The Plot To Seize The White House by Jules Archer Read Free Book Online Page B

Morgan interests were deeply involved.
    Even yet another of MacGuire's predictions came true a fortnight later, when A1 Smith published a scathing attack on the New Deal in the New Outlook, breaking publicly with the President over economic policies.
    If Butler had had any lingering doubts about the authenticity of MacGuire's claim to have inside knowledge of what American big-business leaders were up to, the appearance of the American Liberty League on schedule, and A1 Smith's break with the White House, convinced him that MacGuire's revelations of a plot to seize the White House were no crackpot's fantasy. MacGuire had called the shots every time.
    Butler was now genuinely alarmed. For the first time it dawned upon him that if the American Liberty League was, indeed, the  "superorganization" behind the plot that it seemed to be, the country's freedom was in genuine peril. Such money and power as the men behind the League possessed could easily mobilize a thinly disguised Fascist army from the ranks of jobless, embittered veterans and do what Mussolini had done in Italy with the financial support of the Italian plutocracy.
    Getting in touch with Van Zandt, Butler told the V.F.W. commander that he had been approached to lead a coup as head of a veterans' army. He warned that the conspirators intended to try to involve Van Zandt, too, at the V.F.W, convention in Louisville. Thanking him for the warning, Van Zandt assured Butler that he would have nothing to do with the plotters.
    Butler was tempted to leave for Washington immediately to warn the President or his advisers. He now knew enough to expose the whole plot.
    But he was pragmatist enough to realize that on his unsupported word, without the slightest shred of evidence, he was likely to be greeted with polite skepticism, if not ridicule. Heads would shake. Poor Smedley Butler.
    How sad-a fine, brave Marine general like that, losing touch with reality.
    Too many campaigns, too many tropical fevers. At best they might believe that MacGuire had, indeed, told him all those fantastic things, but then MacGuire, obviously,  had to be some kind of psychotic nut. And Butler would have to be an idiot to have taken him seriously, to have believed that many of the nation's greatest leaders of the business and financial world would get involved in a conspiracy to depose the President and take over the White House!
    MacGuire, of course, would deny everything. So would Robert S.  Clark. So would everyone connected with the American Liberty League-if this was, indeed, the superorganization MacGuire had revealed was behind the plot.
    The enemies Butler had made among the military brass during his colorful career would help the press ridicule his revelation. "Old Gimlet Eye," they would scoff, "is at it again-stirring up a storm, making headlines.
    Worst publicity hound that ever wore a uniform!"
    But Smedley Butler had never in his life backed off from his duty as he saw it. Convinced that the democracy he cherished was in genuine danger, he steeled himself for the ordeal of public mockery and humiliating attacks that he knew would follow his exposure of the conspiracy. He was enough of an expert tactician, however, to know that he couldn't win his battle without supporting troops. He would need corroborative testimony by someone whose word, when combined with his own, would have to be respected and force a full-scale investigation.
    Butler confided in Tom O'Neil, city editor of the Philadelphia Record.
    Observing that the whole affair smacked of outright treason to him, he asked O'Neil to assign his star reporter to dig into the story. O'Neil agreed, and reporter Paul Comly French, whose news features also appeared in the New York Post, was instructed to seek confirmation of the plot. Butler knew and respected French, who had done an intelligent and honest job of covering his fight against crime and corruption in Philadelphia ten years earlier.
    French set about determining whether