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| Home Front: Politix |
| 1950 - Plan To Arrest 12,000 Disloyal Americans |
| 2007-12-22 |
| A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage." The F.B.I would "apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under "a master warrant attached to a list of names" provided by the bureau. The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. "The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States," he wrote. “In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said. Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today. The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.” Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War. Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow. So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote. The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted. The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals. Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people. Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs. In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #6 Let's give it a shot - NOW! Let's start with the transzis! borgboy |
| Posted by: borgboy 2007-12-22 20:00 |
| #5 So now it's 12 MILLION! Should of started earlier. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2007-12-22 18:44 |
| #4 Sorry, moose, after FDR got in office, the penetration of the government by FOSU (friends of the Soviet Union) was complete. Look at the reaction to McCarthy's accusations, which have been borne out over time. If he hadn't been such an amateur and dipso, things might have turned out differently, but I doubt it. It is going to take a long time to remove this poison from the body politic. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-12-22 17:47 |
| #3 You have to appreciate the irony that if Truman had taken Hoover's advice, there would probably be a lot fewer raving anti-American Moonbats walking around today. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-12-22 17:32 |
| #2 "Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today. The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory." The constitution does NOT say a word about the rights of foreigners held outside the US who have actied illegally by international treaty (Illegal Combatants according to the Geneva Conventions). More drivel attempting to give US constitutional rights to everyone on the planet. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2007-12-22 15:59 |
| #1 i noticed the link to gitmo... /puke |
| Posted by: Abu do you love 2007-12-22 15:55 |