The Attempted Coup Against FDR

[porkrind]

Here is a very interesting and relevant historical look at the recent origins of the radical/fascist right, and an attempted coup to overthrow the U.S. government. If you haven't read this, please take the time. You will be fascinated. The parallels to modern times are striking. What's old is now new, I guess.

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html

"...The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt represented a revolutionary realignment of political power: the ascendancy of the Democratic party facilitated by new voting coalitions of rural south and industrialized north which dislodged the Republican Party’s nearly seventy-year dominance, signaling the abandonment of laissez-faire economics in favor of state regulation. The losers in this political process coalesced into right-wing Republicanism, and the next sixty years of American history is, in part, the story of their attempt to regain power, reinstitute Lassiez-faire policies, and dismantle the New Deal."

"...The main function of these hate groups was to enforce the will of right-wing corporate America, seeking to regain the political power it lost in the 1932 election."

"...the attempted coup against FDR and the power struggles surrounding it will not give us a smoking gun to the Kennedy assassination. But it will allow us to draw some important implications about the assassination."

"...The coup attempt against FDR gives us an historical precedent to conclude that powerful interests will consider using every available means including political murder in order to pursue their personal wealth."

Another link:
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930s.html

Read more about Smedley Butler, the patriot who exposed the coup plot, in the "war is a racket" link below...

---

Read about the Right-Wing "Master Plan": http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Have you read "War is a Racket"?: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Read George Orwell's classic "1984" free online here: http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984

[yurbud]

1. Ironically, we know about it because they wanted Smedley Butler's help

[pnorman]

4. General Smedley Butler was an authentic military hero.

TWO Medals of Honor, and he reputedly declined to accept a third. He considered himself a Republican and was no great admirer of FDR. The Far Right (essentially Corporate America) was looking for an "authentic American hero" they could manipulate. They had already gone abroad and studied the quasi-military fascistic mass movements in Europe. McArthur had already disgraced himself with his actions against the Bonus March veterans, while Eisenhower & Patton were just Majors then. (They too took part in that attack). Butler looked to be the PERFECT Useful Idiot.

They approached him with a very generous offer for speaking engagements before veterans groups. When he asked further questions, they filled him in on enough details to alarm him. He brought them directly to the White House, and later gave testimony at the McCormack hearings in Congress. The press esentially buried it, but enough details got out. He MOST DEFINITELY deserved one more Medal of Honor over that.

pnorman

[paineinthearse]

10. McCormack hearings

Please provide more information here and/or links. Was this John McCormack, who was Speaker of the House?

[pnorman]

11. House Speaker McCormack may have been the same person,

or it may have been a relative. I'll check later. That was the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which ironically evolved into the HUAC. Initially, the HUAC concentrated on Nazi & Fascist organizaions, but under the chairmanship of dixiecrat-like CREEPS like Martin Dies, it evolved into a "GET FDR!!! sounding board ... "jews, commies, unionists" (particularly CIO) was their usual fare.

Back to Smedley Butler. I hadn't done any web-searching of him in a long time, until now. Here are today's initial 'hits' (some I hadn't seen before):

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Smedley%20Butler
http://www.snowshoefilms.com/filmmakersnbcont67.html
http://www.carpenoctem.tv/cons/whitehouse.html
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/morgan4.htm
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/1000_americans.html
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f448.html
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm

That should be enough for now, although there are MANY more.

pnorman

[pnorman]

13. It's STILL coming in!

I'll NEVER get away from this keyboard!

Here's what I just spotted elsewhere on DU a few minutes ago:

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The Unsuccessful Right-Wing Coup Against a Democratic President

