History
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 was a United States federal law that made it a crime to interfere with military operations or to support U.S. enemies during wartime. It also allowed the government to censor the mail and prosecute individuals for expressing dissenting opinions. The Act was controversial for its impact on free speech and civil liberties.
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11 Key excerpts on "Espionage Act of 1917"
eBook - ePubChallenges to Democracy
Essays in Honour and Memory of Isaiah Berlin
- Raphael Cohen-Almagor(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
The three basic laws used during the war to counter ‘disloyalty’ and promote patriotism were the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act and the Aliens Act. Close study of the language employed in those Acts does not reveal the extent of the dangers they presented to free expression and other constitutionally guaranteed rights. It was the way they were interpreted by district attorneys and the courts that made them such a threat to basic American freedoms.On 15 June 1917, only two months after the United States entered World War I, Congress passed the Espionage Act. The law was composed of seventeen laws that were prepared by the Justice Department, and declared that:Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.23Over 100,000 people were convicted, according to this section of the law and its amendment (the Sedition Act of 1918), among them politicians, leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), Eugene Debs and others.24 The Espionage Act also allowed the government to prohibit the distribution in the mail of:Sec. 1:
eBook - PDF- Joel Samaha(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
. . . A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. But the ugly and incredible thing has actually come about and we are without adequate federal laws to deal with it. I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. (Wilson 1915) The Espionage Act became law just after the United States entered World War I. Most of it, like the provisions that made espionage and sabotage crimes, was noncon- troversial. It was Section 3, amended in 1918 to become the Sedition Act of 1918 that generated over two thousand cases, in which the government obtained over one thou- sand convictions. The amended Section 3 provided: Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States, or any language intended to bring the form of government, or the Con- stitution or the military or naval forces or the flag of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, ELEMENTS OF ESPIONAGE Actus Reus (Voluntary Act) 1. Collect, record, or publish or 2. Communicate or 3. Attempt to elicit Mens Rea Intent to communicate information to the enemy Circumstance 1. Any information useful to an enemy of the U.S. and 2. During war Criminal Conduct Espionage Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
eBook - PDFKentucky and the Great War
World War I on the Home Front
- David J. Bettez(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- The University Press of Kentucky(Publisher)
4 Opposition to the War During World War I, freedom of speech in the United States was often cur- tailed in the name of loyalty and patriotism. With help from the states, the fed- eral government tried to suppress opposition to the war, which it interpreted as sedition. Government officials, however, struggled with the difference between freedom of speech and sedition. Moving quickly after the United States entered the war, Congress on June 15 passed the Espionage Act of 1917. Under the act’s terms, people were sub- ject to fines up to $10,000 or imprisonment up to twenty years, or both, if they made “false reports or false statements” that might interfere with the success of the US military or promote the success of its enemies; attempted to cause or caused “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty” in the military; or willfully obstructed enlistment or recruiting efforts. 1 To bolster this law, which appeared ambiguous and weak to some people, the following May the federal government passed “an even more draconian amendment,” the Sedition Act of 1918, which forbade “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the US form of government, the Constitution, the military and naval forces, or the US flag. 2 The federal government’s efforts to enforce these acts involved major agen- cies: the Treasury Department’s Secret Service, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (BI), the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division, and the US Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence. Eventually the Bureau of Investigation led the effort under its chief, Alexander Bruce Bielaski. He reported directly to US attorney general Thomas Watt Gregory, although the director of Gregory’s War Emergency Division, John Lord O’Brian, and O’Brian’s assistant, Alfred Bett- man, usually handled sedition matters.
