The Plot to Seize the White House

American Leftist Joe links to a website that has posted both an HTML and Word version for a rare and out-of-print book called “The Plot to Seize the White House” by Jules Archer. A used copy can be had for $650.00+ on Amazon.

The story goes that “a cabal of capitalists” approached Major General Smedley Butler for this reason:

The instigators wanted a putsch commander who could mobilize 500,000 soldiers overnight. These would make up a paramilitary force, to take form as the American Liberty League. Its pattern was a French veterans’ group, the Croix de Feu. (The backers studied then rejected two other models of veterans’ organization that fascists had used in taking power: Mussolini’s blackshirts and Hitler’s brownshirts.)

The reason for the plot was the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a member of the same ruling circles as the cabal itself. March 5, 1933–the day after his inauguration–FDR embargoed the export of gold and declared a national bank holiday. He told the “Hundred Days Congress” to enact a New Deal into law. In striving against the Depression, FDR awakened hope in the American people, but he appalled bankers and industrialists. Who would pay for this New Deal? The rich feared changes to the US system of finance, a rise in taxes, possibly even (Heaven forbid!) socialism.

On the other hand:

There are those, however, who believe that the intent of the plotters was not the imposition of Butler as the leader of the government, but was actually to use the incident as a means by which Roosevelt could impose a dictatorship down upon the American people after Butler led his army upon the White House. This action, after Roosevelt termed it to be a “national emergency,” could have enabled him to take complete control of the government in the emergency, and the American people would probably have cheered the action. So Butler was, according to this theory, only the excuse to take complete control of the machinery of the government, and was never intended to be the new dictator.

Either way, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is the hero:

Jules Archer quotes testimony from the McCormack-Dickstein House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings (including testimony that was subsequently censored from public record) that details how Butler was approached by representatives of the arch-conservative American Liberty League; how they tried to persuade him to lead an army of veterans in demonstration against Roosevelt’s silver standard; how Butler quickly concluded that the silver standard controversy was being used as a subterfuge to lead American veterans against Washington for truly sinister purposes; and how this hero, patriot, and Republican democrat, upon uncovering the full dimensions of the conspiracy, determined to go to Washington and blow it wide open.

John L. Spivak, a reporter assigned to cover the committee hearings, calls the story “one of the most fantastic plots in American history. . . . 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. It would be regrettable if historians neglected this episode and future generations of Americans never learned of it.”

Get a copy while you can and pass it on.

Joe also has an excellent round-up of reports related to the kidnapping of CSM reporter Jill Carroll that lead him to make some interesting observations.