one. More importantly, it is only then that this action will achieve the actual reconciliation which it is intended to bring about. The war exiles are not hopeful about a legal amnesty unless it is accompanied by the acceptance of them, on the part of the public, as people who are now entitled to take their place in society on an equal footing with everybody else.

Where time permits, the most effective exploration of the amnesty question in a group setting should be done over the period of several sessions. A "package plan" of this sort might be organized as follows:

1. Raising the question-The people in the group should determine what facts about amnesty they need to know. Once the basic facts are clear, they should determine the issues that they need to discuss to reach a consensus on amnesty. As a final step in this session, each person should write down the best reason they can think of why an amnesty should be granted, and the best reason they can think of why an amnesty should not be granted. This technique has the advantage of assuring that people think seriously about both sides of the question, no matter what side they may happen to favor themselves. Literature should be available at the close of this session so that people may inform themselves more fully on particular aspects of amnesty. Some popular sources of literature on amnesty are: American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Project on Amnesty, 22 E. 40th Street, New York, NY 10016; National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors, 550 Washington Bldg., New York Ave. and 15th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005; Clergy and Laity Concerned, Literature Services, 235 E. 49th Street, New York, NY 10017.

2. Informational input and discussion-A starter for this session could be a film such as “Amnesty or Exile," a 35 minute black and white documentary containing excerpts of interviews with draft and military exiles, military personnel in the U.S., representatives of the Pentagon, and selections from the Kennedy Senate Subcommittee hearings on amnesty. The film concludes with a proamnesty viewpoint, but presents both sides of the question. It may be rented for $25 from the Broadcasting and Film Commission, National Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 860, New York, NY 10027.

Another film which might be used is "Duty Bound." This is a 60 minute color courtroom drama. A strong case for both sides is made during the trial of a war resister. The jury is the viewing audience. This film may also be rented from the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches. The rental is $25. A dramatic reading might be presented in lieu of a film. The script from "The Advocates" program on amnesty might be used for this purpose. It is available from "The Advocates," WGBH Educational Foundation, 125 Western Avenue, Boston, Mass. 02134, at a cost of $2. Another possibility is the transcript from the "Firing Line" program featuring Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. and Henry Schwarzschild of the ACLU. It is available for 25¢ from Firing Line, P.O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C. 29250. Still another possibility for starting discussion is to begin the session with a tape. A 20 minute cassette entitled "Amnesty: Is it a Good Idea?" is available at a purchase price of $3 from the Office of Selective Service Information, Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., 315 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010.

After discussion has sufficiently clarified the problem, the group should attempt to work out a concensus position. It would be helpful for the group to draft a written statement that specifies its position so that those of its membership, or others who wish to do so, might subscribe to it.

3. Action for amnesty-Once the group has arrived at a position favorable to some form of amnesty it should spend some time considering how it might best be influential in promoting amnesty. This is often best done by having the participants in the group "brainstorm" various possibilities. A secretary could write the results on newsprint positioned where the group can keep tabs on them. Suggestions arising from such "brainstorming" will vary depending on the character of the group, but sample possibilities might be: circulate amnesty petitions for forwarding to the President and Congress; write one's own Congressperson and Senators; form a Speakers' bureau composed of parents of men killed in Vietnam who favor amnesty, parents of draft evaders and deserters, veterans of Vietnam who favor amnesty, parents of draft evaders and deserters, veterans of the Vietnam era now opposed to the war; plan programs on amnesty in service clubs and other civic organizations; organize panels composed of representatives of the military, religious leaders, politicians, and conscientious objectors or former exiles or deserters; suggest a sermon on the question of amnesty in churches any synagogues; arrange placement of literature tables on amnesty wherever

possible; write letters to editors; ask for more radio and television discussion of the issue by networks and local stations; raise the question of amnesty on callin radio and T.V. programs; in conversation, ask people how they feel about amnesty in the light of historical precedent, religious group statements, etc. It should be emphasized that these are only sample possibilities. The imagination and creativity of individuals and groups will hopefully produce others. The important thing is not how education is done, but that it is done.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Reverend Barger. I think that is a very interesting point that you have made. And it is one that perhaps as we go down the road with the amnesty maybe even a more important one, and that is that amnesty does not mean exoneration.

