Sally Denton

2 Books

I am an investigative reporter, author, and historian who writes about the subjects others ignore--from a drug conspiracy in Kentucky to organized crime in Las Vegas; from corruption within the Mormon Church to murdered women in New Mexico; from one of America's bitterest political campaigns to the powerful forces arrayed against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

While the subjects of my books at first glance seem disparate, they are actually unified by a central theme of the exploration of subjects in American history that have been neglected or marginalized, and characters whom I return to their rightful places in history. I am a Guggenheim fellow, a Woodrow Wilson public scholar, a Black Mountain/Kluge fellow, and the recipient of the Robert Laxalt Distinguished Writer Award and two Western Heritage Awards.

My book "The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World" won Best Investigative Book of 2016 from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). I have been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, and am a decades-long resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am the mother of three sons and am married to journalist and author John L. Smith www.sallydenton.com @sallydenton

Interviews

Interview with author Sally Denton

In 1933 a group of American Legion and financial community figures approached former Marine general and Medal of Honor recipient Smedley Butler to lead a coup d’etat against the United States government and establish a military regime. Butler reported the contact and a congressional investigation found that what became known as the business plot was intended to set up fascist rule. Boulder City native Sally Denton has written a book, The Plots Against the President, that deals with the business plot. Part of the following interview appeared in our print edition.

Given Smedley Butler’s record of criticism of the financial community and U.S. foreign policy, what possessed the plotters to choose him?

Well, I think that they knew that he was probably the only general or military figure of his stature who the veterans would follow. I know that they probably would have preferred to have MacArthur or somebody more like-minded but there’s no way that the half-million veterans that they wanted would go along with that. I think they were hoping that if they could convince Butler that America was on a downward spiral that they could convince him to take on the position.

When I interviewed you previously, you said that you found information on the coup that was not available at the time of the investigation.

That interview would have been long before I actually even did much of the later research, because I went to Washington to do research at the Woodrow Wilson presidential library. During that time I was able to get into the FBI files that had never really been perused before and also there were some of the contemporaneous files about the business plot that were never really published either at the time or later that are now available in various locations. Spivak, I guess, [reporter] John Spivak had come across many of the documents but, you know, he published them in the New Masses, which was a communist publication and so they were really marginalized and didn’t get much attention. But the other really fascinating thing I found in the FBI files was actually that there was a second plot that Father Coughlin [anti-Semitic radio personality and priest Charles Coughlin] later approached Smedley Butler and wanted him to invade Mexico, also using these half-million veterans and said, “And we’ll take care of Roosevelt on the way down.” Indefatigable, I guess [laughs].

In your NPR interview, you suggested that critics of FDR may not have been able to distinguish between socialists, communists and other leftist points of view. That doesn’t seem to have changed a lot in 80 years. The tea party and other people seem to use those terms interchangeably.

Well, I don’t know if it’s so much—I mean, they do use the terms interchangeably. I don’t know if it’s because they really don’t know the difference or if it’s all just kind of saber-rattling and trying to, you know, use these push-button words that alarm the populace often. I mean, there’s nobody who did more to save capitalism than Franklin Delano Roosevelt and to suggest that he was a socialist or a communist or a fascist—you know, he retreated from all those, what those labels would be. But I think, you know, to your point about the usage, I think it’s often just you get these strange bedfellows that in some demographics it works to call somebody a communist, whereas in other places it works to call them a fascist. I mean, it’s like these Wall Street plotters having aligning or having these relationships with people like Huey Long, who was on the far left, and Father Coughlin’s on the far right. These are just, I think, affiliations that are beneficial for everybody and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re even in agreement with what the terminology means—or that they even know.

You said there were some techniques used against FDR similar to those used by the birthers.

Well, I found a lot of this was stunning and, as you’ve read the book, I don’t draw the parallels to today. I decided a choice not to do that, a narrative choice to let the reader draw the parallels. But while researching it I could not help but see the similarities between this cottage industry that sprouted up during Roosevelt’s first term, trying to prove that he was Jewish. And there was this feeling that there was a Jewish conspiracy and that he was part of it—a Jewish conspiracy to take over the money of the world. And so they went to great lengths to try and prove that he was descended from Dutch Jews. There was [U.S. Christian Party leader] William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Legion [who] referred to him as “President Rosenfeld” and trotted out the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the kind of crackpot transcripts about a secret world Zionist conference that was really gaining popularity among American anti-Semites during that time. And that even though he [Roosevelt] was a patrician, he was an aristocrat, his bloodlines and aristocratic background was undeniable, there was still this element and the populists, this kind of unhinged element, determined to prove that he was Jewish. And a lot of it took place around the Lindbergh stuff, that there was this Jewish suspect in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, who came to symbolize the fear of the mainstream American establishment. There was suddenly this fear of Jewish proletariats and the reds in Russia. And this element seemed to be galvananized against Roosevelt, especially when he then recognized the Soviet Union, when he took America off the gold standard. There was just this kind of xenophobic and really not well founded belief that he was something else.

