A letter from defendant Frank W. Clark, chairman of the National Liberty Party, revealing that his organization planned to provoke a civil war against the Jews was among the 160 exhibits admitted in evidence at the mass sedition trial today. The documents were seized, according to government testimony, by the F.B.I. at Bund headquarters in Los Angeles.
Clark wrote in a series of letters to L. Frey, secretary of the western states convention of the anti-Communist Federation: “You people of Los Angeles have over 70,000 Jews to deal with and twice as many Communists, and the Pacific Ocean is a pretty good place for them to start swimming or go down.”
The defendant predicted that “before the battle is over, we will have cleaned up and cleaned out this thing we call government, having driven all enemies into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans — or else bury them here, as we cannot deport them, as we have finally found out in the twenty years struggle for immigrant legislation.”
Other documents showed similar sentiments on the part of other defendants. A document bearing the signature of Robert E. Edmondson, another of those on trial for conspiring to incite the armed forces to disloyalty and mutiny, listed Jewish names of reserve officers who were called out at Fort Dix, N.J., in 1938 for active duty as instructors of 2,000 citizen military training corps students. Edmondson commented: “Fine American names in the United States Army — which may be called upon to shoot down patriotic vigilantes trying to rescue, the Republic from Jewish Communism.” He added: “Did Germany’s Hitler stand for that? No. He disfranchised the Jews. And Mussolini is now evidently following in his footsteps.”
Several letters from Lois M. Lafayette Washburn, national secretary of the National Liberty Party, inform H. Diebel of the Aryan Book Store that “our leader,” Mr. Frank W. Clark, and his cohorts bring us fifty-five years experience with evidence and reports of findings in secret investigations of the worlds worst criminal Jews, against whom drastic action is planned.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
