serving only 41% of their sentence. Presently, only a handful of convicted violators are being incarcerated after convicted and in one instance a Court of Appeals remanded a case to the District Court with instructions to vacate the conviction upon completion of a parole in the Armed Forces. In addition to the 7,932 convicted violators, as of January 1, 1974, there were 5,119 violators under indictment and another 3,080 under prosecutive determination of an FBI investigation. Of this total number of 8,199, approximately 4,400 are fugitives, of which it is estimated that 3,000 are in Canada, 500 overseas, and the whereabouts of the remaining 900 is unknown. In sum then, we are speaking of a maximum number of less than 17,000 violators who could be affected by a blanket or general amnesty, which amounts to less than one per cent of the total number of inducted men during the Vietnam conflict.

I now wish to turn briefly to the history of amnesty for draft evaders in this country and then address the issue itself. As I am sure you are aware, only twice in our history has amnesty been granted, and when granted, only then in a selected manner, that is, first in 1933 and secondly in 1947. You will recall that President Roosevelt fifteen years after World War I granted amnesty to some 1,500 convicted violators of that war while President Truman did the same for a like number of violators from World War II. In both cases convictions were reviewed and those persons deemed to be deserving were recommended for clemency. The 1947 Board reviewed over 15,000 cases, recommending amnesty only in one out of every 10 cases. Also in 1933 and 1947 all sentences had been served by the convicted violators before amnesty was granted. There was no amnesty granted after the Korean War. I have defined the extent of the problem, because, in my opinion it has a significant bearing on the issue of amnesty. The numbers of violators and historical precedent should not be ignored in addressing the issue.

There are those who in the name of morality contend that he who refused to serve his country did it out of a sense that his country was wrong and he was right about our involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. They contend that such a violator had a "true sense" of right and distinguished it from wrong. He responded to a higher law or morality. Yet let us not forget that each one of them had his chance to prove his belief and eligibility for the recognized conscientious objection status under the conditions described below. Now, after the fact, he contends that if not truly a conscientious objector he is at least a "selective" conscientious objector and should be recognized as such. If this should be the case it would appear to make a mockery of the efforts of the 17,000 local board members who faithfully served their country without pay and did their duty as they saw it.

For those who believe that many if not all of the 8,199 outstanding violators, particularly the estimated 4,400 of this number who are fugitives, are in fact conscientious objectors, the facts would appear to belie such a conclusion. On July 6, 1970, Local Board Memorandum No. 107 was issued which set forth the criteria for classification of conscientious objectors as had also been the case under Operations Bulletin No. 270 issued on March 12, 1965. Local Board Memorandum No. 107 gave effect, as presently does Chapter 661 of the Registrants Processing Manual, to the Supreme Court's rulings in U.S. v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), and in Welch v. U.S., 398 U.S. 333 (1970). In the 1965 decision it held that an individual seeking to qualify for draft exemption as a conscientious objector does not have to believe in the existence of a "Supreme Being" in its most orthodox sense and in 1970 the court further stated that the conscientious objector may even embrace any individualistic or "homemade religion" which is so sincerely and deeply held as to guide the conduct of his life in the same way that a traditional pacifistic religion would guide one of its adherents. However, as you may know, the Supreme Court refused in the decisions of U.S. v. Gillette and Negre v. Larsen, 401 U.S. 437 (1971) to recognize the "selective" conscientious objector who is opposed to participating in a particular but is not opposed to participating in all wars. Thus, it can be concluded that if within the 8,199 outstanding violators there are Seeger-type conscientious objectors, they would all have to pre-date the year 1965 since the System by Operations Bulletin No. 270 gave effect to this decision at that time.

If they are Welch-type conscientious objectors, their violations would have to have occurred before 1970 since Local Board Memorandum No. 107 gave effect to the Welch decision at that time. Obviously, however, if they are "selective" conscientious objectors, they have not been afforded relief by the courts or the procedures of the Selective Service System. Notwithstanding, whether these

violators be of the Seeger, Welch, or Gillette-type, it would appear at this point in time that if there is to be validity to their contentions, these alleged-to-be conscientious objectors should have filed a claim with their local boards for such a classification prior to their violations and not now be permitted to do so after the fact. I am not aware that they did. However, I am aware that from June 1964 to June 1973, 145,807 registrants were classified as conscientious objectors. Accordingly, it must be recognized that the System did respond to a bona fide claim for such an exemption.

Then too there are those who say that not to forgive and forget keeps open the wound of divisiveness. We should remember the 1.8 million who served, perhaps in some instances without total commitment. Truly those who served and sacrificed as an obligation to their country may become the divisive element should amnesty be granted to the less than one per cent who failed to meet their duty. The patriotic youth who complied with the law of the land risked his life and gave up his personal freedom for a period of two years.

