There are always at least two sides to every story. Please watch the clip and then read Douglas Reed's take on Long.

In a Southern State, Louisiana, arose a politico of Mr. Roosevelt's type. Mr.Huey Long, a young demagogue with a fleshy face and curly hair from a poor hillbilly home, grew popular (like Mr. Wilson and Mr. Roosevelt) by attacking "the interests" (in his particular countryside, the oil interests in general and Standard Oil in particular). The idol of the poor whites, he was elected governor in 1928 and at once tried to raise money for building schoolhouses by putting a tax on oil, whereon at the opening of the Louisiana Legislature one Rabbi Walter Peiser refused to invoke a blessing, calling him "an unworthy governor".

Mr. Long grew more popular and was elected to the United States Senate where (March 1935) he devoted "a large part" of a speech to "an attack on Mr. Bernard Baruch", in whom he apparently saw the supreme representative of the "interests" (about the only charge never made against Mr. Long, who had many Jewish associates, was that he was "anti-semitic"). Mr. Long was becoming a force in the land and wrote a book called My First Week in the White House, containing illustrations which showed Mr. Roosevelt, looking much like the Roosevelt of Yalta, listening humbly to the wisdom of a hale and ebullient Huey Long.He set out to undo Mr. Roosevelt by outdoing him in Mr. Roosevelt's especial skill: lavish spending and lavish promises. He did this in an ingenious way (he was possibly trickier than even Mr. Roosevelt). Mr. Long, with his "Share the Wealth" and "Every Man a King" programme, controlled the political machine in Louisiana. When the Roosevelt money began to flow into the States (for expenditure on all manner of crisis "projects", and incidentally on votes) Mr. Long calmly diverted it to his own similar ends. He forced through the Louisiana Legislature a law prohibiting local authorities from receiving any Washington money without the consent of a Louisiana State Board. As he controlled this board, he intercepted the cornucopian stream and the money was spent to enhance his, not Mr. Roosevelt's voting strength. He did with public money what Mr. Roosevelt was doing, but for his own political account.

In 1935 Mr. Roosevelt's second election campaign loomed ahead. Suddenly his advisers became aware that Mr. Long was popular far beyond his native Louisiana; he was a national figure. The Democratic National Committee "was astonished when a secret poll revealed that Long on a third-party ticket could poll between three and four million votes and that his Share The Wealth plan had eaten deeply into the Democratic strength in the industrial and farm States" (Mr. John T. Flynn).

Therefore Mr. Long, although he could not have become president at that time, certainly could have prevented Mr. Roosevelt's re-election, and the ruling few suddenly beheld a disturber of their regime. However, as Mr. Flynn says, "Fate had gone Democratic and remained so"; on September 8, 1935 Mr. Long was shot in the Louisiana State Capitol by a young Jew, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss. The motive will never be known because Dr. Weiss, who might have explained it, was shot by Mr. Long's tardy bodyguard.

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The political effect was c1ear; Mr. Roosevelt's re-election was ensured. The usual suggestion of "a madman" was conveyed to the public mind and various other motives, not entailing insanity, also were suggested. No public investigation was made, as in the cases of other political assassinations of the last hundred years, in respect of which investigation was denied or curtailed. Such investigations as have been made (for instance, in the cases of President Lincoln, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and King Alexander of Yugoslavia) have never supported the theory (always put forward) of the lonely "madman", but have revealed thorough organization with powerful support. The removal of Mr. Long determined the pattern of events for a decade, so that it was as important inits effects as the murders of more highly-placed men.

Mr. Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936. His allotted task evidently was to reinvolve his country in the "foreign entanglements" of Mr. House and Mr.Wilson, and, like Mr. Wilson, he promised from election to election to keep it out of these.

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Mr. Long had foretold his assassination in July, saying in the Senate that enemies bad planned his death with "one man, one gun, and one bullet" as the medium. He said that a dictograph, concealed in a New Orleans hotel room where his "enemies" had met, recorded this conversation. A contemporary writer who claims to have been present at the meeting, Mr. Hodding Carter, says, "The 'plotting' was limited to such hopefully expressed comments as, 'I wish somebody would kill the . . . .' ". p318-320 "Controversy of Zion"

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