A plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans

[Stout1]

Tweethttps://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/wa...gg&exprod=digg

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.”


After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges. In September 2006, Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an “unlawful enemy combatant.”
But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the right of American citizens to seek a writ of habeas corpus. This month the court heard arguments on whether about 300 foreigners held at Guantánamo Bay had the same rights. It is expected to rule by next summer.


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.

[solidground]

Tweetmilitary comissions act 2006 =rip habeas corpus, worse then the patriot act.

[PL456]

Tweet1950??? IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!!!! IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!!!!! IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!!!!!

See, guys, what I have been saying is that during extreme times, extreme measures are called for. The men being held in gitmo are suspects in the planning or carrying out of terrorist activities against our country. These people are NOT american citizens, thusly, they do NOT enjoy the same rights we do. Habeus Corpus is something found in the US constitution. I am quite sure you wont find H.C. in the taliban's little constitution, China's constitution, north korea, or iran's govt's constitutions. The US constitution is for the US and its citizens. I do not want these thugs that were picked up on some sand dune in iraq or afghanistan or where ever clogging up our domestic and supreme courts for years with their claims that they didnt get the correct edition of the koran and the right sized prayer rug. I think they should get a military tribunal, representation by a lawyer (provided for by you and me) and justice by those means. This is a military action, they were arrested by the military, let the military try them.

Oh, by the way, I hear the average gitmo detainee gains about 20 pounds, eats better than they ever have in their lives, sees a doctor and dentist if needed (some for the first time in their lives) as well as enjoys all the religious activities that they are accustomed to. The islamic fascists stirred up this hornet's nest when, as a last straw, they took aim against our largest city and took out 3,000 AMERICANS. Cry me a river.

[solidground]

Tweet^read the military commisions act 2006 and find where it exempts american citizens from being an accused terrorist, then read the patriot act and see how it defines a terrorist.

[Klash]

Tweet

See, guys, what I have been saying is that during extreme times, extreme measures are called for. The men being held in gitmo are suspects in the planning or carrying out of terrorist activities against our country. These people are NOT american citizens, thusly, they do NOT enjoy the same rights we do. Habeus Corpus is something found in the US constitution. I am quite sure you wont find H.C. in the taliban's little constitution, China's constitution, north korea, or iran's govt's constitutions. The US constitution is for the US and its citizens. I do not want these thugs that were picked up on some sand dune in iraq or afghanistan or where ever clogging up our domestic and supreme courts for years with their claims that they didnt get the correct edition of the koran and the right sized prayer rug. I think they should get a military tribunal, representation by a lawyer (provided for by you and me) and justice by those means. This is a military action, they were arrested by the military, let the military try them.

Oh, by the way, I hear the average gitmo detainee gains about 20 pounds, eats better than they ever have in their lives, sees a doctor and dentist if needed (some for the first time in their lives) as well as enjoys all the religious activities that they are accustomed to. The islamic fascists stirred up this hornet's nest when, as a last straw, they took aim against our largest city and took out 3,000 AMERICANS. Cry me a river.

How do you know people detained and imprisoned without trial are not American citizens, they are not given the chance to face their accusers, they are not given the chance to provide evidence that they are American citizens. This is why the "war on terror" is so dangerous. Once your labeled a terrorist - your phucked. You never consider at any time, that by error or by malice that you or someone you love could ever be defined as terrorist.

Think of this: the **** party went from nothing to controlling Germany in 14 years. So a couple decades from now, who knows who will have power of this country and how they will choose to use the power given to them by previous Presidents. Maybe it's someone who hates Christians, and he makes a list, like Hoover did, of people he despises and the people on that list are your loved ones and they are imprisoned. Now, you and your family have no recourse; they will remain in prison indefinitely. In this hypothetical do you really care about how well people tell you they have it in prison?

It's death by a million cuts. America isn't going to be defeated by an outside source. It's going to be brought down from the inside by millions of little laws that take our freedoms away slowly and gradually, until we don't have a method of fighting back.