The Business Plot: When Wall Street Allegedly Tried to Overthrow FDR

In November 1934, retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler sat down in front of a congressional committee and calmly explained that a group of wealthy businessmen had spent the previous year trying to recruit him to lead a private army of half a million veterans, march on Washington, and turn President Franklin Roosevelt into a puppet figurehead. Congress investigated. Its final report concluded there was no question the plot had been discussed and planned, and might well have been...