The Plot To Seize The White House (29 page)

Van Zandt wrote Butler on December 26, "The next time I see you I will explain to you just how I became involved in the Nazi story.

After I read your article in the paper the Commander of North Dakota and a few others asked me to give them the lowdown which I did resulting that one of the boys carried the story to the newspaper; therefore, causing such article to appear in print, and, of course, misquoting me all around."

Butler replied on January 2, 1935, "I thought your statements on the Fascist story were darn good and served to stir up the lines.

However, I can guess how it came about, but it did no harm."

The storm of controversy over his exposure of the plot led radio station WCAU of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to urge Butler to make broadcasts for them two to four nights a week. He agreed, and beginning on January 4 took to the airwaves with hard-hitting attacks on Fascist plotters. What he had to say was impressive enough to make small headlines in the back pages of newspapers sufficiently often to generate enthusiastic support from the nation's veterans.

On January 7 the Miami, Oklahoma, post of V.F.W. passed a resolution: "Major General Smedley D. Butler should be commended for his high type of patriotism in exposing the alleged plot to establish a dictatorship in the United States, and . . . Franklin D. Roosevelt, President, and citizens of the United States, should express their appreciation of this exposure."

A movement began within the V.F.W. to have each post 
reaffirm its loyalty to the President and the Constitution. "This, in my opinion, would serve notice upon all plotters against our government,"

wrote Henry S. Drezner, V.F.W. official of a Brooklyn post, "that the Veterans will not stand idly by while an attempt should be made to destroy our form of government."

On January 31 a New Jersey veteran wrote Butler, "General, at this time I can say you have 95 percent of the New Jersey veterans in back of you in anything you do."

Two weeks later Dickstein declared that he intended to seek a new congressional appropriation to press a thorough investigation into Butler's charges.

"General Butler's charges were too serious to be dropped without further investigation," Dickstein insisted. "He is a man of unquestioned sincerity and integrity. Furthermore, in my opinion, his statements were not denied or refuted. I think the matter should be gone into thoroughly and completely and I intend asking Congress for funds to make such an investigation. The country should know the full truth about these reputed overtures to General Butler. If there are individuals or interests who have ideas and plans such as he testified to, they should be dragged out into the open."

February 15 McCormack submitted to the House of Representatives the committee's findings in the investigation:

In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country.

No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European 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.

This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. 
Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States.

He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler (p.
9-114 D.C. 6 II).

MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but
your
committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements
made by
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 forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character (p. 111 D.C. 611).

There was also corroboration of this point in French's testimony.

The committee then cited an excerpt from the letter MacGuire had written to Clark and Christmas from France praising the Croix de Feu as a model veterans organization.

This committee asserts that any efforts based on lines as suggested in the foregoing and leading off to the extreme right, are just as bad as efforts which would lead to the extreme left.

Armed forces for the purpose of establishing a dictatorship by means of Fascism or a dictatorship through the instrumentality of the proleteriat, or a dictatorship predicated on racial and religious hatreds, have no place in this country.

This total vindication of Butler did not burst like a bombshell across the front pages of America. Instead, as Seldes noted, "Most newspapers again suppressed or buried or belittled the official verdict."

The New York Times
made no mention of the plot in its headlines on the committee's report, emphasizing instead the committee's proposal that all foreign propagandists-Fascist, Nazi, and Communist-be compelled to register with the State Department. In the fifth and sixth paragraphs of the story the
Times
briefly reported:

It also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated.
 

* Italics are the author's.
 

The committee recalled testimony by General Butler, saying he had testified that Gerald C. MacGuire had tried to persuade him to accept the leadership of a Fascist army.

And that was all.

John L. Spivak had been tipped off earlier by a fellow Washington correspondent that some of Butler's testimony had been deleted in the committee's November 26, 1934 report to the House of Representatives, and not for national security reasons. Spivak determined to get a look at the complete uncensored record of the testimony given at the executive session.

He had asked for permission to see it, in order to follow up leads on Nazi activities in the United States, but he had been turned down on grounds that no one outside the committee and its employees could sec transcripts of testimony taken in executive session.

Other newsmen, however, joined him in pressing for a copy of the Butler testimony. It was then that the defunct McCormack-Dickstein Committee, possibly to quiet persistent rumors about why it was being hushed up, decided to publish a 125-page document containing the testimony of Butler, McGuire, and others, on February 15, 1935. It was marked "Extracts," and the last page explained why: In making public the foregoing evidence, which was taken in executive session in New York City from November 20 to 24, inclusive, the committee has ordered stricken there-from certain immaterial and incompetent evidence, or evidence which was not pertinent to the inquiry, and which would not have been received during a public hearing.
 