There has been some testimony today that you probably heard that objected to amnesty on the grounds that it amounted to saying the U.S. Government was wrong and these people that had a matter of conscience were right. You are bringing out the fact that amnesty does not mean that, and that maybe a very important point in any future legislation that might come. And we might even in such legislation say that explicitly, in order to make it clear to everybody. But it is a very helpful point.

Thank you.

Reverend BARGER. You are welcome. I just want to underline that amnesty would be neither commendation or condemnation by either the Government or the organizations.

Mr. SMITH. As was pointed out before, something in the nature of reconciliation without judgments being made.

Reverend BARGER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. The subcommittee appreciates your statement very much and accepts it in the nature of a benediction on our first of 3 days of hearing on the subject of amnesty. You have also written on this subject, and we look forward to reading the piece that you have already distributed.

Reverend BARGER. Might I claim a point of personal privilege, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the witnesses who have been here all day, and I am sure the remaining witnesses in thanking you as chairman and the distinguished members of your committee, both the majority and the minority, for holding these hearings and for helping us all to realize more what is at stake.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say-and perhaps we ought to say for the record—that Reverend Barger has supplied each one of us with his book, "Amnesty, What Does It Really Mean.” And we thank you for this.

Reverend BARGER. We are doubly appreciative.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. This concludes the first day of hearings on the question of amnesty. The hearings will resume in this room on Monday morning at 10 a.m. Until that time we stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:18 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Monday, March 11, 1974.]

[The statement referred to at p. 52 follows:]

STATEMENT ON AMNESTY (OCTOBER 1973)

We ask again that the public and the government face the fact that for all that has happened in our Vietnamese war, only men who are young have been or

are being punished; and that in disproportionate numbers these men are nonwhite and from low economic estate.

We are speaking of those men who are or were imprisoned for refusing induction; of those who expatriated themselves before or after induction or who have lived underground; and of those given "less-than-honorable" or other discriminatory discharges from the military.

We believe that justice-justice that is symmetrical in its equal treatment of all citizens-requires an unconditional amnesty, pardon, or fair restitution for all men who are charged with, may be charged with, or have been convicted for offenses arising out of their refusal to participate in the military action in Southeast Asia, or for offenses against military law while doing so.

A country which has found only a lieutenant guilty for My Lai, has found no one legally culpable for the massive deception revealed in the Pentagon Papers and in the disclosures of later lawlessness and deceit in the war's conduct, has seen its honor sacked by Watergate and similar affairs-such a country so long as it may belong to a just people cannot now impose its penalties only on these young and powerless men. That cannot be fair, cannot be in keeping with our best ideals.

Our war, we trust, is over. The nation now has much to do, much that it can do only as a united people. There is too little mutual trust among us, too much that is corrosive of hopes and spirits.

A general and unconditional amnesty would be a simple and clear act. It would be a sign that we want to live at peace with each other, that we want to end within ourselves the awful division caused by the war, that we want to get on with the work of making this a better land.

Who can be opposed to such an act? Can the dead speak, and advise us; or can any speak for them? Would we really want to turn to parents of the dead and set them speaking against each other, some urging amnesty and some opposed? Are veterans (including former prisoners of war) opposed? They appear divided, many for, many against, many indifferent. Although interest and weight do attach to the views of the veterans of this war who were themselves enlisted men, even they, in the tradition of our civil society, have now to advance those views as citizens, and not as a distinct group.

Can Congressmen and members of the administration, both present and former ones, who put us into the war and who kept us in it so long, have it in their hearts to absolve themselves while they hurt these young men?

