AMNESTY: Limited Program, Limited Response

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Men who have already been convicted of draft evasion, including those in prison, will also be treated differently. Their cases will be reviewed by a new nine-member Presidential Clemency Board, headed by former New York Republican Senator Charles Goodell, who sharply opposed the Nixon Administration's Viet Nam War policy. This board will be able to recommend to the President that specific men serving in prison be released. It will determine how much compensating service in jobs must be performed in each case. It will also have the task of reviewing the files of some 216,500 veterans who received less than honorable discharges, and upgrade those discharges if the rating seems unjust.

Assessing Motives. Precisely how many men will be eligible for the program is in dispute. The White House issued the following figures: 15,500 draft evaders (including 8,700 men who have been convicted, 4,350 under indictment, 2,250 under investigation and 96 in prison); 12,500 deserters at large; 660 deserters either confined or awaiting military trial. Draft resisters' groups place the number of dodgers and deserters at more than 50,000.

Whatever the number of men who finally respond by the Jan. 31, 1975 deadline, the case-by-case review is certain to be a difficult task. To assess accurately the motives of men who evaded service as long as five years ago may prove impossible. There is a problem of equity too for the many men who sought status as conscientious objectors and would have served 24 months in alternate work, but were denied that classification by local draft boards. To ask them to take menial jobs now, when they have acquired careers and families, seems harsh. Many also became fugitives before the Supreme Court, in June 1970, broadened the definition of conscientious objector to embrace persons resisting service on ethical rather than purely religious grounds. In addition, many draft evaders have received short or suspended sentences from compassionate judges and face no job requirement at all. Draft evaders convicted during 1971, for example, served terms averaging only 9.4 months.

The program got off to a slow start last week as only 18 military deserters reported to Fort Benjamin Harrison, where the joint review board is prepared to process some cases in as little as four days. The Pentagon released 95 convicted deserters from military prisons while their situations are being studied. Attorney General William Saxbe gave 30-day prison furloughs to 83 convicted evaders pending reviews.