ROBERT K. MUSIL

President Ford’s re-entry program for Vietnamese War resisters is part of a continuing cover-up of the terrible costs and consequences of this nation’s intervention in Indochina. It is designed to discredit resistance to the war and, along with the Presidential pardon of Nixon, bring to an and our long “nightmare” of bickering over
Indochina.  Mr. Ford’s August 19th speech announcing leniency at the VFW Convention in Chicago came as a surprise to many and was widely reported as a courageous step.
It was neither. With substantial numbers of the Nixon entourage in jail or awaiting trial, leniency was on the way in; law and order on the way out. Melvin Laird and Robert Froehlke had run up trial balloons for conditional amnesty and the weather was fine—a little flak from the VFW, but otherwise just fine. Meanwhile, in the wake of Watergate, sentiment for amnesty was growing. In March, a majority of Americans favored conditional amnesty.  Robert Musil, a former Army captain who refused to serve in Vietnam, is associate secretary of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and a member of the steering committee of the National Council for Universal and Un-
conditional Amnesty. He testified at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearings.

 International amnesty, and more than a third were for unconditional amnesty. And at the House Judiciary hearings on amnesty, it became clear that at least a conditional
amnesty might soon be in the works in Congress. [See Musil: “Amnesty—What Kind and When?” The Nation, April 20.

Mr. Ford’s speech to the VFW is a classic example of the kind of cynical manipulation that we have come to expect of Presidential speeches. “Unlike my last two
predecessors, I did not enter this office facing the terrible decisions of a foreign war.” This from a man whose first complaint against Defense Secretary Schlesinger was that
he wasn’t effective enough at peddling aid to Indochina to the Congress, and who was heard emerging from his first National Security Council meeting as President singing the praises of a Congressman who stands “firm and tail on the war.”

The speech was vintage Nixon “peace with honor,” rewritten into Jerry Ford’s “straight talk.” It contains the same self-serving analogies to Lincoln and Truman, the same ritualistic invocation of Medal of Honor recipients, the same vilification of war resisters, those “few citizens” who committed the “supreme folly of shirking their duty at the expense of others.” But the worst was yet to come. First came the “full, absolute and unconditional” pardon of Richard Nixon, and then in sharp contrast, on September 16, the detailed White House announcement of the reentry plan.

As Atty. Gen. William Saxbe said earlier, persons returning under the plan would have to show “contrition.” So much, in fact, that the program looks as if it were designed to fail. It provides for clemency for persons convicted, charged, under investigation, or sought for violations for portions of the Selective Service Act or Articles of (desertion), 86 (AWOL), or 87 (missing movement) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Those not yet convicted of an offense must turn themselves in by January 31, 1975, reaffirm their allegiance to the United States, and agree to perform two years of alternate service in the national interest.

Draft violators report directly to the U.S. Attorneys and will be relieved of prosecution upon completion of alternate service. Military absentees return to a central processing point, first located at Camp Atterbury, Ind., and now at Fort Benjamin Harrison, sign their oath, agree to do alternate service and, then receive an undesirable discharge (UD). If and when they complete alternate service they receive a new clemency discharge.

Those already convicted of offenses eligible for amnesty apply to a nine-member Presidential Clemency Board which reviews theft case and may recommend clemency
to the President contingent on up to two years of alternate service. Draft violators may have theft civil rights restored, but their records will not be expunged. Veterans
holding undesirable or punitive discharges for desertion offenses will receive a clemency discharge upon completion of alternate service. That is a simple explanation
of the program, and even on its face, it is insulting and unacceptable to most war resisters. On closer examination, the plan is even worse—conceived in bad faith and
riddled with traps, inconsistencies, illegalities and in-
equities. I