Can those Congressmen who opposed the war, in the way the public empowered them to do, want to hurt those powerless men who opposed the war in the only ways they could or knew how, men who in the process helped create and sustain that public disgust with the war which finally gave some success to Congressional effort to end it?

We believe that Congress and the President are, in fact, fully free to act for amnesty, and that they cannot rightfully claim to be held back by constituents' pressures. We believe amnesty, as was segregation in the South, is an issue wherein statesmen would not trade on fears but can, and therefore should, lead. We believe that the people will respond helpfully to forthright leadership, as did people in the South when segregation was outlawed.

We believe that if Congress or the President will give the American people the opportunity to be generous and just, the nation will be so. We ask for that opportunity.

Does this nation, that was established to "form a more perfect union" and to "insure domestic tranquility," not want to heal itself? Do we not want to take this chance on justice?

There are few acts a government can decide upon that clearly and immediately benefit individuals; amnesty would be one. We think it would be even more. We would be saying to ourselves that we now put the Vietnam war behind us, with its terrible freight of bitterness and recrimination, and of corruption and brutality too. We would signal a decisive turning away from the darkness of the war years, and toward rebuilding and restoring and healing, both here and, as we are morally bound to do, in Indo-China. We also would be affirming to ourselves that America has no time or need for vengeance against ourselves, and especially not against our youth. We would, instead, be welcoming the return, as free members of a freer society, of young men who can give much to the futuretheirs and ours and our country's.

31-658-74-23

Roger Baldwin, founder and former Director, American Civil Liberties Union. Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, retired General Secretary, World Council of Churches.

Rabbi Irwin M. Blank, Temple Ohabei Shalom, Brookline, Mass.

Rev. Robert McAfee Brown, Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University.

Heywood Burns, Director. National Conference of Black Lawyers.

Rev. Will D. Campbell, Director, Committee of Southern Churchmen.

Rev. W. Sterling Cary, President, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Kenneth B. Clark, Professor of Social Psychology, City University of New York: President, Metropolitan Applied Research Center.

Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., Chaplain, Yale University.

John R. Coleman, President, Haverford College.

Robert Coles, psychiatrist, Harvard University; author.

Dorothy Day, Editor and publisher, The Catholic Worker.

Patricia M. Derian, Democratic National Committeewoman from Mississippi.

Leslie Dunbar, Executive Director, The Field Foundation.

Vernon A. Eagle, Executive Director, The New World Foundation.

Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, President, Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Eric H. Erikson, psychoanalyst and author.

W. H. Ferry, Executive Director, D.J.B. Foundation.

Lawrence J. Friedman, President, U.S. National Student Association.

Willard Gaylin, Professor of Psychiatry and Law, Columbia University; author.

Ernest Gruening, former U.S. Senator from Alaska.

Michael Harrington, Chairman, Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee; author.

Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President, University of Notre Dame. M. Carl Holman.

David R. Hunter.

Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., Pastor, Centenary Methodist Church, Memphis, Tenn.

John Lewis, Executive Director, Voter Education Project, Atlanta, Georgia. Robert Jay Lifton, Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University.

Benjamin E. Mays, President, Board of Education, Atlanta, Georgia; President Emeritus, Morehouse College.

David McReynolds, War Resisters League.

Charles Morgan, Jr., Executive Director, Washington National Office, American Civil Liberties Union.

The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore Jr., Bishop of New York, Episcopal Church.

Rev. Robert V. Moss, President, United Church of Christ.

Aryeh Neier, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union.

Rev. Kenneth Neigh, retired General Secretary of the former Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chairwoman, New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Hon. Justine Wise Polier.

Roy Pierce, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan.

Daniel H. Pollitt, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina Law School. Charles O. Porter, former U.S. Congressinan from Oregon; Chairman, National Committee for Amnesty Now.

Rev. Stephen G. Prichard, Director of Training, Institutes of Religion and Health.

