Overview
A forgotten episode of WWII, the supreme court case it sparked, and the precedent it set for secret military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay.Synopsis
In 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were caught on American beaches after one of them turned the others in. The execution of the saboteurs by the Roosevelt administration was challenged in court and eventually upheld in the Supreme Court's ruling in Ex parte Quirin, a decision that has frequently been cited by the George W. Bush administration in support of its declared power to hold "enemy combatants" and try them by military commission. This use of Ex parte Quirin is clearly on the mind of O'Donnell (a former Supreme Court law clerk) in his narrative of the case, as he makes explicit in his concluding chapters. Even if the case has relevancy to the holding of "enemy combatants"—and many argue it doesn't—we should be cautious in applying it as precedence, because the process by which it was decided by the Supreme Court, O'Donnell demonstrates, was illegitimate. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publishers Weekly
In 1942, Nazi U-boats landed eight German-Americans with sabotage gear on the U.S. coast. Almost immediately, their leader phoned the FBI to turn everyone in. Traditionally, historians treat this episode as WWII comic relief. Despite the misleading title, O'Donnell treats it not as terrorism but as a sad example of national hysteria trumping justice-one with real relevance today. The arrests made headlines, producing universal outrage and cries for revenge. Anxious to gratify public clamor, President Roosevelt ordered a secret trial by a military commission operating only under the "laws of war." After three weeks of silence, a bulletin announced the execution of six defendants and long prison terms for two. Public opinion enthusiastically approved. The author, a lawyer, agrees with most legal scholars that Roosevelt's order and the trial were a disgrace. But current Bush administration officials consider FDR's handling of the saboteurs a precedent. O'Donnell devotes his final 70 pages to refuting this, quoting liberally from court transcripts of appeals filed by the prisoners. His account of the German saboteurs is also dense with legal maneuvering and now-available trial records. Readers expecting wartime fireworks will be disappointed; this book is a passionate defense of the Bill of Rights. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.