---
title: Francis Biddle
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/francis-biddle/
description: 4 verified quotes from Francis Biddle, Attorney General of the United States (1941-1945), with sources.
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: a Second World War naval-intelligence collage of a Pacific theatre map, aerial reconnaissance photographs and radar plots.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwii-pacific.jpg)

[Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · United States

# Francis Biddle

![Francis Biddle in 1945](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roosevelt-administration/francis-biddle.jpg)

[Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Francis_Biddle,_Bestanddeelnr_900-8889.jpg): Anefo (Dutch news agency), CC0 (Nationaal Archief)

Attorney General of the United States (1941-1945) · United States

On the regime page: [Roosevelt administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roosevelt-administration/#francis-biddle)

4 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=francis-biddle).

1. > “It is extremely dangerous for the columnists, acting as "Armchair Strategists and Junior G-Men," to suggest that an attack on the West Coast and planned sabotage is imminent when the military authorities and the F.B.I. have indicated that this is not the fact. It comes close to shouting FIRE! in the theater; and if race riots occur, these writers will bear a heavy responsibility.” — February 17, 1942 · Statement Verified (secondary source) — Two days before Executive Order 9066, Biddle sent the President a note arguing that the Justice Department saw no evidence of imminent attack or planned sabotage on the West Coast and criticising newspaper columnists who called for mass evacuation. The same memorandum said the Constitution made about 60,000 of the 93,000 Japanese in California American citizens. — Attorney General Biddle, memorandum to President Roosevelt (briefing paper for a press conference), 17 February 1942, as printed in Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied (Washington, 1982), ch. 2, "Executive Order 9066", pp. 83-84 (fn. 165) [Source](https://www.archives.gov/files/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied/chapter-2.pdf)
2. > “Rowe and Ennis argued strongly against [the Executive Order]. But the decision had been made by the President. It was, he said, a matter of military judgment. I did not think I should oppose it any further. The Department of Justice, as I had made it clear to him from the beginning, was opposed to and would have nothing to do with the evacuation.” — 1962 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Biddle, writing twenty years afterwards, recounts how his Justice Department aides, James Rowe and Edward Ennis, argued against the order and why he stopped opposing it once the President had decided. Rowe and Ennis were Justice Department lawyers. — Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), on the February 1942 decision on Executive Order 9066, as quoted in Personal Justice Denied (1982), ch. 2, p. 85 [Source](https://www.archives.gov/files/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied/chapter-2.pdf)
3. > “The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime President.” — 1962 · Book Verified (secondary source) — In his memoir Biddle commented on President Roosevelt's approach to the legal questions raised by the 1942 exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Rehnquist quotes the sentence and cites p. 219. — Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), p. 219, as quoted in William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws But One (New York: Knopf, 1998)
4. > “This mass evacuation illustrates the influence that a minority, uncurbed and substantially unopposed, can exercise.” — 1962 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Biddle reflected in his memoir on the Japanese American exclusion and removal he had not stopped as Attorney General. — Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), concluding remarks on the Japanese American evacuation, as quoted in The 1940's: Decade of Triumph and Trouble (Internet Archive full-text snippet)