Read Jack 1939 for Free Online Page B

with his cabinet.
    Butler wanted no part of any plan to overthrow his own democratically elected government, but he played along with his contacts in order to learn who was financing them. They told him confidentially they were backed by a new organization: the American Liberty League.
    The ALL’s professed purpose was to oppose “radical” political movements. Among its members were the directors of some of the country’s largest corporations—U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Montgomery Ward, Goodyear Tire. Alfred P. Sloan was a member, as were the Du Ponts. E. F. Hutton had joined. So had Elihu Root. Together, they controlled more than $37 billion in assets.
    And they were gunning, Butler explained, for the overthrow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
    Hoover refused to investigate the American Liberty League; he told Roosevelt they’d violated no federal statute. The real reason Ed sat on his hands, Roosevelt knew, was that he would never cross the wealthiest men in the country. He handed that thorny problem directly to Roosevelt. The President tossed it to a private congressional subcommittee charged with investigating Nazi propaganda in the United States. In a closed session, they listened to Major General Butler and others who’d been offered leading roles in the putsch. Word of the plot leaked from the session and circulated in Washington and New York. Somebody wrote a news exposé about it. By the time Roosevelt ran for a second term in 1936, the American Liberty League was totally discredited. Most of its prominent backers had quit.
    But the lesson remained. J. Edgar Hoover had prevented a conspiracy to overthrow the United States government. And he’d come to Roosevelt again, five years later, with evidence of the Nazi money network.
    “The way he sees it, Boss, you owe him something now,” Schwartz surmised.
    “Spies,” the President said thoughtfully. “That’s what he wants, you know—his Bureau boys opening secret files all over the world. And a few spies would be useful in this coming war, God knows. But I hesitate to concentrate all my eggs in Edgar’s basket, Sam.”
    Schwartz’s lips compressed. Hoover’s power grabs were old news. He even wanted Schwartz’s job, and fought an ongoing battle with Henry Morgenthau, the treasury secretary, over Roosevelt’s security detail. By hallowed tradition, guarding the president was the Secret Service’s duty. Hoover thought his Bureau boys should take over the job, and he trotted out the slightest threat to the President as ammunition in his war. If Hoover could convince Roosevelt to place his life in the FBI’s hands, Hoover’s eyes and ears would be right there in the White House: recording the President’s every thought and move. But to Schwartz’s relief, Henry Morgenthau had crushed Hoover’s bid. For now.
    “I think we have to assume that Herr Hitler is as devoted as ever to removing me from office,” Roosevelt was saying. “He’ll barely break stride for the death of a hatcheck girl. Or an ambassador’s son, if it comes to that. Could you get Jack Kennedy on the phone?”
    * * *
    JACK WAS IN THE HANDS of the bellman, his bill settled and his Boston train departing in half an hour, when the President’s call came through. His hat was on his head and his coat slung over his arm; he was feeling well enough this morning to eye the girls walking through the hotel lobby. There was a real looker waiting demurely on a sofa, gloved hands folded over her handbag; a typist for hire, probably, with great legs beneath her narrow business suit.
    “Long-distance call for you, Mr. Kennedy,” the bellman said.
    Jack dropped his hat and coat next to the typist, and walked over to the switchboard operator’s desk. She offered him an earpiece.
    “Jack? Roosevelt here.”
    His pulse accelerated. “Good morning, Mr. President.”
    “I guess your father sailed today?”
    “He did, sir.”
    “We’ll hope for fair winds and following seas,