FDR’s medical records went missing after his death (a fact suspicious in itself), so we may never know, but officially:
Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, which is a type of stroke caused by bleeding in the brain…. (His) death was sudden and unexpected, and it shocked the nation. He was sitting for a portrait at his retreat in Warm Springs when he collapsed and died. …He had been in poor health for some time, suffering from a variety of ailments including high blood pressure, heart disease, and bronchitis. (Wikipedia)
But why did Eleanor Roosevelt suddenly, a decade after FDR’s death, hire a private investigator to probe his doctor’s treatment methods? Why were all of FDR’s medical records lost or stolen from a locked filing cabinet at Bethesda Naval Hospital, which was ironically, the same hospital that covered up so many facts during the JFK autopsy? Are we really expected to believe that FDR died of natural causes at the same time Allied Troops were closing in on Hitler’s bunker? Are we really expected to believe that Roosevelt, Hitler and Mussolini all died within an 18 day span by coincidence? These questions are what inspired Steve Ubaney to dive in and write a book titled ‘Who Murdered FDR?‘ on his amazing discovery of an assassination plot. Many other researchers and historians also now say that FDR was poisoned after their own research.
Ubaney believes the evidence shows that FDR was not solely suffering from the physical difficulties of a man who had contracted polio, a paralytic illness, in 1921 at the age of 39. Ubaney describes a situation in which Roosevelt was the victim of a meticulous, systematic poisoning that began around the time of the Tehran Conference in December 1943.
When examining the suspects, Ubaney writes as an investigator, examining means, motive, and opportunity. No one is off limits. He examines Eleanor Roosevelt’s growing anger over FDR’s trysts with Missy LeHand, his personal secretary, and Lucy Mercer, Eleanor’s social secretary. FDR was so fond of LeHand that he included her in his will after she suffered a stroke. Mercer was with FDR in Warm Springs when he died. FDR had refused his wife’s request for a divorce, leaving her fastened to a loveless marriage.
Harry Hopkins, FDR’s chief diplomatic advisor and friend, is the book’s most interesting character. Long treated by Roosevelt biographers as the heroic architect of New Deal implementation, Ubaney details Hopkins’s ties to Soviet intelligence, going so far as to label him “a Soviet spy and operative.” Hopkins had always been closer to the Soviets than many American diplomats had wished him to be. When FDR was going through a more difficult stint of immobility, Hopkins would act as the mouthpiece and legs of the president.
Ubaney writes that Hopkins was “the most important man that no one ever knew.”
Elizabeth Schoumatoff and Nicholas Robbins were also present in Warm Springs when FDR died. Schoumatoff, a friend of Mercer, was a Russian-born painter tasked with capturing FDR’s likeness in his fourth term. Robbins was a photographer and longtime friend of Schoumatoff. Both shared Russian backgrounds, ties to high-level anti-FDR financiers, and a presence in Warm Springs.
When Ubaney discusses the practicalities of poisoning, characters reminiscent of the board game Clue enter the story. There is Arthur Prettyman, one of FDR’s personal valets, Howell Crim, the chief usher of the White House, and the cooks who prepare Roosevelt’s daily meals, about which FDR had increasingly complained throughout his presidency.
After his death, many of FDR’s medical records at Bethesda were either lost or stolen. We know this because Mrs. Roosevelt had her own suspicions approximately 10 years later. She wanted a re-evaluation of her husband’s medical history and the records of his death. She soon discovered that what was not locatable could not be re-evaluated.
Though Roosevelt was only 63 when he died, he appeared much older, as many onlookers observed. The severe decline began after Tehran and then seemingly hit bottom after the Yalta Conference of February 1945. Ubaney points out that the closer FDR traveled in proximity to the Russian delegation, the worse his health deteriorated.
Though the lions of the Second World War were gone or removed from office, Stalin did not have complete autonomy. He had underestimated both Truman’s resolve and corporate America’s desire to control new markets. What he may have done, however, is end the fourth term of FDR prematurely. Ubaney admits that Stalin is the puppetmaster in the plot. The remainder of Who Murdered FDR? answers the questions of the players, their roles, and the strategies used to poison an American president.
