# Smedley Butler Major General Smedley Butler (1881–1940) was at his retirement the most decorated Marine in U.S. history — two Medals of Honor across a career of interventions in the Philippines, China, Central America, and Haiti — and then became the military establishment's most famous apostate. His 1935 tract *War Is a Racket* distilled the conclusion of his career ("I was a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers... a gangster for capitalism") into the founding text of the war-profiteering critique that runs through the KB's [[Military-Industrial Complex 2.0]] through-line. He is in the vault chiefly as the whistleblower of the [[Business Plot]]: the man the alleged 1933–34 fascist coup conspirators tried to recruit as their veteran-army figurehead, and who instead testified to Congress.