The Assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Vice President Henry Wallace was a plain-speaking farmer’s son from Iowa . . . and he fully expected to be re-nominated for Vice President at the Convention.  The MI-6 agent and children’s author Roald Dahl, became a close ‘friend’ of Henry Wallace but unknown to Wallace, Dahl was spying on him and sending his private papers to Sir William Stephenson at 30, Rockefeller Plaza.

“Marsh had given him a draft of a pamphlet written by his close friend Henry Wallace.  Entitled ‘Our Job in the Pacific,’ it summarised the vice president’s post-war goals, among them international control of the airways, economic assistance for the industrial development of Asia, and the demilitarisation of Japan.  Wallace was also in favour of ‘the emancipation of colonial subjects’ in the British Empire, including India, Burma, and Malaya. Dahl could feel his ‘hair stand on end’ and immediately realised the document’s importance, and knowing that his superiors would want to see it, he excused himself saying that he was going to finish reading it downstairs.

He quickly phoned his BSC contact, explained the urgency of the situation, and convinced him to meet him on the corner as soon as possible.  The agent knew something was up and materialised on the street in front of Marsh’s house in a matter of minutes.

Dahl sneaked out of the house and handed the document through his car window, warning his partner in crime to be back in half an hour or there would be hell to pay. ‘He flashed off,’ recalled Dahl, ‘and I’m around downstairs, near the lavatory door, and if the chap upstairs had come down looking for me saying, ‘have you finished reading it,’ then I’d have been in the lavatory you see, saying ‘I’m sorry I’m caught short.’  As it turned out, the agent went straight to the BSC’s Washington offices to make copies and made it back within the allotted time.  Dahl nipped back out, collected the paper, and no one was the wiser.” Conant ‘The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington’

And so it was that the British spy ring, led by Dahl, made sure that Wallace was not re-nominated for Vice President.  A ferocious fight broke out in Chicago between the supporters of Vice President Wallace and the supporters of James Byrnes.  Everyone seemed to somehow know that Roosevelt would not survive his 4^th term, so his Vice President would then become President.

Byrnes was determined to reach the White House no matter what the cost and the refusal of FDR to make him his VP was a staggering blow to his pride, so he tried to ‘sneak in though the back door,’ via the position of Secretary of State.  He arrived at the convention on the morning of 20^th July, absolutely confident that he would be the next Vice President, and therefore by default the next President of the United States.

Byrnes was to face a big disappointment however, as nothing could persuade the absent Roosevelt to name him as his heir apparent.  Jimmy Byrnes was one of the few people at the Convention who ‘knew’ that a new deadly weapon called the atomic bomb was under development.  This weapon could be a complete ‘game-changer’ and its sole possessor could rule the world, completely unchallenged.

Roosevelt would not pledge his support to either Vice President Wallace or to James Byrnes and so a compromise candidate was ‘chosen,’ named Harry Truman.  By whom he was chosen, remains a moot point, but I am sure that we all have our suspicions, eh, dear reader?  Truman came to the Convention as an ardent Byrnes supporter and he had no real Presidential ambitions, FDR could not or as is more likely, would not, make a decision and so Truman was nominated ‘by default.’

The banksters recruited Bob Hannegan, a crooked political operator from Missouri, to secure the Truman nomination by covertly getting the necessary commitments months in advance from big-city organised-crime groups and their political machines in the North and from conservative Southerners, who made up a substantial block of the Democratic Party.  After he was chosen, the banksters’ massive propaganda machine went into overdrive, peddling lies about how Truman would strengthen the Democratic cause etc. etc.

None of this was true – at all.  Before the convention, Truman was the choice of only 2% of the voters, but Wallace was extremely popular all over the country, and especially so with farmers, who otherwise might have voted Republican. In those now far-off days, small farmers constituted 20% of the population, and they loved Wallace for what he had done for them during the 1930s when he was Secretary of Agriculture.

But FDR would soon be disposed-of anyway and the US, the UK would soon turn full circle with regard to the Soviets and on the surface at least, ‘oppose’ the evil of Communism.  But suddenly something went wrong.  Stalin’s spies in Switzerland discovered the Dulles operation and Stalin sent a telegram of complaint to Roosevelt.  Of course, FDR knew nothing of the Dulles plot, and so in his response he expressed surprise to Stalin that he (Stalin) would distrust him.  But unfortunately for FDR, that was the last action he ever undertook.  Realising that they were in danger of being exposed, the conspirators decided to dispense with FDR immediately.