Vereide and Buchman had important allies on Wall Street. According to Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, shortly after Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, he was approached by a group of wealthy Republican industrialists to lead an anti-Roosevelt Fascist coup against the government. As with today’s Fellowship, Vereide and Buchman were merely front men for anti-Socialist big businesses who hid behind the façade of a Christian evangelical movement. To them and their bankrollers, Roosevelt was some sort of anti-Christ who was going to go to bat for the workers, blacks, the poor and women while, at the same time, menacing the ultra-rich and the rising Nazi and Fascist specter in Europe. The coup was to be financed mostly by the J. P. Morgan and Du Pont financial empires. General Butler, who had no time for these industrialists since his military forays into Central America and the Caribbean as a foot soldier on behalf of wealthy capitalists, rejected their overture. Gerald MacGuire, a Wall Street bond salesman and former Commander of the Connecticut American Legion, was the chief recruiter for the coup plot. Butler informed Congress of the plans for the coup. However, Congress was owned by Wall Street and no charges were ever brought against the plotters. Butler was incensed and went public but he was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Not until 1967, when journalist John Spivak uncovered the secret Congressional report, was Butler’s version of the events validated. In the report of the Special Committee to Investigate Nazi Propaganda Activities in the United States, Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY) concluded that there was evidence of a coup plot by the right-wing against Roosevelt. However, much to Butler’s chagrin, no criminal action was taken against the plotters.

Butler said MacGuire’s plan was for Butler to force Roosevelt to declare he had become too sick from polio and create a powerful new Cabinet position, the Secretary of General Affairs, to run the government on his behalf. The New Deal, something the U.S. fascists and Nazis referred to as the “Jew Deal,” would have be scrapped. The comparison between the Secretary of General Affairs and the present Secretary of Homeland Security is striking. If Roosevelt did not agree to the coup plotters’ demand, a half million American Legion veterans would march on Washington to physically remove Roosevelt from office. But MacGuire decided that the perception management campaign would work and an armed force would not be required. He told Butler, “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. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…” Shortly after his testimony before the House investigation committee, MacGuire died of pneumonia at the age of 37.

The perception management concerning the attempted right-wing coup against FDR was a harbinger of more ruses that would come from the same right-wing elements: that the first Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was suffering from mental illness when he threw himself out of the sixteenth story of Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1949, that John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone, pro-Communist assassin, and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The coup plotters involved some of the biggest names in American business and politics, including Irenee Du Pont of the wealthy chemical company family and founder of the pro-Fascist American Liberty League; J. P. Morgan officers Grayson Murphy and John Davis; General Douglas MacArthur; southern segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge of Georgia; and, in what represented a sea change for the extreme American right-wing, two influential Catholics, former Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, who had become very anti-Roosevelt, and John Raskob, a senior Du Pont official and a high ranking member of the Catholic Knights of Malta. The concordat between right-wing Protestants and Catholics presaged a later alliance between The Fellowship and the proto-Fascist Opus Dei movement.
>
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http://www.insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm

pnorman

[yurbud]

18. I agree.

[imenja]

2. FDR was corporate capitalism's best ally

What FDR succeeded in doing was to create a safety net that forestalled more radical responses to American inequalities. It is quite possible that without the New Deal, we might have had a powerful labor movement or poor people's movement with revolutionary potential.

As for the author's point: "I believe that in 1934 there was a foreshadowing of the JFK assassination." Frankly, this argument that the right was behind JFK's assassination prompts me to seriously question the rest of what Lamonica argues. First, no professional historians credit this point of view. Second, I've always wondered why the conspiracy theorists think the right or anyone (besides the mob and a few Cuban zealots) would want to kill Kennedy. He was a fierce Cold Warrior and quite conservative in his politics. He restructured the American tax system to favor the rich and avoided action on Civil Rights. It was LBJ who would push the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. There was nothing remotely radical about the Kennedy administration, quite the contrary. It is possible that if he had not been assassinated, we would not have had anything that approached LBJ's far more liberal Great Society programs. Kennedy's assassination was certainly a tragedy, but I see no motivation for this supposed right-wing conspiracy.

The author's principle source for the her argument about the attempted coup against FDR is a 1973 book published by a vanity press. The government sources she notes deny the plot. These citations don't meet basic standards of the history profession. I would need to see far more compelling evidence before I believed it.

Sympathy for the Nazis was fairly common throughout Europe and the United States, and the rest of the world. I wonder if there were more Republicans than Democrats with German sympathies? I don't know the answer to this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were not German sympathizers in both parties. Remember, very few people knew the extent of Hitler's persecution of Jews at that point. Roosevelt apparently did know, and turned back a boatload of Jews fleeing Hitler and returned them to Germany. They were turned away by many other nations as well. When they did return to Germany, they faced death.

