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«The Palmer raids» - reaction to «The Red Scare» and Edgar Hoover’s role in the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice
Yaroslav A . Levin (Ярослав Левин)
Samara Journal of Science, 2019
The paper is devoted to reaction of the U.S. Department of Justice to the October revolution of 1917 in Russia and the process which received the name The Red Scare in the historiography. The basic changes which happened in Russia, the ideas of radical social justice, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the world revolution during the last stages of the World War I led to an extremely negative perception of the Bolshevik party and its policy in the USA. The general unfriendly spirit was warmed up by various publications accusing V.I. Lenin and his colleagues of communications with Germany (well-known Sissons documents) as well as by various publications in the press. At the same time, the revolution in Russia became an ideological beacon for anarchists and socialists worldwide including America. A special activity was shown by the galleanists organization (followers of the revolutionary and the ideologist of anarchism Luigi Galleani). From April to June 1919 they organized a ser...
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Free Speech in Wartime: Sedition Acts during the Presidencies of John Adams and Woodrow Wilson
Juliana Hafner
Free Speech in Wartime: Sedition Acts during the Presidencies of John Adams and Woodrow Wilson, 2017
This paper analyzes two time eras in which the United States federal government created and passed two sedition acts: in 1798 with President John Adams and in 1918 with President Woodrow Wilson. Both ultimately affected American’s freedom of speech during wartime, as well as during times of peace. This analysis addresses the specific acts themselves, the overall political atmosphere in each time period, including who were considered the country’s “enemies,” in-depth consideration of one court case per era, the government and public reaction to the acts, and the overall impact that both eras had on the development of American Constitutionalism. There will be similarities and differences within each era, but the long-term effects of these wartime sedition acts on American Constitutionalism are ultimately the most significant contribution to this thesis.
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The Internal Security Acts of 1798: The Founding Generation and the Judiciary during America's First National Security Crisis
Arthur Garrison
Journal of Supreme Court History, 2009
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The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965
Ivan Greenberg
Journal of American History, 2012
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An Attempt to Have Secretary Rumsfeld and Others Indicted for War Crimes under the German Völkerstrafgesetzbuch
Jan Hessbruegge
It is well-established that atrocities, including acts of torture, were committed against Iraqi detainees by some members of the United States Armed Forces. On 30 November 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and four Iraqi citizens, who were allegedly detained and severely mistreated by U.S. forces in Iraq, brought criminal charges in Germany against United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his Deputy Secretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, the former CIA Director, George Tenet, the former Commander of the United States Forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and six other high-ranking officers who have served or are serving in Iraq. [1] According to the complainants, Lieutenant General Sanchez and three other officers are currently stationed at U.S. bases in Germany. The complainants seek to have the ten U.S. officials indicted for war crimes under the German Völkerstrafgesetzbuch [2] (Code of Crimes Against International Law) and for a...
Fighting wrongdoing at the Department of Justice Criminal Division and the Department of Defense U.S. Southern Command
Martin E Andersen
“The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Prepared remarks for U.S. Office of Special Counsel panel Whistleblower Summit, 340 House Cannon Office Building, July 31st, 2014 ... After a serious of phone calls from offices and pay phones that were not my own, the head of DoJ security agreed to meet with me, bringing in two FBI agents for the interview in his office and promising me that my confidentiality would be respected. Approximately two weeks later, even as security officials put the entire international program staff in lock down as they sought evidence of wrongdoing, I was also “outed” as a whistleblower to Criminal Division security staff figuratively in bed with the wrongdoers. It was then that I was told that my security clearance had "disappeared"—even though I had worked with classified information on a daily basis for the 19 months before it was mysteriously taken away. (Revocation requires a formal process, yet in the absence of any real protections for national security whistleblowers, the ability to circumvent that requirement is both easy and common for bureaucratic miscreants and their allies.) ... In the absence of any formal duties, and while I was being shunned for even polite conversation, I spent the time reading books about the history of the U.S. Civil War and biographies of George Washington. It made for an odd moment. My security clearance had "disappeared"--but the cluttered, unsecured room where I was being warehoused was at the same time being used to store what were called "burn boxes" full of classified and other sensitive information that was supposed to be destroyed. This farce was part of a libretto that was not meant to be believed, but rather to humiliate me—as the outed whistleblower—and, much more importantly, to warn others I worked with about the likely consequences for them if they came forward with what they knew about wrongdoing in the Criminal Division. (This is a phenomenon, by the way, repeated where I worked at National Defense University, where I was also a whistleblower.) ... The Justice Department IG did nothing to protect me and the other whistleblowers who came forward in the Criminal Division. However, that did not keep it from claiming credit before Congress for the positive contributions the whistleblowing did for tightening up the egregiously lax security at a division of Justice that considered itself the crown jewel of federal law enforcement. ... Even as the DoJ Inspectors General did nothing to try to help me (and, at times, the actions of their staff made me think that they were acting as Criminal Division’s own "plumbers" and enforcers against those who were willing to step forward), the Office of Special Counsel took its own mission very seriously. ...
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Before “National Security”: The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Concept of “National Defense”
Daniel Larsen
Harvard Law National Security Journal, 2021
This article challenges current understandings of the Espionage Act of 1917, which lies at the heart of the legal apparatus protecting government secrets. The fearsomeness of the Espionage Act arises from its enormous presumed scope, with it protecting all information “connected with the national defense.” This crucial phrase goes undefined in the legislation and is wrongly assumed to be synonymous with “national security”—a very different concept that was not invented until around the 1940s. This article explores the meaning of “national defense” within the Act. It connects the term to a specific historical concept that was widely understood in the early twentieth century. By reconstructing this long-forgotten concept, this article shows that both the text of the Espionage Act and its key 1941 Supreme Court precedent have been gravely misinterpreted. The Espionage Act is revealed to be dramatically narrower in scope than presently assumed, casting serious doubt on many of the recent and current prosecutions under the Act. The article also raises important, novel questions of due process concerning these prosecutions.
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Review of Criminal Dissent: Prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
Daniel Kanstroom
2020
Review of Criminal Dissent: Prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. By Wendell Bird (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2020). © 2020 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_0160
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Socialism/Political Radicalism Red Scare Deportations (1919-1920)
Joshua Britton
americanreformmovements.com
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The 1783 Newburgh Conspiracy: America’s First Attempted Coup (op ed)
Robert Ovetz, Ph.D.
San Jose Mercury News, 2021
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