As Dr. Curtis W. Tarr, the former Director of the Selective Service System, stated in February 1972 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee "any widespread program of amnesty would be incompatible with the continuation of inductions." If the world situation should make it necessary for the System again to reinstitute inductions, general amnesty for past violators might well convince some young men in the future that they had little to lose by evading military service. Further, since the Military Selective Service Act is permanent legislation and requires a person to register when he becomes eighteen, even during periods of no induction, the person who refuses to do so must be prosecuted. How can we explain or justify amnesty for those who broke the law in times of armed conflict but refuse it for those in time of peace? Such a position is illogical on its face.

In summary, I hope I have shown that those who would qualify for amnesty are few in number, historical precedent and inequity would dictate against the granting of amnesty, and lastly the disruptive effect in the future on the Selective Service System of providing amnesty to those who refused induction into the Armed Services could be far reaching.

This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. Next, the Chair would like to call Father J. Bryan Hehir, director of the Division of Justice and Peace, United States Catholic Conference.

TESTIMONY OF REV. J. BRYAN HEHIR, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF JUSTICE AND PEACE, UNITED STATES CATHOLIC CONFERENCE

Mr. HEHIR. Mr. Chairman, as you noted, I am director of the Division of Justice and Peace, which is the civil agency of the Catholic bishops of the United States.

I appreciate the opportunity to present the views of the conference on the question of amnesty to this subcommittee.

The agreement the United States and other nations signed over a year ago brought a formal cease-fire to the war in Vietnam. We must acknowledge, however, that this action did not achieve fully the expectation of establishing peace for the people of Indochina, nor did it eliminate all of the conditions which that most tragic war inflicted upon the people of the United States.

Domestically, the effects of the war are still with us; in fact, there is a risk that its aftereffects can leave a residue of bitterness which could poison our national life for years to come. This must not be allowed to happen. We must instead seek to resolve the situations which cause divisions among us, in a spirit of reconciliation. Reconciliation is the theme and motivating idea of this presentation; reconciliation is also the primary need of the moment in this country.

The manifestations of the need for reconciliation are nowhere more apparent than in the lives of those directly touched by the war. The consequences of the war are diverse and call for a plurality of modes of reconciliation. On a prior occasion, the Catholic bishops of the United States called attention to the needs of returning veterans, especially the wounded and the prisoners of war. In the last few weeks, some of these very men have come to Washington to remind the Congress and the country that their needs have not been adequately met as yet. The reintegration of these returning veterans into the full life of the society and the provision for their medical, social, and economic needs is one dimension of reconcilation due to them because of the valor they have displayed and the sacrifices they have made.

An equally important task of reconciliation to which we would like to give specific attention in this testimony, however, relates to those young men whose critical judgment of the Vietnam war led them to resist military service. This testimony today in favor of amnesty is rooted in prior evaluations which the American Catholic bishops have made about these young people. For example, in 1968, the bishops offered the following assessment of those who oppose military service:

There is sometimes ground for question as to whether the attitudes of some toward military duty do not spring from cowardice. In this problem, as in all crises which test generosity and heroism, cases of moral as well as physical cowardice doubtless occur. But a blanket charge of this kind would be unfair to those young people who are clearly willing to suffer social ostracism and even prison terms because of their opposition to a particular war. One must conclude that for many of our youthful protesters, the motives spring honestly from a principled opposition to a given war as pointless or immoral.

Nor can it be said, the Bishops continued, that such conscientious objection to war, as the war is waged in our times, is entirely the result of subjective considerations and without reference to the message of the gospel and the teaching of the Church; quite the contrary, frequently conscientious dissent reflects the influence of the principles which inform modern papal teaching, the Pastoral Constitution [of the Second Vatican Council] and a classical tradition of moral doctrine in the Church, including, in fact, the norms for the moral evaluation of a theoretically just war. ("Human Life in Our Day," ch. 2, The Family of Nations, November 1968.)

The purpose of recalling these words is to focus our concern today on those who have suffered prison terms and social ostracism, even to the point of self-imposed exile, as a result of their opposition to the war. It is the belief of the Catholic Conference that in the present context of our country, the granting of amnesty is a work of reconciliation.

It is important to specify what we mean by amnesty; to grant amnesty requires both an understanding of its precise meaning and a recognition of how it relates to reconciliation.

As has been pointed out previously today, amnesty does not mean that society or the Nation "forgives" a person for his unlawful acts. Rather, amnesty is a healing act of deliberate and selective "forgetting," used in situations where the Nation both admits its own need for reconciliation and recognizes that need for healing of injustices suffered by the individuals in question. To grant amnesty, then, brings about healing and reconciliation to some divided members of society and reconciliation of these members with society as a whole. The Government's grant of amnesty becomes the law's own way of undoing what the law itself has done.

