Declassified doc shows Hoover planned mass jailing in 1950

The NYT reports today of a recently declassified document which reveals that longtime FBI head J. Edgar Hoover once planned to suspend habeas corpus in the US, and imprison 12,000 citizens he suspected of being disloyal.

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.

Link (thanks, 'Werewolf boy')