[porkrind]

3. Any real DU historians to help us out?

Hmmmm. I don't know enough to answer your questions. I thought the articles were reasonable and interesting, but I don't know enough of the surrounding history to judge how true they are.

[imenja]

6. a possible source

I'm a real historian, but not of the United States, so my knowledge on this is extremely limited. In assessing the reliability of such works of history, I look at their citations and venue of publication. Peer reviewed journals and university presses go through a process where experts in the field examine the article or book to verify it's accuracy and use of sources. Vanity or commercial presses do not do this, nor do books published through such publishing houses generally include footnotes. If they do, the footnotes invariably fall short of the rigors of the history profession. Commercial publishers are not looking for good, reliable history. They want sales above all else. Most historians are leftists, so an argument that the peer review process denies politically controversial subjects is mistaken. Innovation is an important criteria in getting a work published. Articles that shatter prevailing historical views are seen as especially important, as long as they are well documented.

I searched the database America History and Life to find articles published on a potential coup against FDR. One possible source came up, but the full text article is not available through my university's database. It's possible others may have access to it through local university libraries or databases.
Cramer, Clayton. "AN AMERICAN COUP D'ETAT?"
_History Today_ 1995 45(11): 42-47.
It's an unusually short article, so it can't say much, but it seems to deal with the subject since it came up with a search under the key works Roosevelt and coup. It also came up with a search using the key words Butler and Franklin Roosevelt.

There are a number of sources on business and political opposition to FDR. In one article: Waddell, Brian, "CORPORATE INFLUENCE AND WORLD WAR II: RESOLVING THE NEW DEAL POLITICAL STALEMATE," __Journal of Policy History__ 1999 11(3): 223-256, the author argues that World War II succeeded in quelling opposition to the Roosevelt administration. He concludes: "Overall, we can say that the New Deal was successful in mediating for a time the economic and political crises of the 1930s. The New Deal failed, however, to provide a governing project that successfully secured the internal unity of the state system and resolved the state-societal tensions surrounding expanding national state power because many of its innovations were too controversial and roused too much antagonism among powerful class forces (including representatives of major corporations and the southern caste system).

Wartime mobilization, however, offered a model for the organization of expanding national state power that proved acceptable to major corporations and congressional conservatives by diminishing the threat of an expansive welfare state and by channeling national state power into an expansive warfare state. Economic mobilization thus resulted in a paradoxical strengthening and weakening of the U.S. national state. The military-state alternative that replaced the New Deal substantially increased the capacity of the national state to intervene internationally while containing its ability to intervene domestically. The resulting warfare state was qualitatively different from the welfare state, which had been undergoing construction during the New Deal. There was no simple transfer of New Deal state power to the national security state, as Hooks suggests, 102 since it was the democratizing elements of the New Deal that corporate executives associated with war mobilization hoped to defeat by resisting the expansion of civilian-state authority during the war. . . .

Corporate participation accounts for the impressive ability of the national security state to encompass both the accumulation goals of corporate executives and the strategic goals of government officials in a state project capable of internally uniting a fragmented and internally competitive state system and in a larger hegemonic project capable of solidifying the allegiances of a class-divided society to expansive national state power. 103 And so Katznelson and Pietrykowski are right to contest Skowronek's conclusion that the postwar national state was a "hapless administrative giant . . . that defied authoritative control and direction." 104 However, by overlooking the national security state formed in the wake of the war, they miss completely why and how modern U.S. governance was stabilized. Contrary to Brown (and Skowronek), the governance project that came together in the years immediately following the war was anything but weak and fragmented; it was powerful enough to survive, and succeed on its own terms, for over forty-five years. Grounded upon the twin goals of national security and profitable accumulation, these arrangements secured a powerful governing consensus for a particular type of effective and extensive state intervention masked by the weaknesses and relative incoherence of the domestic interventionist state."

[porkrind]

9. Thanks, imenja.

It looks like this is a tantalizing and murky issue. Thanks for the insight.

