The Plot To Seize The White House (22 page)

The Conspiracy Explodes

1

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee agreed to listen to Butler's story in a secret executive session in New York City on November 20, 1934.

The two cochairman of the committee were Representative John McCormack, of Massachusets, and New York Representative Samuel Dickstein, who later became a New York State Supreme Court justice.

Butler's testimony, developed in two hours of questions and answers, was recorded in full.

Simultaneously Paul Comly French broke the story in the Stern papers, the Philadelphia
Record
and the New York Post. Under the headline "$3,000,000 Bid for Fascist Army Bared," he wrote: Major General Smedley D. Butler revealed today that he has been asked by a group of wealthy New York brokers to lead a Fascist movement to set up a dictatorship in the United States.

General Butler, ranking major general of the Marine Corps up to his retirement three years ago, told his story today at a secret session of the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities.

McCormack opened the hearing by first noting that General Butler had been in the Marine Corps thirty-three years and four months and had received the Congressional Medal of Honor twice, establishing his integrity and credibility as a witness. Then he invited the general to "just go ahead and tell in your own way all that you know about an attempted Fascist movement in this country."

"May I preface my remarks," Butler began, "by saying, sir,
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140 The Plot to Seize the White House

that I have one interest in all of this, and that is to try to do my best to see that a democracy is maintained in this country?"

"Nobody who has either read about or known about General Butler," replied McCormack promptly, "would have anything but that understanding."

Butler then gave detailed testimony about everything that had happened in connection with the plot, from the first visit of MacGuire and Doyle on July 1, 1933.

Some of his testimony was not released in the official record of the bearings, for reasons that will be discussed later, but was nevertheless ferreted out, copied, and made public by reporter John L. Spivak. This censored testimony is indicated by the symbol † to distinguish it from the official testimony eventually released by the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. The same was true of testimony given by reporter Paul Comly French, who followed Butler as a witness, and the same symbol (†) indicates the censored portions.*

Butler first described the attempts made by MacGuire and Doyle to persuade him to go to the American Legion convention hand make a speech they had prepared for him.

BUTLER: . . . they were very desirous of unseating the royal family in control of the American Legion, at the convention to be held in Chicago, and very anxious to have me take part in it. They said that they were not in sympathy with the . . . present administration's treatment of the soldiers. . . . They said, "We represent the plain soldiers. . .We want you to come there and stampede the convention in a speech and help us in our fight to dislodge the royal family."

He told of MacGuire's revelation that he was the chairman

*The reader who wishes to examine the official testimony is referred to the government report,
Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation
of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Public Hearings Before the Special
Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-third
Congress, Second Session, at Washington, D.C., December
29,
zg34. Hearings
No. 73-D.C.-6, Part 1.
Extracts of the censored testimony are revealed in the books
A Man in His Time,
by John
L.
Spivak, and
1000 Americans,
by George Seldes.

of the Legion's "distinguished guest committee," on the staff of National Commander Louis Johnson, and that at MacGuire's suggestion Johnson had put Butler's name down as one of the distinguished guests to be invited to the convention.

† BUTLER: [MacGuire said] that Johnson had been taken this list, presented by MacGuire, of distinguished guests, to the White House for approval; that Louis Howe, one of the secretaries of the President, had crossed my name off and said that I was not to be invited-that the President would not have it.

This tale had struck Butler as peculiar, since the President had been grateful for the general's assistance in winning Republican votes for him away from Hoover, and their relations had always been cordial and warm.

BUTLER: I thought I smelled a rat, right away-that they were trying to get me mad-to get my goat. I said nothing....

CHAIRMAN: When you say you smelled a rat, you mean you had an idea that they were not telling the truth?

BUTLER: I could not reconcile . . . their desire to serve the ordinary man in the ranks, with their other aims. They did not seem to be the same. It looked to me as if they were trying to embarrass the administration in some way.... I was just fishing to see what they had in mind. So many queer people come to my house all the time and I like to feel them all out.

MacGuire had told him, Butler revealed, that invitation or no invitation, he and his supporters had figured out a way for Butler to address the Legion convention.

BUTLER: I said, "How is that, without being invited?" They said, "Well, you are to come as a delegate from Hawaii."

I said, "I do not live in Hawaii."

"Well, it does not make any difference. There is to be no delegate from one of the American Legion posts there in 
Honolulu, and we have arranged to have you appointed by cable, by radio, to represent them at the convention....

I said, "Yes; but I will not go in the back door."

They said, "That will not be the back door. You must come."

I said, "No; I will not do this."

"Well," they said, "are you in sympathy with unhorsing the royal family?"

I said, "Yes; because they have been selling out the common soldier in this Legion for years. These fellows have been getting political plums and jobs and cheating the enlisted man in the Army, and I am for putting them out. But I cannot do it by going in through the back door."

"Well," they said, "we are going to get them out. We will arrange this."

Butler described the second visit of MacGuire and Doyle a month later, at which time MacGuire had unfolded a new plan they had developed to get Butler to the speaker's platform at the Chicago convention of the Legion.