Decorated Air Force officer Colonel Fletcher Prouty says that Stalin advised presidential son Elliott Roosevelt that the “Churchill gang” had his father murdered, because they were afraid FDR’s postwar plans would destroy British influence around the globe. Was he pointing the finger away from himself or was it a conspiracy of the cabal of bankers in an effort to move a chess piece? Stalin said the murder was accomplished by a program of poisoning begun at the famous Yalta Conference and perhaps continued at Warm Springs. Emanuel Josephson, author of The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, points out that one of Roosevelt’s closest aides, General Edwin Watson, became suddenly ill and died on the return from Yalta, the implication being that he had been poisoned as well.
An article on falsificationofhistory.co.uk summarizes the conspiracy:
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 materialized 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 4th 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 20th 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 organized-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. Realizing 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 rumors 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 30th 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, 12th 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 20th 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 12th 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 odor and burial must be done rapidly but of course, the official cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. 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 33rd President, immediately after the assassination of Roosevelt and James Byrnes was appointed Truman’s Secretary of State.
His body turned black within hours of his death, an alleged result of arsenic poisoning. Although Georgia law demanded an autopsy, as in the case of JFK twenty years later, Roosevelt’s body was whisked out of the state without the legally mandated autopsy by state officials. That’s not an unsubstantiated allegation; that did happen. But that it was done for some nefarious reason is unsubstantiated.
From an archived article by historian, author, and respected researcher Webster Tarpley, he writes:
FDR knew Stalin, Molotov, and the other Soviet leaders well enough to know that they were not a humanitarian society. He knew of Stalin’s butchery of Russians, Ukrainians, and others. He was aware of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and what had gone into it. Nevertheless, FDR had to be a realist. Given the reality of Stalin’s Soviet Union, would it be confrontation or cooperation? FDR chose cooperation, and the hope of partnership.
During the weeks leading up to FDR’s death, Harriman had made two separate attempts to return to Washington in order to give the President his patented “Stalin can’t be trusted” anti-Soviet briefing. Twice FDR had made sure that the State Department refused. He simply didn’t want to hear it. As soon as Harriman got the news that Roosevelt was dead, he fired off a cable to the State Department with his third request to return to Washington. This request, too, was turned down. Harriman’s presence was required in Moscow.
According to Elliott Roosevelt, Stalin was convinced that FDR had been poisoned by “the Churchill gang,” whom he also accused of having attempted to poison himself, Stalin. According to this account, Stalin had wanted Gromyko to inspect FDR’s body for evidence of poisoning, but had, to his great anger, been denied the opportunity by Eleanor Roosevelt. [Parade Magazine, Feb. 9, 1986] Stalin’s reaction to events following FDR’s death must be read through this lens, and to his probable surmise that whoever succeeded FDR as president would be a tool of FDR’s assassins.
Early on April 13, Harriman met with Stalin, who wanted to know every detail possible about how FDR had died. Harriman launched a successful ploy to get what he wanted – the chance to assume personal control of Harry Truman. Harriman hinted to Stalin that if Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov were to go to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco, Molotov could also go to Washington to size up the new US president and learn his intentions towards the USSR. Stalin agreed to this proposal. Harriman further put a US aircraft at Molotov’s disposal for the trip. With Molotov now going to the US, the protocol of the situation was now changed; it was usual for an ambassador to accompany a foreign minister on a visit to the ambassador’s home country. The State Department now gave Harriman permission to come to Washington.
Although he was in a hurry to leave, Harriman still found time for a Parthian shot against Stalin. He raised the question of US airmen held by Stalin at Poltava. This led to a clash, much to the dismay of Gen. Patrick Hurley, an FDR loyalist. “On the way back to Spaso House, Hurley exclaimed that he had been afraid Harriman would come to blows with Stalin during their contretemps over the grounding of the Poltava airmen. [Harriman, p. 446] Such fisticuffs would have delighted Churchill.
Webster Tarpley discusses the assassination of FDR below:
Additional sources:
