Posted by Damozel | Newly declassified documents show that in 1950, J. Edgar Hoover asked President Truman to suspend habeas corpus and imprison 12,000 people Hoover suspected of "disloyalty."(NYT) Habeas corpus, the right of a person who is "detained or imprisoned" to seek relief, is guaranteed by the US Constitution.(LectLaw.com) The Supreme Court has called it "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.".(LectLaw.com) In a habeas case, "[t]he predominant inquiry...is a legal one: whether the "petitioner's custody simpliciter" is valid as measured by the Constitution (LectLaw.com). The Constitution allows suspension of the writ only "when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” Sometimes the government has considered it necessary to invoke this loophole.
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. (NYT)
To get back to Hoover: Ninety-seven percent of the 12,000 on his list were American citizens.(NYT). Hoover wanted Truman to issue a proclamation that the mass arrests and suspension of habeas corpus were necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” (NYT). "The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau."(NYT). The persons arrested would be held in permanent detention. They would have had the right to a hearing by a panel composed on one judge and two citizens, but the hearings wouldn't be bound by the rules of evidence (NYT).
And in fact, Congress passed a law which authorized the detention of "dangerous radicals" if the president declared a national emergency, which Truman in fact did do after China entered the Korean War. (This was of course during the period of so-called "Second Red Scare," the age of "red-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of people suspected of following Communist or other left-wing ideology.") I was brought up by my Communist-fearing father in my small Southern milltown to regard this as a disgraceful period in our nation's history. My father, like many people who lived through that time, believed that the threat had been real, but that the government---and the public---had seriously overreacted.
The problem, it seems to me, is that before you accuse (or punish) someone for disloyalty, you should have to articulate to what or to whom the disloyalty applies. It was the prerogative of feudal overlords to demand loyalty, for example. But in a democracy, dissent and civil disobedience are arguably not only the right but the obligation of an engaged citizen who believes that the government has retreated too far from the principles on which it is founded.
But John at Power Line is feeling a touch nostalgic for the days when loyalty meant something. But what? "Hoover was too quick to judge people disloyal," he acknowledges, "....but some may feel nostalgic for a time when disloyalty was at least acknowledged to be a bad thing." (He's Making a List and Checking it Twice). Again, though, disloyalty to what or to whom? The Constitution? Rule of Law? The President?
And if the last, will John of Power Line avoid this bad thing if Hillary Clinton is elected president?
Paddy at Cliff Schecter: "Everything old is new again." (A 1950 Plan: Arrest 12,000, Suspend Due Process).
And here's me thinking that the Bush Administration doesn't seem quite as bad in contrast with Hoover. Perhaps they would have liked to be---this remains to be seen---but one way or another, they have not tried to go this far. Of course, "not quite as bad" ain't good.
But at the end of the day, "we the people" are responsible for any such excesses on the part of our government. Such overreactions occur when we ourselves to be so ruled by fear that we respond to a threat by agreeing to any infringement of our basic principles rather than with courage and common sense.
Memeorandum blogger round-up is here.
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President Troover?
Posted by: Callimachus | December 24, 2007 at 01:44 PM