Thread: A Business Story

Once upon a time…..


CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition.

Does that paragraph describe something vaguely familiar? No? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only 4 term president in US history, promised a New Deal after some hard national times. The New Deal spread the nation’s wealth amongst all citizens and entrusted oversight and some management of civilian business projects to the Federal Government. From the expansion of the Federal Emergency Relief Admin and the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corp which created scores of jobs, to the Wagner Act encouraging the establishment of labor unions and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to oversee the operations of Wall Street the New Deal promised much and delivered more.


This pissed off the ultra rich in the USA. Many of the blue bloods in the US were fascist sympathizers impressed with Mussolini’s (and Hitler’s) strong-arm management of his country’s prevailing business conditions. Fascism utilizes governmental power to enforce and embolden the position of the investor class: unions are crushed, corporations are elevated and authoritarianism is supreme. These Ultra-rich Americans hated FDR considering him a traitor to his class of people: The Ultra-rich.


So they decided to do something about it.


Frightened by the prospect of a truly equitable distribution of resources and wealth, the Ultra-rich devised a coup d`etat to take down FDR and install a neo-fascist government. Enter Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most decorated officers in Marine Corps history. He received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism. He was a true leader and greatly loved by all of the men he served with—an enlisted man’s general.


He was to be the front-man for the coup. Butler was a good choice because of his military skills: His personal courage and tactical skill made him a powerful commander. His ties of friendship to many officers still on active duty might have undermined military opposition to his force, as friends and colleagues sought to avoid a direct confrontation with him. Also, Butler was not regarded as a great intellect because he lacked formal education.


A Wall Street bond salesman and former commander of the Connecticut American Legion approached Butler. Gerald MacGuire had a proposal: he was acting as a front man for wealthy industrialists and bankers, and J.P. Morgan, du Pont and other names came up in the conversations. The proposal was this: Butler would get elected as the American Legion's national commander. With that office, Butler would have the loyalty of 500,000 veterans. With that private "army" (du Pont would arm them through their controlling interest in Remington Arms Company) and up to $300 million of funding made available by the bankers and industrialists, they would take over the White House.

MacGuire said that the same people with the money also controlled the press, and would concoct a rationale that Roosevelt was ill and needed a strongman to help run the country. The public would easily swallow it, and Butler would be installed in a new cabinet position as Roosevelt's right hand, in a position dubbed the "Secretary of General Affairs." MacGuire had been studying the Italian and German Fascist "miracles," and the plan was closely modeled after Hitler's Brown Shirt coup. They would ease Roosevelt out of office, and Butler would be America´s new Hitler.


They picked the wrong man. Although Butler had been openly critical of Mussolini, they thought that Butler could be controlled b/c he wasn’t “bright.” MacGuire mentioned other candidates they would approach if Butler turned them down, such as Douglas MacArthur. MacGuire even told Butler that his superiors doubted that Butler would obediently play the game right, but nobody else in America could gain the ready allegiance of millions of veterans.


When he got all the information he could, Butler went straight to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1934, telling them all he knew. As with many other official "investigations," the HUAC was decidedly timid in pursuing those allegations. They refused to subpoena the names Butler had given them except for MacGuire, who predictably denied everything. The other names given by Butler to the HUAC were former-presidential contenders John Davis and Al Smith (who was a Morgan attorney), and Grayson Murphy, who was a co-founder of the American Legion, a board member of organizations such as Morgan Bank, Goodyear and Bethlehem Steel, and MacGuire's boss. The committee, which went to great lengths to ferret out commies, lost their zeal when confronted with those rich and powerful names, and largely swept the affair under the carpet.


Butler went public. Nevertheless, without official corroboration, no other investigations were launched, nor did anybody in government appear too concerned. The establishment and media went out of its way to either ignore or slam Butler, with Time magazine openly ridiculing him. The rich conspirator that Butler met threatened to sue Butler for libel. The conspirator never sued, and Butler never backed down.


While the HUAC's public posture was a quiet folding of its tents, it issued an internal report to Congress which journalist John Spivak obtained. The HUAC internal report told a starkly different story. The report to Congress stated that its investigation confirmed that Butler's story was true in every particular they could verify, and that MacGuire had perjured himself when he denied it. The truth was there, even documented in a report to Congress, but it got swept under the rug, as with most American scandals that involve the rich and powerful. Case closed!




Epilogue:
If you cannot kick-down the door to get in, do an end-around. The methodology of the CIA in destroying equitable fledgling democracies is borne of the methodology of the Ultra-rich fascists of the early 20th century. As a side note, does anyone wonder why the average Joe hates unions, loves deregulation of business, loves big tax cuts, loves tort reform, hates social insurance or social healthcare, hates government—unless attacking marginally armed foreign countries, or is anti-environmental protection? Do those notions which are antithetical to the personal interests of the average Joe just arise b/c they are stonecold truths or b/c they are slickly inculcated into the mind via popular means—news and culture—by the owners of those entities?

The End

http://www.nndb.com/people/572/000055407/
http://www.claytoncramer.com/amcoup.html
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/butler-by_frazier.html
Please read: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

I shouldn’t have written such a verbose story. No one reads anything that goes beyond 2-3 paragraphs.

If I would change one thing though, I might change the Epilogue to this:

After FDR’s death, Harry Truman took over. This former schoolteacher signed NSC 68 or The National Security Act of 1947 and what was left of our constitutional government was fundamentally killed. The Act centralized the different military branches; it created the CIA, the NSC and made National Security superior to our “antiquated” constitutional form of government. In the interests of National Security and without the consultation of the US public, the US has engaged in over 201 military conflicts worldwide since 1945. From the Red Menace to the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, the US has always been at “war.”

President Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address as the US’s president, warned the American people about the dangers presented by the Military-Industrial Complex. http://www.militaryfactory.com/military_industrial_complex_speech.asp

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

The Military-Industrial Complex and the secret operations of the CIA (led by Wall Street Attorney—Allen Dulles) worked hand-in-glove. The ultimate pro-corporate arrangement: the unaccountable CIA, armed by the Military-Industrial complex, deterring democracies at odds with US business interests around the world.

I guess National Security is defined rather widely for these folks. Anyway, the neo-fascists that tried to overthrow FDR did not stop there. They took a sublime alternate route to meet their ends of a fascist regime.

And that is how I’d change the story.