In fact, the conspirators had started to poison FDR with intermittent doses of arsenic tri-oxide and to add insult to injury they started the rumours about FDR being a dying man.  The first dosage was apparently given to FDR at the Tehran Conference in 1943.  With each subsequent dose, FDR would show the typical symptoms of such poisoning, such as respiratory difficulty and heart trouble, but then he would recover, only to take another turn for the worse when the next dose was administered.   Unfortunately for him, either Roosevelt’s physicians did not suspect poisoning, or they were ‘in’ on the whole plot – most probably the latter.

In April 1944, President Roosevelt was assigned a new doctor, a young Navy lieutenant named Dr. Howard Bruenn at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It was very unusual that the President would be attended-to by such a low ranking officer, but obviously, skill in the use of poison was all that was necessary for Dr. Bruenn to possess in terms of medical prowess.

But once the plotters had made the final decision to kill FDR, they would have to use a poison that would act much more quickly than arsenic, so they settled on cyanide.  Roosevelt ate around noon each day, usually a bowl of gruel and a drink to stimulate his appetite.

On 30^th March 1945, President Roosevelt arrived at his hideaway home in Warm Springs, Georgia, for a 2-week break.  It was the place where his security was most lax.  Dr. Ross T. McIntire was the White House physician in charge of Roosevelt’s health and Dr. McIntire predicted confidently that the President would be a ‘different man’ when he returned to Washington.  When Dr. Bruenn telephoned on Thursday, 12^th April, his report to him was most optimistic…  

“The President had gained back eight of his lost pounds and was feeling so fit that he planned to attend an old-fashioned Georgia barbecue in the afternoon and a minstrel show that evening for the Foundation’s patients.  Every cause for anxiety seemed to have lifted, and given another lazy, restful week, there was no reason why he should not return to Washington on 20^th April to greet the Regent of Iraq.”  ‘McIntire, White House Physician,’ p. 240

Admiral McIntire was in Washington DC at that time, but the President’s personal physician, Dr. Bruenn, was with the President in Warm Springs. Nicholas Robbins (real name Nicholas Kotzubisky) was the driver and photographer for Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a Russian-born artist.  FDR was having his portrait painted by her, when he took a break for lunch.

At twenty minutes to one, Arthur Prettyman, the valet, entered and placed a cup of gruel, a pitcher of cream, and a glass with a green fluid beside the president.  FDR grimaced and without lifting his eyes from his reading, downed the latter, a vile concoction that was supposed to increase his appetite.  FDR then absently took a few mouthfuls of gruel, still absorbed in his papers and then almost immediately complained of a terrible headache. The MI-6 agent Shoumatoff had resumed painting Roosevelt’s portrait when he collapsed.  MI-6 agent Lucy Mercer, a long-time mistress of the President, was also present.

Shoumatoff immediately called his physician, Howard Bruenn but doctors can be deadly and a medical assassination is a lot easier to hide than a bullet in the back of the head.  Bruenn had prepared the deadly cocktail or ‘cup of succession’ for the President and Dr. James Paullin, an Atlanta internist, arrived soon after the poisoning and helped  Bruenn make sure that the President did not undergo a ‘miraculous recovery.’  At 3.35 pm, on the 12^th April 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was pronounced dead.

Bruenn acted surprised that Roosevelt’s lungs had failed.  He had said that the President would die from heart trouble, but his heart kept beating for five minutes after his breathing stopped.  Lung failure and FDR’s other dying symptoms are definitely those indicative of cyanide poisoning, so once again the banksters had discarded another one of their ‘useful idiots’ and made ready to replace him with another.

Shoumatoff, and Mercer were quickly hustled out of the house by the US Secret Service. Shoumatoff returned to New York whilst Mercer went to find her priest to obtain ‘absolution’ for her complicity in the assassination of the President of the United States.  Totally violating Georgia state law, no autopsy was performed on the President, as his body was rushed back to Washington DC for an indecently hasty funeral.  ‘Twas ever thus!  After death by poisoning, a human body soon begins to emit a terrible odour and burial must be done rapidly but of course, the official cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage.  In fact, FDR was buried at the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York and from death to burial took less than three days.

And so, Harry S. Truman was sworn in as the 33^rd President, immediately after the assassination of Roosevelt and James Byrnes was appointed Truman’s Secretary of State.