eBook - PDFAmerican Political Prisoners
Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts
- Stephen M. Kohn(Author)
- 1994(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
4 CONGRESSIONAL PASSAGE OF REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION At the time the United States entered World War I, there was a very large American peace movement. Congress, aware of this move- 8 • American Political Prisoners ment, passed two laws intended to suppress "disloyal" or anti-war activity. On June 15, 1917, Congress passed the now infamous Espionage Act. 5 This law, which had nothing whatever to do with espionage, made it a felony to make "false statements" or statements that might cause "insub- ordination" or "disloyalty" in the armed services or statements that could "obstruct" enlistment into the armed services. 6 A "conspiracy" to cause such "disloyalty," "insubordination" or "obstruction" was likewise crim- inalized. 7 Anyone found guilty under the law was subject to heavy fines and imprisonment of up to twenty years. The congressional supporters of this law specifically pointed to the anti-war resolution passed by the Socialist Party in a special St. Louis convention and to the radical labor union activities of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as justification for passing the Espionage Act. 8 For example, Congressman Albert R. Johnson from the state of Washington complained of the pre-war labor-organizing activities of the IWW within the lumber industry. On the floor of Congress he noted that "all of the lumber manufacturers" had sent him telegrams request- ing federal action against the IWW. Johnson spoke in support of the bill as a means of eradicating the "nonloyal agitators" and "outlaw leaders" of the IWW. 9 In the Senate Lee S. Overman of North Carolina warned that the Es- pionage Act was needed to prevent "papers" from being "circulated all through the South urging Negroes to rise up against white people." 10 A minority of congressmen and senators unsuccessfully opposed passage of the Espionage Act. Senator William E. Borah of Idaho warned: I am afraid of the . . . unconstitutional, un-American, unwise, and unnecessary scheme.
eBook - ePubLegislative Deliberative Democracy
Debating Acts Restricting Freedom of Speech during War
- Avichai Levit(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Civil Liberties in Wartime: Legislative Histories of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 . Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co., 2007.Rabban, David. Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Statutes at Large of the United States of America , Vol. 41. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921.Stone, Geoffrey R. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
eBook - PDF- Stephen M. Feldman(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
When introducing the amendment to the Senate on April 4, 1918, Walsh explained that it would counter “the strained construction which has been given to the espio-nage act” in the “startling [and] most notorious” Hall decision. Much of the congressional debate entailed declarations that the nation needed the amendment to avoid vigilante justice. North Carolina Senator Lee Over-man chided his colleagues that “if we want mob law, just go on and delay this bill.” On May 16, 1918, less than a year after the enactment of the origi-nal Espionage Act, Congress overwhelmingly passed the amended section 3 (also called the Sedition Act of 1918). With this legislative proscription of “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” words concerning the nation’s government, Constitution, military, or flag, Congress erased any lingering doubts regarding its willingness to foster suppression. Indeed, Congress defeated an amendment that would have qualified the Sedition Act with the truth-conditional standard. And without compunction, congressmen identified outsiders as the Act’s targets. Representative Patrick Norton proclaimed that the Act “will stop much of the loose, lying, soap-box so- Free Expression during the World War I Era { 251 } cialist and I.W.W. language that has been too generously tolerated in this country for a long time.” 17 The administration proceeded to apply the amended Espionage Act as a broad-ranging prohibition of seditious libel. The Justice Department initiated more than two thousand prosecutions and secured convictions in more than one thousand cases. Sentences could be severe, with twenty-four individuals receiving twenty-year prison terms, six receiving fifteen-year terms, and eleven receiving ten-year terms.
eBook - ePubCrimes Against The State
From Treason to Terrorism
- Michael Head(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Gitlow , the majority upheld the constitutional validity of a New York statute on ‘criminal anarchy’, which punished those who advocated overthrowing or overturning organised government by force, violence, or any unlawful means. The court ruled that the statute did not penalise the utterance or publication of abstract doctrine or academic discussion having no quality of incitement to any concrete action, but denounced the advocacy of action for accomplishing the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means. The majority said the statute was constitutional as applied to a printed manifesto issued by the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, advocating and urging mass action. According to the court, the manifesto sought to ‘progressively foment industrial disturbances and, through political mass strikes and revolutionary mass action, overthrow and destroy organised parliamentary government; even though the advocacy was in general terms, and not addressed to particular immediate acts or to particular person’ (268 US 652, 654).World War II
In 1941, on the eve of US entry into World War II, the court stated that ‘before utterances can be punished’ the ‘substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high’ (Bridges v. California , 314 US 252, 266 (1941)). Far from being a qualitative departure from Debs and the other World War I cases, this formulation still left ample scope for repression of opinions that were regarded as a serious threat to the official order. The scene was set for another wave of repression during and after World War II.One early indicator of what was to come was President Roosevelt’s secret 1936 decision to authorise the J. Edgar Hoover-led FBI to investigate suspected fascists and communists in the US. Hoover regarded the assignment as an invitation to resume many of the activities he supervised during the Red Scare of 1919–20 (Stone 2004: 248). During 1940, before the US entered the war against Germany, the Congress re-enacted the Espionage Act of 1917, making its provisions applicable for the first time in peacetime. It then went further, passing the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act), which required all resident non-citizens to register with the government, streamlined deportation procedures and forbade any person ‘knowingly or wilfully’ to ‘advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence’. Roosevelt declined to veto the Act, claiming that its advocacy provisions ‘hardly … constitute an improper encroachment on civil liberties in the light of present world conditions’ (Stone 2004: 252).