BUTLER: . . . I was to get two or three hundred legionnaires from around that part of the country and bring them on a special train to Chicago with me. . . . they would sit around in the audience, be planted here and there. . . . I was to appear in the gallery. These planted fellows were to begin to cheer and start a stampede and yell for a speech. Then I was to go to the platform and make a speech. I said, "Make a speech about what?"

"Oh," they said, "we have one here."

. . . They pulled out this speech. They said, "We will leave it here with you to read over, and you see if you can get these fellows to come."

I said, "Listen. These friends of mine that I know around here, even if they wanted to go, could not afford to go. It would cost them a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars to go out there and stay for five days and come back."

They said, "Well, we will pay that."

I said, "How can you pay it? You are disabled soldiers. How do you get the money to do that?"

"Oh, we have friends. We will get the money." Then I began to smell a rat for fair....

To test the seriousness of their purpose and the extent of their backing, he had challenged their claim to have access to the funds they claimed to have.

BUTLER: . . . they hauled out a bank deposit book and showed me, I think it was $42,000 in deposits on that occasion, and on another occasion it was $64,000....

CHAIRMAN: Do you know on what bank that was?

BUTLER: I do not. They just flipped the pages over. Now, I have had some experience as a policeman in Philadelphia. I wanted to get to the bottom of this thing and not scare them off, because I felt then that they had something real. They had so much money and a limousine.

Wounded soldiers do not have limousines or that kind of money. They said, "We will pay the bill. Look around and see if you cannot get two or three hundred men and we will bring them out there and we will have accommodations for them."

Butler described MacGuire's third visit, without Doyle, during which the bond salesman had inquired as to his progress in rounding up soldiers to take to the convention. Pointing out to MacGuire that the speech given him urged a return by the United States to the gold standard, Butler had demanded to know what that had to do with the ostensible reasons for which he was being asked to go to Chicago.

BUTLER: . . . MacGuire had said, "We want to see the soldiers'

bonus paid in gold. We do not want the soldier to have rubber money or paper money. We want the gold. That is the reason for this speech."

Butler had then sought to get MacGuire to reveal the source of the funds on deposit in his name.

BUTLER: He said that it was given to him by nine men, that the biggest contributor had given $9,000 and that the donations ran all the way from $2,50o to $9,000

I said, "What is the object?"

He said the object was to take care of the rank and file of the soldiers, to get them their bonus and get them properly cared for.

Well, I knew that people who had $9,000 to give away were not in favor of the bonus. That looked fishy right away.

He gave me the names of two men; Colonel Murphy, Grayson M.-P. Murphy, for whom he worked, was one. He said, "I work for him. I am in his office."

I said to him, "How did you happen to be associated with that kind of people if you are for the ordinary soldier and his bonus and his proper care? You know damn well that these bankers are not going to swallow that. There is something in this, Jerry MacGuire, besides what you have told me. I can see that."

He said, "Well, I am a business man. I have got a wife and family to keep, and they took good care of them, and if you would take my advice you would be a business man, too."

I said, "What has Murphy got to do with this?"

"Well," he said, "don't you know who he is?"

I said, "Just indirectly. He is a broker in New York. But I do not know any of his connections."

"Well," he said, "he is the man who underwrote the formation of the American Legion for $125,000 He underwrote it, paid for the field work of organizing it, and had not gotten all of it back yet."

"That is the reason he makes the kings, is it? He has still got a club over their heads."

"He is on our side, though. He wants to see the soldiers cared for."

Butler revealed that he had then expressed sharply critical sentiments about the Legion. He later discovered that these remarks had been expunged from the record.

† BUTLER: "Is he [Murphy] responsible, too, for making the Legion a strikebreaking outfit?"

"No, no. He does not control anything in the Legion now."

I said: "You know very well that it is nothing but a strikebreaking outfit used by capital for that purpose and that is the reason we have all those big clubhouses and that is the reason I pulled out from it. They have been using these dumb soldiers to break strikes."

He said: "Murphy hasn't anything to do with that. He is a very fine fellow."

I said, "I do not doubt that, but there is some reason for his putting $125,000 into this."

In September, 1933, when he had gone to Newark for a convention of the 29th Division, Butler testified, MacGuire had unexpectedly showed up at his hotel to remind him that the time for the American Legion convention was rapidly approaching and to ask whether he was finally ready to take a contingent of veterans to Chicago.

BUTLER: I said, "No; I am not going to Chicago."

"Why not?"

I said, "You people are bluffing. You have not got any money," 
whereupon he took out a big wallet, out of his hip pocket, and a great, big mass of thousand dollar bills and threw them out on the bed.

I said, "What's all this?"

He says, "This is for you, for expenses. You will need some money to pay them."

"How much money have you got there?" He said, $18,000

"Where did you get those thousand dollar bills?"

"Oh," he said, "last night some contributions were made. I just have not had a chance to deposit them, so I brought them along with me."

I said, "Don't you try to give me any thousand dollar bill.

Remember, I was a cop once. Every one of the numbers on these bills has been taken. I know you people and what you are trying to do. You are just trying to get me by the neck. If I try to cash one of those thousand dollar bills, you would have me by the neck."

"Oh," he said, "we can change them into smaller denominations."

I said, "You put that money away before somebody walks in here and sees that money around, because I do not want to be tied up with it at all. I told you distinctly I am not going to take these men to Chicago."