They arrived on shore with full German uniforms.
One group arrived via New York, while the other group arrived via Florida. The saboteurs arrived in two factions using German submarines. These individuals were Richard Quirin, George Dasch, Edward Kerling, Ernst Peter Burger, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Werner Thiel, Herbert Haupt, and Herman Otto Neubauer. Fisher also takes issue with the Bush administrations mistaken citing of Ex parte Quirin as an apt precedent for trying suspected al Qaeda terrorists.Ĭoncisely designed for students and general readers, this newly abridged and updated edition provides a cautionary tale as our nation struggles to balance individual rights and national security, as seen most clearly in the recent Supreme Court decisions relating to Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and the detainees at Guantanamo.In early 1942, eight German saboteurs arrived in the United States from Europe. Thus, the FBIs bogus claim to have nabbed the saboteurs entirely on their own was allowed to stand, while the saboteurs death sentences were initially kept hidden from public view. He reveals that the trials were conducted in secret not to preserve national security but rather to shield the governments chief investigators and sentencing decisions from public scrutiny and criticism.
“One can only hope that Fisher’s compelling account enjoys a wide circulation.” -Jonathan Lurie, author of Military Justice in America See fewer reviews.įisher contends that the Germans constitutional right to a civil trial was hijacked by an ill-conceived concentration of power within the presidency, overriding essential checks from the Supreme Court, Congress, and the office of the Judge Advocate General. Belknap, author of The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court Martial of Lieutenant Calley “Fisher’s fascinating and important account of the Supreme Courts decision in Ex parte Quirin reveals how poorly the justices resisted wartime pressures and how badly they failed to protect rights guaranteed by the constitution.” -Michal R.
“After 9/11, American civil liberties seem to have entered an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole featuring indefinite detentions and predetermined verdicts-so very similar, as Fisher reminds us, to the wild departures from due process that characterized this famous 1942 case.” -Robert Justin Goldstein, author of Flag Burning and Free Speech “Fisher pulls no punches in identifying poor government decision making and deciding that much of what passed for justice was patently unconstitutional. One of Americas leading constitutional scholars, Fisher analyzes the political, legal, and administrative context of the Supreme Court decision Ex parte Quirin (1942), reconstructing a rush to judgment that has striking relevance to current events. Louis Fisher chronicles the capture, trial, and punishment of the Nazi saboteurs in order to examine the extent to which procedural rights are suspended in time of war. After the Supreme Courts emergency session upheld the tribunals authority, six of the men were executed.
Caught before they could carry out their missions, under FDRs presidential proclamation they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. In 1942, during World War II, eight Germans landed on our shores bent on sabotage.
The 9/11 attacks were not the first operations by foreign terrorists on American soil.