The Business Plot

In 1933, Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, three-time runner-up for Best Name Ever, testified before what would later become the House Un-American Activities Committee about an alleged “Business Plot” to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator in his place. To Butler, the prospect of corporations becoming more powerful than democracy must have seemed pretty dangerous.

According to his testimony, CEOs from powerful companies like DuPont and J.P. Morgan had offered him about $50,000 to lead a private army of over 500,000 soldiers up the streets of Washington, D.C. in order to take over the Capitol building. Butler snitched on them, but no charges were ever brought. Presaging what would later be referred to as the Military-Industrial Complex, just a year after these hearings took place, Butler wrote a pamphlet called “War is a Racket,” which describes how the only people who benefit from war are the CEOs of corporations who manufacture the supplies used in combat. 

It reads like an early edition of the Halliburton employee handbook.