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. [Link]

The Fourth Circuit Court, in a 2-1 ruling on Monday, declared that President Bush did not have the authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain a civilian who was taken from his home in Peoria, Ill. For a Qatar national who has been held by the military since 2003, the Court said, "military detention...must cease." The ruling barred military detention of any civilian captured inside the U.S.

The panel majority ruled that Congress has not taken away the legal right of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri to challenge his detention, thus limiting the reach of the Military Commissions Act's court-stripping provisions. "As an alien captured and detained within the United States," the Court said, "he has a right to habeas corpus protected by the Constitution's Suspension Clause." [Link]