How Does Samuel Untermeyer Fit into the Scheme?

This entry is part 1 of 8 in the series The Man Behind Scofield: A Look at Samuel Untermyer

Scofield was “taken under the wing of Samuel Untermeier (Untermeyer) (Untermyer)…” The following is excerpted from The Hidden Tyranny, by Benjamin H. Freedman.

President Wilson Blackmailed

Shortly after President Wilson’s first inauguration, he received a visitor in the White House by the name of Mr. Samuel Untermeyer. Mr. Untermeyer was a prominent New York city attorney who contributed generously to the National Democratic committee that installed President Wilson in the White House in Washington in the 1912 election. Mr. Untermeyer was a very welcome guest and President Wilson was very glad to welcome him to the White House. They had met before during the campaign.

Mr. Untermeyer surprised President wilson that he had been retained to bring a breach of promise action against President Wilson. Mr. Untermeyer informed President Wilson that his client was willing to accept $40,000 in lieu of commencing the breach of promise action. Mr. Untermeyer’s client was the former wife of a Professor at Princeton University at the same time President Wilson was a professor at princeton University.

Mr. Untermeyer produced a packet of letters from his pocket, written by President Wilson to his colleague’s wife when they were neighbors at Princeton University. These letters established the illicit relationship which had existed between President Wilson and the wife of his colleague neighbor. He had written many endearing letters to her, many of which she never destroyed. President Wilson acknowledged his authorship of the letters after examining a few of them.

President Wilson left Princeton University to become the Governor of New Jersey. In 1912 he was elected to his first term as president of the United States. In the interim, President Wilson’s former sweetheart had divorced her husband and married again. Her second husband resident in Washington with a grown son who was in the employ of one of the leading banks in Washington.

Mr. Untermeyer explained to President Wilson that his former sweetheart was very fond of her husband’s son. He explained that this son was in financial trouble and suddenly needed $40,000, as he told the story, to liquidate a pressing liability to the bank for which he worked. The details are not relevant here except that the son needed the $40,000 badly and quickly. President wilson’s former sweetheart thought that Wilson was the logical prospect for that $40,000 to help her husband’s son.

President Wilson quickly set Mr. Untermeyer’s mind at rest by informing him that he did not have $40,000 available for any purpose. Mr. Untermeyer suggested that President Wilson should think the matter over and said he would return in a few days to discuss the matter further. Mr. Untermeyer used the next few days in Washington looking into the credibility of the son’s story about his pressing need for $40,000 to liquidate a pressing liability. He learned that the son’s story was not misrepresented in any way to his mother by her son.

Mr. Untermeyer returned to President Wilson a few days later as they had agreed. President Wilson did not hesitate to inform Mr. Untermeyer that he did not have the $40,000 to pay his blackmailer. President Wilson appeared irritated. Mr. Untermeyer considered the matter a few moments and then volunteered a solution to President Wilson for his problem.

Mr. Untermeyer volunteered to give President Wilson’s former sweetheart the $40,000 out of his own pocket on one condition: that Wilson promise Untermeyer to appoint to the first vacancy on the United States Supreme court a nominee to be recommended to Wilson by Untermeyer.

Without further talk, President Wilson accepted Mr. Untermeyer’s generous offer and Mr. Untermeyer promptly paid the $40,000 in currency to president Wilson’s former sweetheart. The contemplated breach of promise suit was never heard of after that. Mr. Untermeyer retained in his possession permanently the packet of letters to insure against any similar attempt at some future time. [or could it be the letters were held by Untermeyer to further blackmail him should Wilson ‘step out of line’? jp]

President Wilson was most grateful to Mr. Untermeyer for everything he was doing to solve his problem. Mr. Untermeyer was a man of great wealth. The law firm in New York of which he was the leading partner, Messrs. Guggenheim, Untermeyer and Marshall, is still today one of the nation’s most prominent and most prosperous law firms. Mr. Untermeyer organized the Bethlehem Steel Company for his friend, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, who resigned from the United States Steel Company to form his company in competition with it.

Justice Brandeis — The Pay Off

As anyone might reasonably suspect, Mr. Untermeyer must have had something in mind when he agreed to pay President Wilson’s former sweetheart $40,000 out of his own pocket. He paid the money out of his own pocket in the hope that it might bring to pass a dream close to his heart — a Talmudist (“Jew”) on the United States Supreme Court on which none had ever served.

The day soon arrived when President Willson was presented with the necessity of appointing a new member of the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Untermeyer recommended Louis Dembitz Brandeis for the vacancy, who was immediately appointed by Wilson. President Wilson and Justice Brandeis became unusually intimate friends. Justice Brandeis knew the circumstances of his appointment to the Supreme Court by President Wilson.

In 1914 Justice Brandeis was the most prominent and most politically influential of all Zionists in the United States. As a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Brandeis was in a better position than ever before to be of service to Talmudists (“Jews”) both at home and abroad. The first opportunity to perform a great service for his Zionist followers soon became available to Brandeis.

Justice Brandeis volunteered his opinion to president Wilson that the sinking of the S.S. Sussex by a German submarine in the English Channel with the loss of lives of United States citizens justified the declaration of war against Germany by the United States. Relying to a great extent upon the legal opinion of Justice Brandeis, President Wilson addressed both houses of Congress on April 2, 1917. He appealed to Congress to declare war against Germany and they did on April 7, 1917.

After the October 1916 agreement was concluded between the British War Cabinet and the World Zionist Organization, the Talmudists throughout the world were hopeful that an international incident would soon occur to justify a declaration of war against Germany by the United States.

The declaration of war against Germany by the United States guaranteed the Talmudists throughout the world that Palestine was to be turned over to them upon the defeat of Germany. The defeat of Germany was certain if the United States could be railroaded into the war in Europe as Great Britain’s ally.

[end excerpt]

Freedman quotes Winston Churchill (Scribner’s Commentator in 1936) as saying:

“America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war, the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917. If we had made peace there would have been no collapse of Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty…. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ‘isms’ wouldn’t be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917 it would have saved over one million British, French, American and other lives”.

The Hidden Tyranny, p.15
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