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jakeXT

(10,575 posts)
Mon Apr 29, 2013, 06:34 AM Apr 2013

America’s Unchecked Security State: Part I: The Toxic Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover’s Illegal Powers

America’s Unchecked Security State: Part I: The Toxic Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover’s Illegal Powers

“Dear Bess…. Hoover would give his right eye to take over (from the Secret Service) and all Congressmen and Senators are afraid of him. I’m not and he knows it. If I can prevent (it) there’ll be no NKVD or Gestapo in this country. Edgar Hoover’s organization would make a good start toward a citizen spy system. Not for me.”

-- President Harry S Truman, 1947
"The other night, we picked up a situation where this senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. We got the information, reported it in a memorandum, and by noon the next day, the senator was aware that we had the information, and we never had trouble with him on appropriations since."

-- FBI Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach1
“We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. Democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

--Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, during a speech at CIA headquarters, 1988.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."2

--Mandell Creighton in an April 1887 letter to the Anglican Bishop of London.

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3932




America’s Unchecked Security State: Part II: The Continuity of COG Detention Planning, 1948-2001
Peter Dale Scott

Hoover and the Origins of COG’s Emergency Planning

In November 1939, after the outbreak of war in Europe, Hoover also began to compile a list of individuals to be closely monitored and/or detained in the event of a national emergency or war. In June 1940 he sought and gained the approval of Attorney General Robert Jackson for this list, known as the Custodial Detention list. (Late in life, Jackson appears to have regretted the powers that Hoover accumulated.)123
The Custodial Detention list played no role in the wholesale displacement in 1942 of Japanese and coastal Italians, which Hoover opposed.124 In 1943 Biddle decided that the Custodial Detention list had outlived its usefulness and that there was no statutory authorization for it. His order to Hoover to close the list was unambiguous:

The (Justice) Department fulfills its proper function by investigating the activities of persons who may have violated the law. It is not aided in this work by classifying persons as to dangerousness….

(But) upon receipt of this order, the FBI Director did not abolish the FBI’s list. Instead, he changed its name from Custodial Detention List to Security Index.125

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3933


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America’s Unchecked Security State: Part I: The Toxic Legacy of J. Edgar Hoover’s Illegal Powers (Original Post) jakeXT Apr 2013 OP
Wow! Long read but definitely worth the time n/t tech3149 Apr 2013 #1
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