Posted on 04/04/2008 11:24:46 AM PDT by SpaceBar
After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia.
The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret.
Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s.
He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence to whether these arrests actually occurred in practice or not.
Changes of laws due to “exceptional circumstances”
Hoover asked Truman to suspend the century old right to a defence in court that protected the individual citizens from unlawful arrest (better known as Habeas Corpus). Hoover planned on breaking this law and putting 12,000 people in military and federal prisons. The list of suspects took years to make, and the moment came to implement the plans of illegal confinement. The American Congress authorised the law in July 1950 after the Korea was broke out.
Truman said that an exceptional situation was at hand, and that his changes must be implemented.
Today, those secret documents no longer carry the marking of state secret, and the public has had an opportunity to see their contents. As mentioned, 12 thousand people were in question, of which 97 percent were American citizens.
(more at link...)
I am reminded of the punchline of that old joke about a busload of lawyers going over a cliff.
If the President suspends habeas corpus, as Hoover asked him to, it would in no way be breaking the law since it is a presidential prerogative explicitly enshrined in the Constitution.
12,000? What’s the point? It’s a drop in the bucket.
I am betting that it would be an entirely different world we would be living in today if he did it though...
I would wonder if J. Edgar would have led the charge in drag or not?
funny, considering your tagline. the president has NO authority to suspend Habeaus Corpus. Congress can ONLY overturn Habeaus during a rebellion or an invasion
But nobody stopped Lincoln when he did it.
If he had done it and gotten rid of them, we might not have 100 million plus traitors today.
A good place to start would be outside the DNC convention. Just wrap the place in razor wire, put guards on the doors and be done with it ;-)
All these references can be traced to a single page in a single book by BBC journalist Tony Summers in which he claims that an unidentified source told Summers that the source had twice seen Hoover in drag.
Summers also believes that American right-wingers plotted to assassinate President Kennedy.
JEHoover should have at least followed up on Joe McCarthy’s work and chased the traitors out of the country. That would have been a good thing!
“I would wonder if J. Edgar would have led the charge in drag or not?”
Hoover was not a cross-dresser.
It was made up out of thin air, and became a part of common knowledge through the efforts of the media and it’s cultural siblings.
Since it is the responsibility of the executive to provide a writ of habeas corpus, the suspension of the writ would entail the executive not providing it - but not providing it only in the circumstances above described.
“paranoia” ?????
You call it paranoia after those people have carried us so deep into Socialism that we can’t even drill for oil on our own land or build nuclear power plants????? You call that paranoia?
They’ve taken over our government so that it won’t even maintain our borders, and you call it paranoia?????
They’ve installed Gorbachev right her in the United States and sent Jimmy Carter, who gave away our very strategic Panama Canal, all over the world encouraging tyrants, and you call Hoover’s concern paranoia? That’s what the Communists call it.
I call it telling the truth when others hid and still hide their eyes and ears.
And there never will be.
Habeas Corpus writs are issued by the courts, not the executive. Any citizen in custody has the right to apply for one in court.
The FBI has no authority to “followed up on Joe McCarthy’s work and chased the traitors out of the country.” The AG msut authorize such actions.
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