Citizen lockdown: the plot against Americans.

• Author: Walker, Jesse
• Position: National security plan in case of emergency - Brief article

"FOR SOME months," the document begins, "representatives of the FBI and of the Department of Justice have been formulating a plan of action for an emergency situation wherein it would be necessary to apprehend and detain persons who are potentially dangerous to the internal security of the country." If the U.S. faced a rebellion, an invasion (real or threatened), or an "attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory," the government would suspend habeas corpus and detain everyone on an index that "contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States."

It sounds like the ramblings of a paranoid crank. And that's exactly what it is, except the crank in question was J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a 1950 letter to the White House. The...