January 03, 2022

Jonathan M. Katz, Rolling Stone

“As I looked through history to find the origins of the patterns of self-dealing and imperiousness that mark so much of American policy, I kept running into the Quaker Marine with the funny name. Smedley Butler’s military career started in the place where the United States’ overseas empire truly began, and the place that continues to symbolize the most egregious abuses of American power: Guantánamo Bay.”

Journalist Jonathan Katz tells the little-known story of Butler’s 1934 disclosure of a “Business Plot” to overthrow the Roosevelt administration.  Katz also draws parallels between U.S. political tensions then and now. 

Read the full story here

Katz’s book, Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of American Empire, was released in January 2022.