STAX
12-28-2007, 10:28 AM
Ex-FBI chief planned to arrest 12,000 Americans, report says
COLD WAR | Hoover kept list of those deemed disloyal
December 23, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, a newly declassified document shows.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Harry Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.
Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to ''protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage,'' the New York Times reported Saturday on its Web site.
The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.
''The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States,'' Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. ''In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus.''
Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention.
All apprehended individuals would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards made up of one judge and two citizens would not have been bound by the rules of evidence. AP
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
COLD WAR | Hoover kept list of those deemed disloyal
December 23, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, a newly declassified document shows.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Harry Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.
Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to ''protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage,'' the New York Times reported Saturday on its Web site.
The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.
''The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States,'' Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. ''In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus.''
Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention.
All apprehended individuals would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards made up of one judge and two citizens would not have been bound by the rules of evidence. AP
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.