The Business Plot

Major General Smedley Butler was no crack-pot. As the most decorated marine in the history of the US military during his lifetime, Butler did not have a reputation for frivolity or excitability. He was, in contrast, widely-known for his ability to stay cool under pressure, his forthrightness and personal integrity.

“Old Gimlet Eye” as he was called on account of his steely, unflinching gaze, commanded the respect of his troops, military veterans, and civilian political leaders alike.

Which is why it must have come as a shock to some when Butler testified before a select congressional committee on a subject so seemingly far-fetched that nowadays one wouldn't be blamed for imagining his testimony coming instead from a pale-skinned, tin-foil hat-bedecked misfit who'd never seen anything more closely resembling battleground action than an all-night session of World of Warcraft.

So what stunning claims did Butler make in his congressional testimony (since, despite their sensational nature, they were broadly ignored by the press and never penetrated the popular consciousness)?

Butler claimed he had been approached by representatives acting on behalf of a coalition of America’s most powerful business leaders and economic elites to lead a plot to overthrow the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a de facto military dictatorship.

The co-conspirators he implicated in the plot included many of the wealthiest names in that period in American history, including Irenee Du Pont, Grayson Murphy, and even Prescott Bush (grandfather of America's scandal-plagued 43rd President), among many other notables. (It's noteworthy that many of these same captains of industry presided over companies that were later revealed to have maintained illicit business dealings with the Nazi party even after America's late entry into World War II.)

So were Butler's claims actually credible? Could it really happen here? Well, strange as it seems, that's what the McCormack-Dickstein congressional committee, which was tasked with investigating Butler's allegations, seemed to conclude. In part, the committee's final report on the incident finds in closing:

There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.

Nevertheless, no party to the controversy was ever formally charged with a crime. Little doubt remains over the material facts of Butler's testimony. And the pro-Fascist political sentiments held by many of the parties implicated in the conspiracy are well-documented and broadly acknowledged. Debate among historians, however, still continues about the actual scope, seriousness and feasibility of the plot.

(Submitted by Museum Curator)

Official Status: A congressional committee (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) investigated Butler's allegations and concluded that they were credible, affirming that the material details of Butler's testimony had been confirmed by the evidence and corroborating testimony.

Curator's Remarks: Ultimately, it's not at all beyond the realm of likelihood that only two things kept America from succumbing wholesale to the iron-heel of military dictatorship at this particular point in our history: The integrity of one honest soldier and the cold calculus of political expediency.

In light of the less than overwhelming popular response to the accounts offered by the few news outlets who even dared to report on the plot, it might be reasonable to consider this particular favorable outcome for American democracy a fragile victory. But it's probably better not to dwell on that fact to the point of paranoia.

Links for Further Reading:

• "The Business Plot" via Wikipedia
• The Business Plot to Overthrow Roosevelt
• The Plot to Overthrow FDR (Documentary Video)
• "Oh, Smedley: Was there really a fascist plot to overthrow the United States government?" via The Straight Dope

The Conspiracy Against Conspiracy Theories

These days, in many respectable circles, talk of conspiracies is considered too puerile and incompatible with common sense to be indulged even for a moment's worth of passing amusement. These hostile attitudes, in fact, seemingly extend to conspiracy theories and to actual historical conspiracies alike, as if no legitimate distinction could be made between the two.

Perhaps in response to this emerging social orthodoxy, one popular conspiracy theory recently gaining currency attributes the phenomenon of knee-jerk animosity toward all things conspiratorial to (what else!) a government conspiracy.

After all, it actually is true that the negative connotations of the word "conspiracy" first entered the vernacular at a time in American history rife with what we now know were real conspiracies: A time when the crimes of Watergate were underway. A time when the CIA was secretly collaborating with organized crime bosses to plot the assassination of Fidel Castro. A time, in fact, when the CIA was undertaking so many covert operations around the world, it's impossible to know exactly how many pies Uncle Sam managed to stick the fingers of his giant, invisible hand into before he got caught. And then again, in many ways, Uncle Sam never really got caught.

Although history offers an ever-expanding catalog of official and unofficial conspiracies of all shapes and sizes, the prevailing contemporary view is that real conspiracies are such rare occurrences they amount to little more than a kind of popular myth. Proponents of the "conspiracy against conspiracy theories" theory argue that this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs is no accident.

Here are the theory's key claims:

• Since at least the 1960s, the American government has operated a far-reaching domestic propaganda and psy-ops program with the aim of subtly influencing public opinion to hold indiscriminately skeptical attitudes toward conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Since previous domestic counterintelligence programs, like the FBI's discredited Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), have made extensive domestic use of disinformation and psychological warfare techniques, historical precedent for the existence of such a program exists.

• The much maligned "conspiracy theories" of popular imagination--wild-eyed fantasies of Yeti and alien autopsies bolstered by timely leaks of classified documents or other new lines of evidence that spark renewed interest among believers--are only cultural noise, disinformation deliberately fed into the system to discredit conspiracy theories generally and to distract a gullible public from less sensational but no less serious abuses of authority.

• The mainstream press wittingly or unwittingly furthers the government's efforts by carelessly blurring the distinctions between legitimate public skepticism and less credible forms of skepticism, all of which are ultimately equivocated and dismissed as mere "conspiracy theories."

• By undermining the cultural legitimacy of the very idea of conspiracies, the government and its corporate patrons systematically undermine the credibility of legitimate public policy critics and whistle-blowers.

Submitted By: The Museum Curator

Official Status: Never investigated.

Curator's Remarks: Whether this theory is true or not, it offers a beautifully constructed argument: its powerful, self-referential logical structure ensures that direct attempts to counter it can reasonably be reinterpreted as actually reinforcing the soundness of its premises. Another strength of the argument, somewhat counter-intuitively, lies in its omission of concrete evidence. By strictly using non-controversial, circumstantial evidence to make its case, it offers no claims of new or novel evidence that might be open to criticism (and as Mr. Miyagi once wisely observed: "Best defense, no be there"). The skeptics are all either in on the conspiracy, this theory claims up-front, or they've fallen under the influence of the official propaganda, too: let the burden be on the skeptic to prove otherwise. Its logic preemptively attacks would-be critics before they even voice their criticisms, insisting that only strong evidence of the inherently unprovable negative case--evidence that the alleged government program isn't underway--is sufficient to refute the theory completely.

This theory at the same time offers a persuasive and compelling admonition against the easy temptation to take public information and conventional wisdom at face value. In an age when the once inexact art of shaping public perception and opinion increasingly resembles an exact science, the broader skeptical questions this theory raises are too salient to dismiss. Whether or not the one particular hidden aspect of reality it probes actually exists, the inescapable fact is, such hidden aspects of reality do exist; choosing to let certain dogmas inhibit us from freely probing them leaves us all exposed to the blind risks that naturally follow ignorance. So ultimately, whether it's factually true or not, this theory offers a healthy dose of what the lit critics like to call "poetic truth," and sometimes, a little poetic truth can be just as valuable as the factual kind.

Links for Further Reading:

• Modern Usages of "Conspiracy Theory"
• Conspiracy Theories in Antiquity
• "Perception Management & Domestic Propaganda" (via disinfo.com)
• "Pentagon's PSYOPs: Information Warfare Using Aggressive Psychological Operations" (via Centre for Research on Globalization)
• "The Necessary Embrace of Conspiracy" (via CommonDreams.org)
  
• Wikipedia on "Psychological Warfare"