Hoover planned mass jailings in the 1950's

[CaptainChewbacca]

No link, but an interesting article:

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950
By TIM WEINER
The New York Times
December 23, 2007

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.

Honestly, it sounds a bit like the premise of one of the worlds visited in the first or second season of Sliders. I wonder how seriously it was considered.

[[R_H]]

Here's the BBC article.

[Flagg]

Sounds just like what happened during WW2, which was only 5 years earlier.

[The Guid]

Well it looks like we have a situation of national emergency and people want to suspend civil rights. Just imagine what could have happened if he didn't manage to detain all 12000 of those suspects he wanted arrested... absolutely nothing apparently. Puts a bit of Verfremdungseffekt onto the modern day.

[Cosmic Average]

It kinda reminds me of Harry TUrtledove's humorous short-story, [http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/Joe_Steele_(story)]Joe Steele[/url], where Stalin was born and raised in the US instead of the Soviet Union, eventually becoming President-For-Life.. J. Edgar Hoover was one of his most loyal supporters.

[FTeik]

"America, the land of the free ... ."

[Sea Skimmer]

Not surprising. In 1950 a fair portion of the US government was convinced that the Korean War was an attempt by the supposedly monolithic communist bloc to bog down the US military, prior to launching a world wide offensive. We had to be ready to preemptively throw all the commie spies and saboteurs into prison, and the reality is the Soviets did have an extensive network of spies in the US at the time.

I’m sure Hoover planned an awful lot of other mass roundups too, and no doubt had people continuously updating all encompassing lists for ever possible crisis.

[Darth Massacrus]

The article didn't mention that Abraham Lincoln also suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War and most certainly did have suspicious persons detained and jailed indefinitely. Anyways, it's good that Hoover actually wasn't allowed to detain the 12000 he wanted to.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Who gives a fuck? That's obviously covered under the Constitution under "REBELLION or invasion"; Korea under the UN in an undeclared war does not cut it.

[andrewgpaul]

I think the point was, Hoover wanted to lock these people up because they might rebel, not because they actually were. IIRC, there's not been a rebellion in the USA since the 1860s.

[andrewgpaul]

edit; misread Primus' post. Didn't realise you were replying to Darth Massacrus, sorry.

[K. A. Pital]

Didn't Hoover also write a preface to "That Godless Communism" which urged Christianized America to prepare "hearts and minds for battle"? Heh.

[Flagg]

I just find it funny the reaction this is getting. I mean at the time I'm sure it seemed like a reasonable thing considering the fact that over 120,000 people had been rounded up and interred for almost 4 years the previous decade.

[CmdrWilkens]

The article didn't mention that Abraham Lincoln also suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War and most certainly did have suspicious persons detained and jailed indefinitely. Anyways, it's good that Hoover actually wasn't allowed to detain the 12000 he wanted to.

Aside from the fact, as IP pointed out, that in the case of Lincoln there was an ongoing REBELLION which would allow for a constitutional suspension of habeas corpus we have one more facet. Lincoln did not suspend HC universally. Rather the order to suspend was limited to the border states and in the terrritory which was returned to Federal control until deemed ready for return to civilian authroities. Lincoln's suspension was volatile and controversial almost splitting his cabinet and yet it was limited in scope and highly targeted to affect those areas most seriously affected by the ongoing rebellion. Hoover's plan was for a massive roundup without anything even coming close to the pretext of imminent threat and was predicated upon the flimsiest evidence aside from "the evil communists are everywhere and will attack as one."

[Adrian Laguna]

The Constitution does not give the President the right suspend Habeas Corpus under any circumstances. That power is given to Congress, and limited to cases of rebellion and invasion. Did Lincoln suspend Habeas Corpus during the Civil War on his own authority, or did he have Congress do it? If it's the former, he overstepped his bounds and acted unconstutionally, if the latter, then it was quite justified.

[Glocksman]

If a war between the US and USSR *had* broken out, rounding up the CPUSA would have been an action somewhat more akin to what Lincoln did during the Civil War (and thus constitutionally justifiable), as the CPUSA leadership and many of the hardcore 'rank and file' were loyal to (and the party was secretly financed by) the USSR and felt no loyalty to the USA.

That said, given Hoover's predilection for seeing Commies everywhere, I'm sure quite a few people who'd never even consider joining the CPUSA and whose only 'crime' was being liberal would have been incarcerated as well.

All in all, it wouldn't have been a good time for American democracy.

[CJvR]

Well there were a rather long list of treason and backstabbing fresh in the minds of world leaders at that time, Quissling, Kuusinen, various eastern Europe "leaders" who were busy selling out their nations to Stalin and the deranged scientists who though handing the A-Bomb to one of the most murderous psycotic regimes in human history.

IIRC we drafted most reds during WWII and sent them deep into the forrest to chop wood and the ones we missed still managed some treason.

[K. A. Pital]

various eastern Europe "leaders" who were busy selling out their nations to Stalin

Like Tito?

the deranged scientists who though handing the A-Bomb to one of the most murderous psycotic regimes in human history

Which never used it, despite another "most liberal regime" in human history planning to use atomic weapons en masse against it without any retaliatory ability from the USSR and continued to plan this until the USSR aquired atomic weapons first and delivery capacity later.