Spivak's newshawk instincts did not let him fully accept this explanation, because he knew that the committee
had
published hearsay evidence. Like a terrier worrying a rag doll, he persisted in trying to find out what evidence had been cut. Other questions nagged at him. Why had the committee at first announced it would subpoena all those named by Butler, only to declare later that it had no evidence on which to question them? Was the clue to this abrupt change of mind to be found in the censored testimony?

A veteran Washington correspondent told Spivak that he had heard the deletions had been made at the request of a member of the President's Cabinet. The implication was that release of certain names could embarrass the Democratic party, because two had been unsuccessful Democratic candidates for the Presidency -John W. Davis, the Morgan lawyer, and A1 Smith, governor of New York before Roosevelt.

Davis had been named in the committee's press release, but not Al 
Smith, the erstwhile "happy warrior" from the slums of New York who had become codirector with Irenee du Pont in the American Liberty League, and a bitter critic of Roosevelt's liberalism and New Deal reform.

Spivak tried everything to check out the story but found himself up against a brick wall at every turn.

He had been tipped off earlier that the House of Representatives intended to let the McCormack-Dickstein Committee expire on January 3, 1935, rather than renew it as the committee had asked in order to continue its investigations. And die the committee did.

About a week later, seeking to do a story on its accomplishments in exposing Nazi and anti-Semitic activities in the United States, Spivak won permission from Dickstein to examine the committee's official exhibits and make photostatic copies of those that had been made public.

Dickstein wrote a letter to this effect to the committee's secretary, Frank P. Randolph, and added, "If necessary consult John [McCormack] about it."

Randolph, flooded with work involved in closing the committee's files and records, gave Spivak stacks of documents, exhibits, and transcripts of testimony that were being sent to 
the Government Printing Office. To Spivak's amazement, he found among these records a full transcript of the executive session hearings in the Butler affair.

Excited by this accidental stroke of luck, he compared it with the official extract of the hearings and found a number of startling omissions made from the testimony of both Butler and French, some of which could not be justified on grounds of hearsay evidence. Spivak copied down the censored material.

In 1971 I asked former Speaker McCormack if he could recall, after thirty-four years, the reasons for these omissions from the official record of the testimony at the hearings.

"I don't recall striking anything from the record," he told me, "but if I did, it was because I tried to be as careful as I could about hearsay evidence in open hearings. Executive hearings were different. We'd let people say anything there because we'd get lots of valuable tips to follow up that way. But in open hearings I insisted that all the evidence had to be pertinent, relevant, and germane-evidence that would stand up in a courtroom to the nth degree. I don't think all investigative committees follow this method, but they should. I wanted to be very careful about safeguarding the character of anyone who might be named, without hard evidence, by a witness in testimony at an open hearing, so if somebody gave hearsay evidence, I would say, `Strike it out."'

Omissions from the official record of some revelations from the testimony of Butler and French gave the American press, with a few minor exceptions, a legitimate excuse to keep silent about them. It was significant that none of the biggest newspaper chains or wire services saw fit to assign crack reporters to dig into what was obviously one of the biggest news stories of the decade.

John L. Spivak could not help wondering why MacGuire, the key to the plot, had not been compelled to testify on where and how he had obtained his advance inside information about AI Smith's plans, Hugh Johnson's firing, and the appearance of the American Liberty League; or why he had not been asked to reveal the sources of his information about the Morgan and Du Pont interests' involvement in the plot.

Worst of all, no one involved in the plot had been prosecuted.

Spivak went to the Department of justice and pointed out that MacGuire had denied essential parts of Butler's testimony, which the committee itself reported it had proved by documents, bank records, and letters. Did the department intend to file a criminal prosecution against MacGuire for perjury or involvement in the plot?

"I was told," Spivak reported, "it had no plans to prosecute."

Roger Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued an angry statement on the curious apathy of the justice Department in punishing any of the miscreants:

The Congressional Committee investigating un-American activities has just reported that the Fascist plot to seize the government . . . was proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the perfectly plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Communists!

Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence, even to the seizure of government, is excusable on the part of those whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system. . 
. .

Powerful influences had obviously been brought to bear to cut short the hearings, stop subpoenas from being issued to all the important figures involved, and end the life of the committee.

The Philadelphia
Record,
which broke the story by French, had these observations in an editorial:

General Butler deserves the highest praise for recognizing the significance of the offers made to him, and the menace they represent.

"I'm a democrat, not a Fascist," General Butler says, "and I was sick and tired of being linked by rumor to this Fascist movement and that one. I believe in the right to vote, the right to speak freely and the right to write whatever one believes. . . . I am certainly not going to lead a movement to destroy the very principles in which I believe."

General Butler performed a great public service 
and showed himself a true American by taking his information to the McCormack committee.

The
Record
condemned phony "popular" movements like the National Economy League, a front for big business, and added: Some of the same interests behind the League, according to General Butler, are behind this effort to use him and his soldier following in defense of special privilege in America. The same people who succeeded in slashing aid to veterans would like to use those same veterans as their pawns in a war on democracy.