To begin, the plan does not even cover most war resisters. According to official figures, there are eligible about 15,500 draft resisters, 12,500 deserters-at-large (of
whom about 10 to 20 per cent will be ineligible because of other offenses), and about 200,000 veterans who. received undesirable or punitive discharges because of offenses under Articles 85, 86 and 87 of the UCMJ. Apparently ineligible are any draft fugitives who are aliens or who have become citizens of another country. That is ominous, since in the year 1972-73 more than 3,000 American males became Canadian citizens, an increase of 82 percent over the previous year. Also ineligible are eighteen draft resisters not furloughed from prison at the time of the announcement because of other charges, persons charged with a variety of other violations stemming from opposition to the war in Vietnam (destruction of government property, tax refusal, conspiracy, riot, and so on) and more than 300,000 veterans with other than honorable discharges that stem from charges or actions other than desertion (refusal of orders, disrespect, disloyalty, etc.). Ford’s plan, in short, ignores some of the most principled opposition to the war in Indochina and the military. Those not included comprise a roster of well-
known resistance cases: the Berrigan Brothers; the Chicago 15; the Milwaukee 14; the Presidio 27; Capts. Howard Levy and Dale Noyd; Seaman Roger Priest (convicted by the Navy of “disloyalty” for publishing his underground newspaper, OM, from within the Pentagon); Andy Stapp, founder of the American Servicemen’s Union, and many, many more.

As for those who are included, the loyalty oath, with its imputations of guilt and evasion, will prevent the most consientious from using the program. The oath
and pledge required of deserters is so outrageous as to deserve full inclusion here:

On or about, _______ , I voluntarily absented myself from my military unit without being properly authorized in contravention of the oath taken upon entering the nation’s military service. Recognizing that my obligations as a citizen remain unfulfilled, I am
ready to serve in whatever alternate service my country may prescribe for me, and pledge to faithfully complete a period of _____ months service. 

I do hereby solemnly reaffirm my allegiance to the United States of America. I will support, protect and defend the Constitution of ! the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and will hereafter bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.

Such an oath alone has doomed the program to failure.  An editorial in the Christian Century sums up its implications:

To earn re-entry, a man would have to be contrite, and to accept his country’s forgiveness for an act of moral protest. In order to be contrite, he would have to acknowledge that his moral protest was a mistake.  Ironically, then, a man’s willingness to accept earned reentry will be inversely related to his conviction that the war was immoral.

Draft resisters are required to sign a similar oath with an even more outrageous and ominous addition—they must give up their constitutional rights.
 

“I also knowingly help to deepen the cynicism of the young in this country.  Apparently, they were not supposed to take Senator Gooddll’s utterances that the war was immoral seriously enough to act on them. And what are they to make of the principles of Father Hesburgh, who resigned from the Nixon administration and came out for unconditional amnesty after Spiro Agnew’s plea bargain? Only a few days before his appointment, Hesburgh joined with other religious leaders in an attempt to visit President Ford and plead for amnesty. They were rebuffed, but their message was, “If leniency excludes certain categories of persons or if conditions are so strict that few take advantage of the leniency offered, our nation would continue to have an exile community and an underground community at home. Consequently, we would not be united, but divided, and the wounds would remain.”

In a final ironic twist, the program places the alternate work program under the direction of the Selective Service System, an agency infamous for its misunderstanding and abuse of objectors and resisters. It is precisely because they were opposed to conscription and the punishment of alternate service for obeying their consciences that many of these men refused to have anything to do with the draft in the first place. The rules for administering alternate service are complex; it is perhaps enough to note that those who will be subjected to it will lack the right of appeal and will be subject to the whims of Selective Service for two years.

Given all this—the VFW speech, the Nixon pardon, the oaths, a Clemency Board that can offer no real relief dressed up in liberal clothes, the legal traps, the imputations of guilt—it is no wonder that the Ford announcements were met with outrage and disdain on the part of war resisters. At a conference in Toronto on September 22, exiles denounced the plan, demanded universal and unconditional amnesty, an end to the war in Indochina, and called for a boycott. At home, the National Council for Universal and Unconditional Amnesty opened new offices in New York City, Atlanta, Denver and San Francisco to warn resisters of the pitfalls and get them involved in the total amnesty drive. The ACLU denounced the program as “offensive in its assumptions
and outrageous in its implementation,” and promised legal challenges as well as free legal counsel to those covered by the program. It is their opinion and that of other draft and military law experts that most men will be better off avoiding the program entirely, seeking legal redress outside it if they return at all.

The rejection of the plan also took dramatic personal forms. Draft resister Bill Meis, 29, originally of Decatur, Ill., became the first exile to return in order to protest and reject the plan. Meis, who had been in Canada for six years, is married and has two small children. He came back with the help of the Safe Return Amnesty Committee, an effective group that had previously arranged the dramatic returns of deserters John David Hemdon, Ed Sowders, Lew Simon and others. Meis’s return was just as effective, with the media carefully recording his joyful reunion with his parents in Chicago, and his equally painful failure to gain admission to the Presidential Clemency Board to protest his case. Meis demanded amnesty for all war resisters before turning himself in
to U.S. Attorneys to face trial. “I am home, but my exile has not ended.”