Perhaps some people just don't understand that unilateral atomic bomb use and one-country delivery capability is bad, because it doesn't provide any counterbalance and makes said country in essense an unchecked hegemon of the world.

[Flagg]

various eastern Europe "leaders" who were busy selling out their nations to Stalin

Like Tito?

the deranged scientists who though handing the A-Bomb to one of the most murderous psycotic regimes in human history

Which never used it, despite another "most liberal regime" in human history planning to use atomic weapons en masse against it without any retaliatory ability from the USSR and continued to plan this until the USSR aquired atomic weapons first and delivery capacity later.

Perhaps some people just don't understand that unilateral atomic bomb use and one-country delivery capability is bad, because it doesn't provide any counterbalance and makes said country in essense an unchecked hegemon of the world.

Which is only bad if that country is not the United States. I mean duh.

[K. A. Pital]

Which is only bad if that country is not the United States.

Yeah. No other country can do that!

Mass repression is only okay if it's in America! Seriously, what kind of whacked-up logic is that? I guess the same one which Bush uses to excuse his torture network in Eastern Europe and "cooperation" with Middle Eastern torture facilities... because when the right guys do bad stuff, they do it right.

Not to mention that CPUSA was so marginal that it didn't really warrant any reason to attack it. Public revolution which would overthrow the US and install a Soviet leader? From the CPUSA? Pfft...

[Flagg]

Which is only bad if that country is not the United States.

Yeah. No other country can do that!

Mass repression is only okay if it's in America! Seriously, what kind of whacked-up logic is that? I guess the same one which Bush uses to excuse his torture network in Eastern Europe and "cooperation" with Middle Eastern torture facilities... because when the right guys do bad stuff, they do it right.

Not to mention that CPUSA was so marginal that it didn't really warrant any reason to attack it. Public revolution which would overthrow the US and install a Soviet leader? From the CPUSA? Pfft...

As the venerable (and probably venereal) Adolph Ghouliani has said: "It's only torture if we aren't the ones doing it!".

[Glocksman]

Which is only bad if that country is not the United States.

Yeah. No other country can do that!

Mass repression is only okay if it's in America! Seriously, what kind of whacked-up logic is that? I guess the same one which Bush uses to excuse his torture network in Eastern Europe and "cooperation" with Middle Eastern torture facilities... because when the right guys do bad stuff, they do it right.

Not to mention that CPUSA was so marginal that it didn't really warrant any reason to attack it. Public revolution which would overthrow the US and install a Soviet leader? From the CPUSA? Pfft...

I recall reading somewhere (probably in a book on the Venona decrypts or the one about the CPUSA leader who was an undercover FBI agent for decades) that the real value to the USSR of the hardcore membership wasn't that they would stage a revolution, but that they would act as saboteurs and as a support network for NKVD/KGB and GRU agents being sent in as needed.

Which never used it, despite another "most liberal regime" in human history planning to use atomic weapons en masse against it without any retaliatory ability from the USSR and continued to plan this until the USSR aquired atomic weapons first and delivery capacity later.

And yet during that most vulnerable period for the USSR, we *didn't* bomb it to extinction.
The argument can be made that the whole US/USSR path to the cold war was based on a 'cycle of fear' (US worries about Russia's intentions and discovery of extensive espionage networks and the USSR's fears about the US A-Bomb) that fed on itself until paranoia was the result.

Looking back on it with hindsight, we can see that the fears on both sides were greatly exaggerated.

[K. A. Pital]

...but that they would act as saboteurs and as a support network for NKVD/KGB and GRU agents being sent in as needed.

Sabotage accusations are the hardest to prove. The USSR repressed people on the whim of a few neighbors who saw their fellow worker as a "saboteur". Now you rationalize the same in the US? Extrajudicial repression with "troikas" to determine who is a "commieh saboteur"? Doesn't that sound like a copypaste from Soviet "antisabotage" methods?

[Glocksman]

...but that they would act as saboteurs and as a support network for NKVD/KGB and GRU agents being sent in as needed.

Sabotage accusations are the hardest to prove. The USSR repressed people on the whim of a few neighbors who saw their fellow worker as a "saboteur". Now you rationalize the same in the US? Extrajudicial repression with "troikas" to determine who is a "commieh saboteur"? Doesn't that sound like a copypaste from Soviet "antisabotage" methods?

I'm not defending it, I'm just pointing out (as you say) how and why such things were proposed.

However given the discovery of the USSR's massive intelligence networks (or 'spy rings' if you prefer the terminology of the time) in the immediate postwar period that were used against a putative ally during the war, the motive becomes easier to understand, if not condone.

[Darth Massacrus]

The Constitution does not give the President the right suspend Habeas Corpus under any circumstances. That power is given to Congress, and limited to cases of rebellion and invasion. Did Lincoln suspend Habeas Corpus during the Civil War on his own authority, or did he have Congress do it? If it's the former, he overstepped his bounds and acted unconstutionally, if the latter, then it was quite justified.

Lincoln did so under his own authority, and later got approval from Congress.