[Solon]

14. Imenja do you have access to some U.S. archives...

I ask this because I do not know where to look for some of this information, I have a lot, and I try to verify the sources. I'm writing a book, a counterfactual about the coup succeeding, but I would prefer to have original sources. So far I have a copy of the original newsreel of Smedley Butler's charges, but I would like the to hear his broadcast of the charges from Jan. 4, 1935, on WCAU in Philadelphia. I would also like to get my hands on the copy of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee report on Butler's and Macguire's testimony from the date of Feb. 15, 1935 to confirm this quote:

In the last few weeks of the committee's official life, it received evidence 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 expedient.

The committee received evidence from Major General Smedley D. Butler (ret.), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee of 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.

MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but our committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements of 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, while MacGuire was abroad studying various forms of organizations of fascist character....

This would be most appreciated, BTW: There is plenty of info on the FOIA FBI site on about fascist organizations in the United States, most were affiliated with Corporations believe it or not. The Black Robes for instance were the creation of GM, and were also used to break up unions, and of course the American Legion and Silver Shirts were pretty famous on their own as well.

ON EDIT: I forgot the date of the Commitee report, corrected!

[imenja]

15. US documents

Most of the US government documents are available through free access online. There is an organization called the National Security Archives (an NGO) that catalogs and organizing documents on their website. They also put in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests themselves. It's an excellent organization. I have my students read documents on the US backed coups on Chile and Guatemala. I would start looking there if I were you.

Amazingly, the CIA also makes it's documents released through FOIA online. They probably have hundreds of thousands of documents there, though the site is harder to search than the National Security Archives. The State Department does the same thing. You might check other government agencies, including the military, to see if they have similar online sites. Veterans organizations would also seem to be appropriate here.

The National Archives puts a large amount of its material online, as does the Library of Congress through it's American Memory Project. You could search there as well. The transcripts of the hearings you are interested in should be available through the Library of Congress site if not through the National Security Archives.

I notice your profile says you live in Missouri In most areas of the country, there is a local public university library that serves as a government documents repository. Since you are dealing with the 1930s, most things should be public by now. Of course there are always some documents the government keeps secret under the guise of "national security," but the further in the past one is dealing with, the less of a problem that is. Public congressional hearings are always made public. A public university will also allow you to use their own databases as long as you are working from one of their library computers. Students and faculty generally have remote access. I'm not sure, right off, if any of these databases will provide you government documents not available elsewhere, but they would allow you to search for other secondary sources published on related subjects. America History in Life is the best database for searching articles in academic journals published on US history (including those published in foreign countries). Some of the political science databases will also be helpful. WorldCat allows you to search for books and chapters in books where there are multiple authors. You can also examine the footnotes of secondary works to see what sources those author's reference. That should point you to the location of pertinent archival material.

There is an amazing amount available online now. What I tell my students is to make sure the documents are scanned versions of original documents (rather than transcriptions) and are available through a library or archive's website. All kinds of individuals post things online, but they are not necessarily reliable. Joe Smith decides he loves the Civil War, so starts posting things on his own personal website. They may or may not be accurate transcriptions, but they cannot be relied on as such.

Get a copy of Kate Turabian's _A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations_. It is far cheaper and easier to use than _The Chicago Manual of Style_ it derives from and should provide you with the appropriate form for citing all US government documents. How you cite your sources is of enormous importance because it allows other historians to verify your information. It also allows them to pick up where you left off.

Let me know if I can offer further assistance. My own research is on a very different area, but I teach research methods classes so know generally how to locate documents outside of my own field.

[Solon]

16. Thanks...

I have looked, but I probably missed some things, I usually only get abstracts that are somewhat muddy and subject to interpretation, which is rather annoying. I'm going to look for those documents soon, it is amazing how much stuff is online now.

[pnorman]

17. "Black Robes" .

I believe the name of that organization was the "Black Legion" (or "Legions"). I've seen countless references to that in books about union activity during the Thirties, but am somehow unable to bring it up with Google. The references I recall were sort of sketchy, but I got the impression that it was centered on the (White) immigration from the rural South, and appealed to their prejudices.