Who should be granted amnesty? We find three broad categories of cases. First, those young men who were subject to the draft but whose informed conscience led them to oppose participation in the Vietnam war, even though they could not say in conscience that they were opposed to all use of military force. These selective conscientious objectors are now serving prison terms. We do not believe any useful purpose is served at this time by continuing the incarceration in Federal prisons of these young men whose consciences instructed them not to engage in the killing and dying of the Vietnam war. Therefore, for this first group I would repeat the injunction of the American Catholic bishops made in 1971:

We urge civil officials *** to consider granting amnesty to those who have been imprisoned as selective conscientious objectors (“Declaration on Conscientious Objection and Selective Conscientious Objectors,” Oct. 21, 1971).

Secondly, we also recognize that an additional group of young men are in a somewhat similar position-that is, men in military servicewho for reasons of their consciences were compelled to refuse to serve in the war and who were imprisoned or given less-than-honorable discharges. Here again the complicating impact of selective conscientious objection upon the structures of military law is evident. However, we do not believe that the individual forfeits his right to exercise the dictates of his conscience once he enters the ranks of the military, or for that matter, any other form of employment. The request for amnesty for selective conscientious objectors in Federal prisons, therefore, we believe, should also be extended similarly to men in military jails.

Thirdly, there is the group of young men who have left the country or who have remained in the country as fugitives from the law because they felt compelled to follow their consciences rather than the law. Certainly, their experiences of sufferings and separation have been trying for them personally as well as for their families and friends. We are here to again urge officials and all Americans to respond to their conspicuous need to find a solution to the problems of these men through the reconciling work of amnesty.

Perhaps the heart of my testimony is to answer why should amnesty be granted to these men? I have already cited one reason: the political and spiritual need to deal with the divisions in the fabric of our national life. There is, however, also a second reason of the moral or jurisprudential order. All three of the categories cited are made up of men who held the position of conscientious objection to a particular war, that is, selective conscientious objection. Catholic teaching on the morality of warfare fully supports those who, with informed conscience, oppose participation in all forms of warfare. The dominant moral position in the Catholic community for several centuries, however, has been the moral doctrine of the just war. This position, while legitimating the use of force against injustice in political affairs as the ultima ratio, refuses to condone any and all uses of forces. Such a teaching, requiring the individual to exercise responsible discriminating judgment about the moral validity for each use of force, is the matrix from which the judgment of selective conscientious objection. issues.

Because selective conscientious objection is so explicitly a product of a Catholic moral doctrine, the American bishops expressed their concern in 1968 about the inadequacy, indeed the injustice, of the failure of our legal system to provide for this very sound moral posture. They said:

The present laws of this country, however, provide only for those whose reasons of conscience are grounded in a total rejection of the use of military force. This form of conscientious objection deserves the legal provision made for it, but we consider that the time has come to urge that similar consideration be given those whose reasons of conscientious objection are more personal and specific ("Human Life in Our Day,” chapter 2, The Family of Nations, November 1968.)

This testimony today is motivated by the fact that because of the inadequacy of the civil law a number of individuals suffered and are still suffering imprisonment, or have left the country and are still in voluntary exile, or have taken refuge from the law, because they felt compelled to follow their consciences rather than the law. The failure of the law to provide for the selective conscientious objector position compelled the Bishops in 1968 to recommend that the law be revised by enacting "a modification of the Selective Service Act, making it possible, although not easy, for so-called selective conscience objectors to refuse without fear of imprisonment or loss of citizenship-to serve in wars which they consider unjust, or in branches of the services (e.g., the Strategic Nuclear Forces) which would subject them to the performance of actions contrary to deeply held moral convictions about indiscriminate killing." (İbid.)

In taking this position this morning and in the past, there is no attempt to underestimate the difficulties of the jurisprudential problem involved here for legislators in seeking to construct a law which respects both demands of public order and the dictates of an informed conscience protesting the character of a specific instance of warfare. Rather, the intention is to highlight the notion that where the imperatives of the moral law contradict the demands of the civil law in a properly formed conscience, in Catholic teaching the moral order must take precedence. This primary of the informed conscience was the basis of the following counsel offered by the Bishops in 1968 when they said:

Whether or not such modifications, [meaning the Selective Service Act], in our laws are, in fact, made we continue to hope that in the all-important issue of war and peace, all men will follow their consciences. We can do no better than to recall, as did the Second Vatical Council, "the permanent binding force of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles, to which man's conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice." (Ibid.)

In 1971, the Bishops explicitly specified their support of selective conscientious objection:

In the light of the gospel and from an analysis of the Church's teaching on conscience, it is clear that a Catholic can be a conscientious objector to war in general or to a particular war because of religious training and belief. (“Declaration on Conscientious Objection and Selective Conscientious Objection," Oct. 21, 1971)

On three occasions, "The Catholic Conscientious Objector,” October 1969: "Military Conscription," March 1971; "Declaration on Conscientious Objection and Selective Conscientious Objection," October 1971, the U.S. Catholic Conference reiterated the Bishops' original