Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sought to suspend habeas corpus
12/22/2007 @ 12:52 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
According to a newly declassified document, the New York Times reports, a
plan by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sought to suspend habeas corpus
during wartime, with the intention of imprisoning thousands of Americans
indefinitely.
Hoover's plan was submitted to the White House twelve days after the start
of the Korean War. Under the plan, approximately 12,000 people deemed as
"potentially dangerous" to national security, 97% of whom were American
citizens, would have been rounded up and sent to military prisons without
due process.
#
EXCERPTS:
The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the
Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel comprised of one
judge and two citizens. But the hearings "will not be bound by the rules of
evidence," [Hoover's] letter noted.
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."
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.
#
The entire New York Times article can be read HERE.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/washington/23habeas.html
.
|