The American Legion was openly anti-union, since their primary reason when founded in ~1919, was to counter the radicalism that was developing in the American labor movement (primarily IWW). I know that the Silver Shirts were an openly fascist group with paramilitary pretensions, but I had never heard of their being used for explicitly strikebreaking purposes. I'm not contradicting you but it's something I'll try to Google.

pnorman

[imenja]

7. "An American Coup d'Etat"

This is the summary of the article by Clayton Cramer that is provided on the History Today website. I'm not familiar with the journal, so I'm not sure if it is peer reviewed. Here is the summary from the website. The rest is available through subscription only. Actually, it's a teaser more than a summary, which is somewhat odd. Academic journals don't tend to do that sort of thing.

Home > Magazines > Archives > Volume: 45 Issue: 11 > An American Coup d'Etat?
Volume: 45 Issue: 11 | November 1995 | Page 42 - 47 | Words: 3968| Author: Cramer, Clayton

"An American Coup d'Etat?

Did America's far right plot against Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal - only to be foiled by a retired Marine Corps general? Clayton Cramer lifts the lid on an intriguing but little-known tale.


Some Americans regard their country as superior to other nations because they do not change governments by coup d'etat – and never have. Perhaps because of a long tradition of power changing hands by election, Americans regard their nation as immune to the use of force for political purposes. True, assassins have killed four presidents, but these deaths did not lead to turmoil and chaos; the government simply followed well-established procedures for transferring control to the vice-president. Unlike other nations where assassination often leads to civil war, the United States has avoided this.



How different is America from nations where political power comes quite directly 'from the barrel of a gun'? A curious footnote to American history suggests that, except for the personal integrity of a remarkable American general, a coup d'etat intended to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt from office in 1934 might have plunged America into civil war.



This remarkable man was Smedley Darlington Butler, retired US Marine Corps Major-General. Butler is the sort of person for whom the word 'colourful' is woefully inadequate. This is a man who won America's highest military award for bravery (the Congressional Medal of Honor) twice. His style of warfare was unusual ... "

http://www.historytoday.com/dt_main_allatonce.asp?gid=10081&aid=&tgid=&amid=10081&g10081=x&g10071=x&g30026=x&g20991=x&g21010=x&g19965=x&g19963=x

[pnorman]

5. "FDR was corporate capitalism's best ally"

No great argument there. But few people are properly grateful towards their "saviors", especially when he tries to MAKE them mend their ways. A very large portion of the "better sort" of that period, spent their entire life, without EVER uttering the word "ROOSEVELT". It was always "That Man in the White House", accompanied by the appropriate sneers and frequently their favorite "Jew Jokes". And did they HATE Eleanor!!! By the prudish standards then, the "Eleanor Jokes" they peddled were pretty raw.

Pretty much the same thing with Kennedy. "Conspiracy" is still a very viable possibility there.

pnorman

[punpirate]

8. As you suggest...

... there was genuine hatred for FDR, and it lingered and festered for a long time. FDR and his administration did put the brakes on unfettered corporatism. He didn't put them out of business, but he ushered in a new era of regulation, and for that, and the changes in the tax laws, he was never forgiven.

Despite the previous arguments for Kennedy being more conservative than his appearance, there is some truth to that--but the anti-communism of Kennedy's administration particularly originated from Bobby Kennedy--the younger Kennedy was even willing to modify his stance on organized crime in order to use them to help get rid of Castro.

However, the Bay of Pigs changed all that, and that singular event coalesced the right wing in the country. Kennedy did arrange for the top tax rate to be reduced from 91% to 70%, but that did little good to change the minds of the Birchers in the country who felt that he was "soft" on communism by not calling in the troops when the Cuban invasion was going badly (which was probably the intention of the CIA plan, which Kennedy frustrated). At the same time, he was grappling with a military the top echelon of which were very close to plotting a coup of their own. Gens. Lyman Lemnitzer and, particularly, Edwin Walker were very right-wing in their attitudes, and deeply mistrusted Kennedy.

It's important to remember that the right wing never did give up their goals of returning the country to its pre-FDR condition, and one of the biggest indicators of this is the degree to which the right used Congress, particularly HUAC, to keep communism in the public eye, and more importantly, the support which big business gave those in Congress who, through committees such as HUAC, equated union activity with communism. HUAC, for example, is not a post-war phenomenon, as most people remember--it had actually been in existence since 1938. Almost from the time FDR entered office, the right was working to undo him.

