AMNESTY: Limited Program, Limited Response

As President Ford last week unveiled his program to permit Viet Nam War evaders and deserters to earn their way back into U.S. society, he termed it "an act of mercy to bind the nation's wounds and to heal the scars of divisiveness." But the wounds bled anew. Leaders of veterans' organizations immediately denounced the plan as "a gross injustice" to those who had served, died, and suffered. Members of war resisters' groups assailed it as a "punitive" assault upon men who had been guilty only of "premature morality." Yet Ford's plan, an extremely complex attempt to resolve a national dilemma, doubtless reflected the middle position of most Americans on the issue.

Certainly, there are inequities in Ford's program, which had been opposed as too gentle by the Justice and Defense Departments and some Congressmen. It falls well short of the blanket postwar amnesty that past Presidents extended, and few were rushing to accept it until they could figure out just how it would be administered. If in practice the leniency stressed by Ford prevails over the fairly harsh provisions of the plan, many exiles may return. If the plan is rigidly applied, relatively few may do so.

The key question is whether returnees from abroad and the U.S. underground will have to serve the full two years in low-paying public-service jobs. Ford's proclamation requires that the jobs be in fields that "promote the national health, safety or interest"—in hospitals, forests, schools and public institutions, usually as menial laborers.

Uncertainty arises because the plan empowers officials to reduce a term on the vague basis of past "honorable service, penalties already paid under law, and such other mitigating factors as may be appropriate to seek equity." These judgments will be made by regional U.S. Attorneys or a military Joint Alternative Service Board at Indiana's Fort Benjamin Harrison under general guidelines from their Washington superiors. The scheme is designed to minimize inequities stemming from local prejudice.

Incredible Oversight. The plan for handling deserters contains two sharp differences from the treatment of draft evaders: 1) only deserters must take an oath reaffirming their allegiance to the U.S.; 2) through an incredible oversight (privately admitted by the Pentagon but publicly denied as a mistake by the Justice Department), deserters can escape serving the alternate public-service work. They will be given "undesirable discharges" and must pledge to take a compensatory job, but will lose only the benefit of changing their discharge to one termed a "clemency discharge" if they fail to do so. Neither type of discharge is a legal barrier to employment in civilian jobs; both deny veterans' benefits to the holder. Few deserters are likely to find two years of enforced labor worth the distinction.