and '30s had supported Adolf Hitler and his fascist state to the tune of millions of dollars, in fact the overwhelming financial support that helped Hitler gain power and credibility in Germany came from the U S. Another little known fact, or should we say, another conveniently covered-up fact. The use of dictators in order to create good conditions for business was acceptable outside the U.S., but at home the use of public relations and deception were preferred. The Congress committee, which had been created in order to go after the coup leaders, was co-opted and later turned into a tool of the establishment. It became the "House Un-American Activities Committee," which later wreaked havoc with thousands of innocent Americans through its Communist witch hunts. Access to the elite media was denied to the true hero of the coup attempt, General Smedley Butler, a modus operandi which would foreshadow decades of successful media censorship "by omission."

As the end of WWll approached, the establishment was determined to prevent the rise of another Roosevelt. Secret agreements were made with Nazi leaders, enabling these leaders to escape to South America and to the U. S. Roosevelt, who was in favor of future cooperation with the Soviet Union, had to be dealt with. In order to get rid of him before the treasonous activities of the establishment could be uncovered, he was given poison over time, and when the moment was ripe, the final dose of cyanide was delivered and Roosevelt died, exhibiting all the appropriate symptoms of cyanide poisoning. Meanwhile, the "powers that be" had engineered into the Vice Presidency, someone they knew could be controlled. This was Harry Truman, and the battle for the future was half won. The passage of The National Security Act of 1947 sealed the victory. In laying the groundwork for the post war economy, Hitler's successful blueprint was used extensively, albeit in modified form. The Jews couldn't be used as enemy any longer, Hitler had seen to that. The Communists were substituted, a perfect solution, which fueled the post war economic recovery for decades. Overt fascism was out, didn't mash well with the American psyche, so covert fascism was successfully introduced, and fooled pretty much every U.S citizen. The only victims were either on the left or foreigners anyway, and they didn't count. The blossoming of the American empire ensued and reached its logical conclusion in the Vietnam War.

Before this war, things were looking up, the economy boomed and the baby boomers reaped the economic benefits on a scale never surpassed in world history. John Fitzgerald Kennedy narrowly became president in 1961, and when his handler, his father Joe, became incapacitated, Kennedy ignored the wishes of the Secret Government and paid with his life for the transgressions he had committed. Unfortunately Kennedy had won the baby boomers hearts, and when "the powers that be" engineered the Vietnam War, the baby boomers erupted in fury. They had not been let in on the agenda of the Secret government, and had no desire to loose their lives in order to amass wealth for the military-industrial complex. During the era, MLK and RFK were assassinated in order to remove the leaders of the youth rebellion, and a stern warning to the counter-culture was delivered at Kent State, where a few students were deliberately shot to death.

However, the developments of the '60s would make the more perceptive Americans suspicious, there seemed to be a gulf between the rhetoric of the establishment and the acts actually performed.

From: Armageddon Explained
http://pages.prodigy.net/benede/info3.html


MORE READING:

General Smedley D. Butler

Nazis Among Us

FDR vs. the Banks- Morgan's Fascist Plot, and How It Was Defeated

It Can't Happen Here

The Wall Street Plot

An American Coup d'État?


Thanks for that interesting link. I've been trying to get digital copies of Government files pertaining to the Butler Conspiracy closest I've com is to find these listed:

Library of Congress #'s DD255.U6 & A 51934B

U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Hearings 73:;D.C.-6, Part 1, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1935).
U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Public Statement, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934).

SOURCES:

Special Committee Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and other Propaganda, 1934-35, known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. An early predecessor of HUAC.

Senate Document 148, 84th Congress, 2d session, Congressional Investigations of Communism and Subversive Activities: Summary Index, 1918-1956, indexes the published hearings and reports of the many small investigations conducted by select, special, and subcommittees, as well as the major investigations of HUAC and SISS from 1918 to 1956.

The National Archives
http://www.archives.gov/legislative/guide/house/chapter-14-judiciary.html