This is a stark reminder as to how quickly our civil liberties can evaporate if we give up our freedoms under the guise of security.
The New York Times:
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.
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.”
As FBI Director, Edgar Hoover thought that the Korean War was enough reason to detain 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty, and under a less courageous president this advice would have been acted upon. How would things have been different today? Would the Republicans and 12 Democrats who supported the 2006 bill allowed 12,000 countrymen to be whisked away without any legal hearings? They might argue that they wouldn't, but they legally paved the way for that very thing to happen. We have already let them take far too many steps in wiping away our civil liberties, let's make sure we don't let them take anymore.
Has there really been any sustained period in the last 70 years wherein the U.S. has not either been in direct conflict or at the very least claimed the serious threat of it? Were we to give into this fear we'd live in a permanent state of emergency, outright doing away with the democracy that the nation prides itself in. Congress, voted on by Republicans (all except 3) and 12 Democrats, eliminated Habeas Corpus without us making much of a fuss in 2006. The Supreme Court has since overruled that piece of legislation for American citizens, but that does not change two important facts: 1) Legal American residents can be detained indefinitely if they are determined a security threat without any right to a court hearing, and 2) Were it not for the Supreme Court, Congress would have allowed the same to take place for U.S. Citizens.
Here's a video of Keith Olberman from a post in 2006 about this very issue:
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