Roosevelt’s supporters, backers, had something of an advantage in those situations. Where race was concerned, people tended to talk race. Today, unless you’re talking about Trent Lott or [Tea Partier] Dale Robertson or somebody, they tend to talk in code. They use code words. They communicate their meaning to their followers, but they don’t really say anything that’s offensive. How do we know these days whether they’re racist or just opposed to whoever?

Yes, I know. It does seem to me code, and it seems to me that there’s this great fear, especially among white men, that they’re losing their majority and their power. In the south, there is not as much of a hesitation to just come right out and blurt out these racist remarks. I think there’s code and I think it goes on a lot of different levels. My middle son is at the University of California at Santa Barbara and he just showed me a paper that he had written. I think it’s called the “History of Obama,” is this class he’s taking. But he was writing about whether or not the fact that we have a black president, does that mean we’re a post-racist society or are we really moving into a multi-racial society? And it seems to me that just because we have a black president doesn’t mean that we’ve made that much progress. I mean, there has been progress made, but I think the fact that the kind of black president we have is the light-skinned and kind of passive and thoughtful and—you know, we don’t have a really dark black, angry black man, which I think still, in this day and age, still alarms a lot of Americans. I understand what you’re saying there about there being a code and you can even identify it when it comes up but it’s amorphous. You can’t really point to it and say, “See, they’re racists,” even though it seems really obvious. …

Having gone through this experience of researching all this, how likely is it that a coup would succeed in the United States?

Well, I think it was likely that it could have happened back then. First of all, America was in such a tenuous situation that there were actually a lot of intellectual thinkers and men and women who were actually smart—it wasn’t all crackpots—who were really thinking that capitalism was finished, that democracy as we knew it was finished, that a fascist government would be preferable. What is clear is that some of the nation’s wealthiest men—and this was bipartisan, these were Republicans and Democrats alike—who were so threatened by Roosevelt’s monetary policies that they actually flirted with the possible anti-government, paramilitary coup. How far it got or how far it could have gone we’ll never know because it was stopped so prematurely. But in any case, it’s a fascinating tale of the power struggles that were alive in 1933. Even Congressman McCormack [U.S. Rep. John McCormack, who led the investigation of the plot] toward the end of his life, he said that if General Butler had not been patriotic and blown the whistle, that the plot might very well have succeeded. Today, I think it less likely because the military is not the same kind of military. I mean, you had a half million veterans that were dispossessed—although I’m sure we have more than that now, you know, who are coming back and not getting treatment that they need. But in 1933 you h had a half million of these Bonus veterans who were absolutely destitute and could easily have been manipulated into a paramilitary force and there was evidence of that all over the world. These plotters sent Jerry McGuire [Gerry McGuire was a Wall Street broker and former Connecticut “commander” of the American Legion], their front man, to Europe to explore veteran’s organizations and how veterans organizations could infiltrate and take over a government. But it seems to me that now the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, that all of it is such a huge bureaucracy, I just can’t imagine something like that being possible. Can you?

Well, you know, as you were talking, I got to thinking—Kurt Vonnegut once said that when he was a kid and he was growing up, the country was very proud of the fact that it had a small standing army.  Now we have a huge professional army, and while—as you say—it’s more difficult to maneuver, it’s like turning an oil tanker, it’s also more of a threat.

And it’s also very privatized.

Yes. They’re everywhere.

You know, that’s what Smedley Butler said. You know, he was the general’s general. He was like the military man’s icon. And he always said—it was kind of like [Ron Paul]—he always said we should have a very strong army that never went more than 200 miles off shore. I mean, it’s a very isolationist thinking, strategy, but he came to see the military as nothing more than an arm of what had not even yet become the multinationals. But he could see the writing on the wall, that the American military was busy in all these theatres supporting basically—providing enforcement for the über-capitalists. United Fruit and other—that was one of the other things that really I think alarmed the Wall Street industrialists was when Roosevelt in ’33 said that the U.S. government military was no longer going to be offering protection in Latin America. I think that really sent alarm bells to them.

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