eBook - PDFCivil Liberties and the State
A Documentary and Reference Guide
- Christopher Peter Latimer(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
The statute of 1917 punishes conspiracies to obstruct as well as actual obstruction. If the act, (speaking, or circulating a paper,) its tendency and the intent with which it is done are the same, we perceive no ground for saying that success alone warrants making the act a crime. . . . Judgments Affirmed. SOURCE: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=249&invol=47 ANALYSIS The Supreme Court has never held that freedoms of speech, press, and assem- bly are completely without limits. During World War I, Schenck mailed circulars to draftees. The circulars suggested that the draft was a monstrous wrong motivated by the capitalist system. The circulars urged “Do not submit to intimidation” but advised only peaceful action such as petitioning to repeal the Conscription Act. Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act by attempting to cause insubordination in the military and to obstruct recruitment. The Court upheld the Espionage Act of 1917 and concluded that the defendant did not have a First Amendment right to free speech against the draft during World War I. One of the primary difficulties for the majority was settling on a general stan- dard to be applied in determining when a form of expression becomes so threaten- ing to society that it deserves no constitutional protection and must be controlled by government. The clear and present danger test effectively established a doctrine that allowed the government to suppress political speech under certain circumstances such as wartime. Holmes admitted that in peacetime Schenck’s words would have been protected by the Constitution. The decision, in addition to sending Schenck to jail for six months, resulted in a pragmatic “balancing test” allowing the Supreme Chapter 4 • 20th-Century Court Rulings 221 Court to assess free speech challenges against the state’s interests on a case-by-case basis.
eBook - ePubEspionage and Secrecy (Routledge Revivals)
The Official Secrets Acts 1911-1989 of the United Kingdom
- Rosamund Thomas(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
2 Espionage and related offences: More recent analyses of section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 (as amended)DOI: 10.4324/9781315542515-2This chapter explores in greater depth the meaning of key terms associated with section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, 1911 (as amended), illustrating the meanings by reference to recent espionage and related offences. Then, in Chapter 3 further key terms are defined which apply to the Official Secrets Acts as a whole (not exclusively to section 1 of the 1911 Act, as amended). In Chapter 4 the role of the Attorney-General, and other Law Officers of the Crown, is elaborated and an explanation is given of how the consent of the Attorney-General to a prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts 1911–1989, a statutory requirement under this law, operates in practice especially in espionage cases.It is common practice when writing about the criminal law to explain first those sections which apply to a statute in its entirety rather than to start with any one particular section. However, espionage is the most serious crime covered by the Official Secrets Acts 1911–1989 and is the focus of this book. Therefore, we are reversing this usual practice and begin this chapter with the most important definitions, being those which relate to crimes of espionage and to section 1 of the 1911 Act, as amended.2.1 Definition of Espionage and Related Offences in Section 1
The definition of espionage - or the offences covered by section 1 - has been a point of issue. Because there was a crisis concerning German spies at the time of the enactment of the 1911 Act, arguments have been raised as to whether section 1 is limited to spying only. The marginal note to this section reads ‘Penalties for Spying’ which reinforces this interpretation. In fact, marginal notes are not supposed to represent the entire content of any provision, as the Attorney-General made clear in the House of Commons’ debate in 1920. He observed, in respect of another sidenote in the Amending Act of 1920, that ‘the marginal note is not part of a statute’.1 In 1962, his view about sidenotes was endorsed by the Law Lords in the case of Chandler and Others v. Director of Public Prosecutions. This case relates to a conspiracy to commit an act of sabotage rather than spying. Sabotage may be defined as an act of wanton or malicious damage or destruction, while spying is ‘the obtaining by surreptitious means of information in the possession of one State for the benefit of another’.2 To constitute an offence under section 1, either act would need to involve either a prohibited place or material intended to be of use to an enemy. In the Chandler case, certain members of the Committee of 1003 planned to enter a prohibited place under the Official Secrets Acts (being a Royal Air Force station