Equally dramatic was the refusal of draft resister Steve Bezich, imprisoned at El Reno, Okla., to accept the furlough granted those in prison while they await action of the Clemency Board. Others of the eighty-three prisoners released have also stated that they will return to prison rather than submit to the clemency plan. The entire plan, in fact, seems to have stirred up further resistance and demands for amnesty, rather than put an end to the problem. The widely publicized first customer of the pro-
gram, John Barry, 22, of San Francisco, turned himself in to U.S. Attorneys, admitting that he had never registered for the draft. However, it was little reported that, after weighing the implications of clemency, Barry is now in exile in Canada. Also little reported were acts like that of James A. Degal, director of the Spokane Center for World Justice and Peace who, hearing of the plan, mailed back his draft card and declared, “I stand in solidarity of conscience with all the peoples of the world who are oppressed, imprisoned, exiled and tortured for their moral and political beliefs.”

By October 24, after more than a month of operation, the clemency program was already clearly a failure. The Presidential Clemency Board still had only a few hundred cases of those released from stockades and prisons to consider. Few of the more than 200,000 others eligible to apply to the board appear even vaguely interested.
 
President Ford’s re-entry program for Vietnamese War resisters is part of a continuing cover-up of the terrible costs and consequences of this nation’s intervention in Indochina. It is designed to discredit resistance to the war and, along with the Presidential pardon of Nixon, bring to an end our long “nightmare” of bickering over
Indochina.  Mr. Ford’s August 19th speech announcing leniency at the VFW Convention in Chicago came as a surprise to many and was widely reported as a courageous step.

It was neither.

And in Indiana, the Department of Defense closed down its processing center at Camp Atterbury and moved it to smaller quarters at Port Benjamin Harrison. They had discharged 1,419 absentees, only 964 of whom had surrendered voluntarily. The Pentagon tried as usual to make it look as if these men were merely immature or
suffering from personal problems. [See Musil: “The Truth About Deserters,” The Nation, April 16, 1973.1 However, lawyers and counselors familiar with procedures at Atterbury and Harrison report that alternative service sentences are lightest for those least opposed to the war or the military, stiffest for those who take strong anti-war stands.

Whatever a man’s reasons for quitting the Army, the .Joint Alternate Service Board perceives few mitigating circumstances other than wounds and decorations. To date, 1,140 of the 1,419 discharged have received 19-to-24-months alternate service. And not all have been happy about the opportunity. Thomas King, 27, a sheet-metal worker who left the service after basic training in 1967, was turned in by his wife. “I was op-
posed to the Vietnam war, but I was not a pacifist. I deserted because it was an illegal war. I don’t believe in any limited amnesty, but you have no choice.”

There has been one happy outcome of the plan so far—a list of indicted draft violators has finally been obtained from the Justice Department at the prodding of the Center for Social ,Action, United Church of Christ.  The existence of such a list had been denied for years, but was revealed inadvertently by Justice in a conversation with UCC’s amnesty coordinator, the Rev. Barry Lynn. Lynn and the United Church threatened a suit under the Freedom of Information Act and the list was finally handed over on October 24. The United Church, ACLU. the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and other groups hope to use the list to help fugitives determine whether they have in fact violated the law.

Amnesty groups are gearing up for more action toward a universal unconditional amnesty, even before the January 31st deadline. They will huddle at a National Amnesty Conference in Louisville on November 16-17 to plot strategy. They believe that Ford’s action has simultaneously appeased those who opposed any clemency at
all, and exposed the inequities and the administrative and legal hopelessness of any conditional amnesty plan. Once the dust settles after January 31, amnesty advocates are convinced that the public will realize that the Ford program was a failure and that total amnesty is the only feasible and fair solution.

As for President Ford, his attempts to pretend that the war in Indochina was just’ and is over, that resisters committed the “supreme folly,” that the draft and military were free of discrimination, illegality and inequity, and that our long national “nightmare” has ended, has clearly misfired. As ‘with the Nixon pardon, President Ford underestimated the depth and the seriousness, of the amnesty question and hoped it could be quickly and quietly laid to rest. He is wrong. But like his “last two predecessors,” it may take some time, and much effort, to convince him of the fact.