Louise Ransom, Director, Americans for Amnesty; Gold Star Mother. Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Counsel, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Milton J. E. Senn, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Yale University.

Charles E. Silberman, Director, The Study of Law and Justice; author. William P. Thompson, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

John William Ward, President, Amherst College.

Raymond M. Wheeler, President, Southern Regional Council; Chairman, Children's Foundation; physician.

Andrew J. Young, Member of Congress from Georgia. (Titles for identification only.)

[The document referred to at p. 242 follows:]

[From The Nation, Apr. 16, 1973]

THE TRUTH ABOUT DESERTERS

(By Robert K. Musil)

Mr. Musil, a former Army captain active in the GI movement at Fort Benjamin Harrison, was discharged as a conscientious objector. He is associate secretary of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an agency for military and draft counseling, and co-editor of CCCO News Notes.

Myths abound about deserters. A colorful Howard Johnson's place mat warns diners on the New Jersey Turnpike that picking up hitchhikers can be dangerous-many of them are AWOLS. Even liberal Sen. Philip A. Hart characterized AWOLS at the Kennedy hearings on the draft and amnesty last spring as "guys who take off with the company cash."

In the growing debate over amnesty in the new cease-fire period, everyone is getting into the anti-AWOL act. In a carefully orchestrated media campaign, Administration spokesmen, including columnist William S. White, White House special counsel Charles W. Colson, and speechwriter Patrick S. Buchanan, have tried to minimize the number of deserters and to label them "malingerers, opportunists, criminals and cowards." Even the usually moderate editorial page of The New York Times, in discussing amnesty (February 23), draws "a sharp distinction between them [draft resisters] and those who deserted the Armed Forces."

On the surface, those who degrade deserters seem to have a solid case. They point out that unlike draft evaders, AWOLS have already taken an oath to serve their country; many of them have criminal records, or are fleeing prosecution. They add that legal avenues of redress of grievances were open to them. Finally, and most significantly, they claim that the motivations of deserters were neither conscientious or pure. In support of this final point, one of great rhetorical strength in the amnesty debate, they often allude to or quote Pentagon studies from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs [OASD (M&RA)] that purport to show that only 5 per cent of all deserters were motivated by anti-war feelings.

These myths are held for various reasons. Most of the public is simply ignorant about AWOLs. They rely on World War II clichés and stereotypes of the bad guy slinking away from his buddies under fire. Or, lacking the data or background to challenge them, they simply accept official explanations. Some politicians inadvertently add fuel to the myths when, hoping to appear reasonable and pragmatic, they speak about amnesty for draft resisters, but neglect deserters in order to gain support.

The current Administration campaign to disparage deserters and perpetuate misconceptions is another matter. [See "What Nixon Forgets: Congress Bestows Amnesty" by Harrop A. Freeman, The Nation, March 26.] By portraying the numbers of deserters as large as insignificant, and impugning their motives as confused at best, but more likely as dishonorable and criminal, the Administration hopes in one blow to discredit its amnesty opposition, justify its war policies, and cover up longstanding abuses in the armed forces.

In this climate, we need a fresh, hard look at deserters. The facts are difficult to come by, but they clearly explode all of the old myths. First, it must be emphasized that the term "deserter" is simply a convenience. It is used by the military to refer to those persons who have been absent without leave for a period of thirty days or more, been dropped from the rolls of their unit, and then administratively classified as deserters for purposes of record keeping, notification of the FBI, etc. No person absent without leave is legally a deserter until convicted of that offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Desertion, as an offense, requires an intent to remain away from the military permanently, and is rather difficult to prove. Thus Pentagon statistics about deserters refer only to those persons who have been dropped from their unit rolls, and do not include a far larger number of persons who at any given time are AWOL for less than one month.

The number of deserters during the Vietnam era is staggering and is probably underreported. From fiscal 1965 through early fiscal 1973 (August 1, 1964– December 31, 1972) the Pentagon reports 495,689 cases of desertion, not counting