at Wethersfield, Essex and belonging to H. Majesty) in order to stage a demonstration on 9 December 1961. They proposed, by non–violent action, to immobilize the aircraft at the station for some six hours to draw public attention to the facts of nuclear warfare and thereby hoped, in the long-term, to prevent a nuclear war. The six accused persons, including Terence Chandler, Patrick Pottle and Michael Randle, were found guilty on 20 February 1962 at the Central Criminal Court on two counts of conspiracy under section 1 (1). A few months later appeals against conviction by the defendants were dismissed by the Court of Appeal but leave to appeal to the House of Lords was allowed because of the constitutional importance of this case and particularly the need to construe properly the terms of section 1(1)4 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The Law Lords ruled that this section was not limited to offences of spying, notwithstanding its marginal heading, but was intended to cover the saboteur as much as the spy.5
eBook - ePub- Paul Finkelman(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
Schaeffer he entered the debate and helped refine clear and present danger so that it would serve more as a protection for free speech than as a license for government repression. He set forth the utility of free speech in a democratic society: Even though it could be abused, the benefits of untrammeled discourse far outweighed any inconvenience. Above all, basic rights should not be crippled because of wartime hysteria. An intolerant majority, he declared, “swayed by passion or fear, may be prone in the future, as it has often been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees. Convictions such as these, besides abridging freedom of speech, threaten freedom of thought and of belief.”The last of the major Espionage Act cases came down soon after: Pierce v. United States (1920) involved prosecution of three Socialists for distributing a strongly antiwar pamphlet. Justice Mahlon Pitney quickly disposed of the constitutional arguments, merely citing the string of cases from Schenck through Schaeffer to sustain the conviction. But he then went to great length to disprove the allegations made in the pamphlet, especially that the war had economic causes. Such a false view, he claimed, could not help but have an adverse, even if indirect, effect on the successful prosecution of the war. (Interestingly, six months earlier Woodrow Wilson had stated: “Who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry. This was a commercial and industrial war.” By the Pierce opinion, the president could have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act!)Brandeis, again joined by Holmes, entered a long and thorough dissent, claiming the government had failed to prove that the publication had posed any danger to the war effort. To urge men to better their lot by creating new laws and institutions could not be labeled a criminal act “merely because the argument presented seems to those exercising judicial power to be unfair in its portrayal of existing evils, mistaken in its assumptions, unsound in reasoning, or intemperate in language.” The “falsity” of one’s view, according to the interpretation of free speech Brandeis and Holmes advocated, had nothing to do with one’s right to promote that view.
eBook - PDFDefending the Masses
A Progressive Lawyer's Battles for Free Speech
- Eric B. Easton(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- University of Wisconsin Press(Publisher)
Of course, that begged the question of what Congress thought it was prohibiting when it passed the law. Hand’s answer: Congress, in adopting the Espionage Act, meant only to prohibit advising or counseling others to violate the law as it stands, that is, to urge that it is their duty or interest to break the law. Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government. The distinction is not a scholastic subterfuge, but a hard-bought acquisition in the fight for freedom, and the purpose to disregard it must be evident when the power exists. If one stops short of urging upon others that it is their duty or their interest to resist the law, it seems to me one should not be held to have attempted to cause its violation. If that be not the test, I can see no escape from the conclusion that under this section every political agitation which can be shown to be apt to create a seditious temper is illegal. I am confident that by such language Congress had no such revolutionary purpose in view. Applying his view of the law to the facts of the case, Hand said none of the language and none of the cartoons in the August issue of The Masses “can be thought to directly counsel or advise insubordination or mutiny.” As to the third provision on which the government relied, prohibiting willful obstruction of re- cruiting or enlisting services, Hand said he disagreed with Roe’s argument that the provision refers only to acts other than words and that the obstruction must be successful.
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