This summer marks the 85th anniversary of the 1933 Wall Street-Fascist plot against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Investigated by the McCormack-Dickstein Committtee, the first House of Un-American Activities Committee, which was chaired by Congressmen John McCormack of Massachusetts, later Speaker of the House, and, Samuel Dickstein of the Empire State, later to become Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

Among the corporate culprits and their supporters:  Guaranty Trust and its director, Grayson M.P. Murphy, the Morgan interests, the Du Ponts, the Pitcairns, Remington Arms, elements of of the American Legion in the guise of Gerald McGuire, William Doyle of Massachusetts. . .

The hero here was Smedley Darlington Butler, who joined the Marine Corps as a private, only to retire 33 years and four months later as a major general.  Butler is one of 19 American servicemen (seven of which are marines) to be accorded the Medal of Honor . . . twice.  Butler's first was in 1914 at Vera Cruz, with his second the following year in Haiti, leading a section of sailors and marines from battleship Connecticut in action against the Caco Resistance.  He would later write a book, with the inflammatory title, War is a Racket, which became a classic anti-war treatise.  This is Butler in 1935:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the Bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.  I helped make Mexico . . . safe for American oil interests in 1914.  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.  I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street . . . I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.  In China in 1927 I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went unmolested.  Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.  The best he could do was to operate his rackets in three districts.  I operated on three continents."

Butler was enlisted to join the plot against FDR by Gerald McGuire, who met with Butler a number of times, together with William Doyle.  McGuire tried to bribe Butler with large amounts of money from his backers.  For McGuire, according to the transcripts of the hearings, stated, "We need a Fascist government in this country to save the Nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America.  The only men who have patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader.  He can organize one million men over night."

However recruiting Butler became an issue.  At one point, McGuire told Butler that he could get 500,000 veterans to press the demands of the plotters.  To which Butler replied, "If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling like Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right here at home."  (Page 8 of the transcripts of the hearings.)

By well into 1934, interest in prosecuting elements of America's Royalty named in the HUAC was waning; and, eventually petered out, just like with the banking crisis of 2008.  Yet 1933 stands as a stark reminder of how fragile our government actually is.  Fragile from the perspective that many Americans do not even know of the existence of such a plot against an elected American president.  And as I travel my state of Connecticut giving talks on this particular incident, the vast majority of listeners are dumbfounded, with many asking, "why were we not told of this?" or, "they should teach this in the schools."  As to the last named, don't hold your breath.  For to form a "more perfect union," such imperfections cannot be admitted, let alone acknowledged.  For instance, how many Americans actually recall that George Bush, Jr's Fascist-flirting grandfather Prescott was laundering money for the Nazis?

General Smedley Darlington Butler died in 1940.  In recalling the American Putsch of 1933, Speaker of the House, John McCormack would later observe, "In peace or war, he [Butler] was one of the outstanding Americans in our history.  I can't emphasize too strongly the very important part he played in exposing the Fascist plot in the early 1930's backed by and planned by persons possessing tremendous wealth."