That attitude persisted through the Kennedy years. Kennedy was a Democrat and a self-professed liberal Democrat. And while Johnson did carry through on civil rights and Great Society legislation, the seeds of those were in the last year of the Kennedy administration (one of the most-quoted books in the White House during that time was Michael Harrington's Poverty in America). Many on the right feared more of the same FDR-inspired programs to come. There were plenty of people who had reason to want Kennedy killed. My bet has always been with the people who had the money to make it happen.

Cheers.

[shance]

22. What were some reasons individuals would have wanted Kennedy killed?

I was not born yet. I'm interested to know.

[punpirate]

24. Pick one....

Quite seriously, the reason for anyone wanting another killed are as varied as the individuals involved.

In Kennedy's case, he had a lot of enemies. The covert ops people in the CIA hated him for the Bay of Pigs. Those in the Cuban insurrection hated him for abandoning them in that same operation. The Mafia hated him (and Bobby Kennedy) because the Kennedys had made them the top domestic target of the administration. The right wing hated Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs and because he was liberally-minded and, like most Democrats, had cost them a lot of money in taxes. The oil and gas industry hated him because he planned to close some of the tax loopholes that allowed many of them to pay minimal taxes. The top brass in the military hated him because he wouldn't let them invade Cuba outright, or failing that, wouldn't let them create excuses to invade Cuba.

Lee Harvey Oswald may have even had a reason to kill Kennedy. Who knows.

There are simply a great number of theories, conspiracy and otherwise, about why Kennedy was killed--mostly because the Warren Commission report was fraudulent (which most people today acknowledge). Google Kennedy together with some of the following names, and you'll find a lot of the theories about why some people would want Kennedy killed:

Lyman Lemnitzer
Edwin Walker
H.L. Hunt
Sam Giancana
Meyer Lansky
"CIA" and "New Orleans"
Clint Murchison

That will get you started. I don't necessarily wholeheartedly endorse any one of the theories, but, as I said, I still lean toward the individuals/groups with the money to make it happen.

Cheers.

[shance]

21. That must be why the corporate capitalists were staging a coup/assasinatio

n attempt on FDR.

You can say something in the hopes that such a false statement will become true if repeated enough times.

Problem is with the facts and Senate Hearing records.

I find it interesting how many of you in the hopes of preserving a monetarily driven perspective will demonize those who are doing the right thing and what is in the highest good for everyone, not just a select money driven, materialistic few.

No, individuals like FDR and Kennedy showed an ability to see the overall value and benefits to investing in everyone's rights and lives and weren't greed driven individuals even though they could very well have been, which to me makes them more impressive.

[imenja]

23. the problem is the "facts" are not yet established

I understand that you are very eager to believe this. It may indeed be true, but more research needs to be done to prove it. The senate hearings the author sites deny rather than prove this attempted coup. They raise concerns over funding that don't provide incontrovertible evidence of a plot. Perhaps she will reveal more evidence through continued research, but the particular piece linked does not establish the plot. I demonize no one. Unlike you, I did not attack the author's character or motivations. I instead speak to the concerns of historical verification. It seems that she may the poster below who has said she intends to examine the senate committee records herself. If you read below, you will see that in response to her inquiry, I offered quite a long list of archives to locate the documents she seeks. I also searched for additional secondary sources on the subject and posted what I found below. So before you impugn the motives of someone you know nothing about, I suggest you start reading.

Please explain to me how you see Kennedy as a martyr to the interests of "investing in everyone rights"? How do you explain his lowering of taxes on the rich? What policies did he pass or propose that makes you so certain he was a champion of the poor? From what I can tell, LBJ did far more in that regard and for Civil Rights, though his legacy is rightly sullied by his grave mistakes in Vietnam. The mythical John F Kennedy is an amazing president. I'm not so sure, however, that the real man lives up to his deification by some. His actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis were of momentous importance, but as for being a champion of the common man, I don't see it. FDR quite clearly did work for the interests of all of us, including the corporate capitalists, whether they liked it or not.

[shance]

25. Facts should not need "establishing". The truth speaks for itself.

This is yet another case of "cui bono"? Who benefits?

In the case of the FDR coup, it doesn't take rocket science to understand who would have clearly, monetarily and governmentally, benefitted from a staged overthrow, the plan and idea itself makes it abundantly clear.

Smedley Butler most assuredly did not benefit from taking the actions of engaging against the Robber barons and fascist corporate interests.

He was ridiculed, shamed, and dismissed for saving the presidency. Corporatism continues to win through its abuse of power and privilege, but was certainly delivered a blow by General Butler.

[imenja]

28. "Facts should not need "establishing". The truth speaks for itself."

Wow, that sounds just like George Bush's arguments about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Unlike you and George, I'm one of these crazy people who demands evidence before I believe something.


By the way, Robber Barons is a term used to describe Guilded Age capitalists. It was the other Roosevelt who took them on.

Corporatism is a political system based on the idea of the state as single body (see Wikipedia). Examples include Peronist Argentina, populist era Brazil, post-Revolutionary Mexico, and the fascists in Italy and Germany. We have never had corporatism is this country. Workers and industrialists are not incorporated into the formal structure of the state, and workers in the US don't have anywhere near the level of formal benefits alloted by corporatist states.

[pnorman]

12. The book "Seven Days In May" is generally regarded

to have ben inspired by that fascistic plot. Here's an article I was alerted to by another DU posting:

Paranoia grips the U.S. capital
By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor

The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro."

Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret "anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are "extra-legal missions."

In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War.

This frightening news comes as Washington is gripped by reborn, Cold-War-style paranoia, ominous threats of war against Iran from the real president, Dick Cheney, and a titanic bureaucratic battle just won by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Instead of being fired for the grotesque military-political fiasco in Iraq and the shameful torture scandals, Rumsfeld has just managed to create a new, Pentagon spy/special ops organization, blandly named "Strategic Support Branch," that will replace or duplicate many of the CIA's tasks.

The CIA has been sent to the doghouse. Too many CIA veterans criticized or contradicted Bush's and Cheney's phony claims over Iraq and terrorism. So Bush has imposed a new, yes-man director on the agency, slashed its budgets, purged its senior officers, and downgraded CIA to third-class status.

Rumsfeld's new, massively funded SSB will become the Pentagon's CIA, complete with commando units, spies, mercenary forces, intelligence to gathering and analysis, and a direct line to the White House. The Pentagon has just effectively taken over the spy business.

Used terrorism hysteria

Mind you, the Pentagon and its Defence Intelligence Agency have been deeply involved in intelligence around the globe for 50 years. U.S. Army intelligence and its covert sub-branches have long conducted "black ops," including missions in the U.S. as well as assassinations and sabotage abroad. The Pentagon consumes three-quarters of the total U.S. intelligence budget.

Rumsfeld has skillfully used terrorism hysteria to wrest control of intelligence and make the Pentagon supreme in Washington's bureaucratic power struggles.

The Pentagon's new spy arm will be largely excluded from Congressional oversight or media examination. Its special operations teams will roam the globe, all under cover of "deep black" missions of which no records will be kept, and no questions asked.

Equally worrying, the Pentagon's new special-ops units are headed up by notorious religious fanatic, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who calls the U.S. Army "the house of God" and Islamic insurgents "agents of Satan." He warned Muslims, "my God is bigger than your god, which is an idol."
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http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/02/06/922316.html

I had seen the movie of that name in 1964, but this discussion has caused mr to order the DVD: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B00004RF83/ref=cm_rev_all_1/102-5401116-6692946?%5Fencoding=UTF8&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=dvd

pnorman

[porkrind]

19. Creepy. Thanks for the link.

[eleny]

20. Yeah, collective bargaining put their panties up their cracks

[Karenina]

29. Kick!

:kick:

[6th Borough]

26. I saw a History Channel documentary on this.

Though I don't recall all of the details, I do remember that a rather large # of Big Business CEOs, Chairmen, etc. backed the idea.

It's a good thing they approached a general who didn't lack in moral courage.

[6th Borough]

27. I should have read post #4 before replying.

Anyway, thanks for the names and additional info.