This is the second of two Flashbacks on John Bugas, an FBI official in Detroit during World War II who became a Ford Motor Co. executive. Part one ran last Sunday, Jan. 21.
The showdown between John Bugas and Harry Bennett was years in the making.
Bugas was the former head of the Detroit FBI office. Bennett ruled Ford Motor Co. through intimidation, violence and clever manipulation of the aging Henry Ford. Their final confrontation came in September 1945, with each man pulling a handgun. No shots were fired, but Bennett’s reign of terror ended that day.
Bugas helped save the company on behalf of the Ford family, and he soon became Henry Ford II’s right-hand man.
Bennett joined the Ford Motor Co. in 1918 as an artist. He gained Henry Ford’s confidence by catering to his every dictate, while undermining the leadership of Edsel Ford, the company president and Henry’s only child.
In the 1930s, Bennett created the Ford Service Department, an armed squad of ex-cops, paroled convicts, gangsters and former athletes, to spy on employees and disrupt union organizers. In May 1937, his squad of goons assaulted UAW organizers ― the famous Battle of the Overpass, in which Walter Reuther got what he called “the worst licking I’ve ever taken.”