provement. To a 4

install a reducing for educational imlatter monnection, we will administer try to determine their needs for such The inf Tatoo will be available to the education officer at the installations where the men are sent after their military training so that they may encourage these mer to take advantage of the of-duty editational programs that are availble at

Since the initiation of this program last October, we have already enrolled over 13.000 men who would not have been accepted under earlier policies, of whom over half were volunteers. Our initial experience with these men in basic training is highly encouraging; only 1 percent have been discharged for such reasons as unsuitability, unfitness or misconduct. We plan to monitor the progress of these men closely throughout their service careers. Our objective will be to assure that every man accepted under this program, as well as all other servicemen, will be much better equipped to fulfill their roles as productive members of society, either in military service careers or as future members of the civilian work force.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that Project One Hundred Thousand, as well as related efforts to improve the skills and education of men in military service, complement-but in no way compete with the training and educational programs of civilian agencies of the Government. The primary objective of military training and educational programs is to increase the capability of our servicemen to perform their military duties. Even under our current reduced standards, we estimate that as many as 200,000 young men per year will continue to be disqualified due to failure on the tests.

However, some assistance is provided to these young men through the rejected referral programs under which young men found disqualified at our examining stations are interviewed by representatives of the State employment service or of community health agencies, and referred to appropriate agencies in their community for remedial health, employment, or training assistance if needed, including referral to Job Corps training. We have also established procedures under which men who have initially failed our screening tests may be retested upon completion of these civilian programs and accepted for service, if qualified.

We are gratified by the reports we have received of the young men who have taken advantage of these opportunities to help qualify them for military service. We shall continue to assist, in every practicable way, in providing them with an opportunity to serve.

Mr. Chairman, this completes our statement. We will now be pleased to answer your questions.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Morris, I want to commend you on your statement. It is extremely comprehensive and con

clusive. Needless to say, it provides a great deal of information for the members of this committee to digest and assimilate.

In the group in Project 100,000, could you add anything to what General Hershey testified to earlier today as to the profile of this group? What are the reasons they are not qualified? Are they for mental or physical, primarily?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, of the group of 100,000 which we have set as our initial target, about 85 percent will be men who were formerly disqualified for failure of the mental test and 15 percent for physical failures. Of the group we are accepting this year the majority will be failures on the mental test. We are keeping an actual name-byname record of these men in order to have a complete profile of their prior premilitary experience as well as what happens to them in the military and after they leave the service. I can give you some initial results of the first group we have studied. About 60 percent of them came to us as volunteers. This is under the new standards. Forty percent came through the draft.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Therefore, of this group, 60 percent wanted to serve in the Armed Forces?

Mr. MORRIS. Yes, sir; of the initial group. This might vary from time to time but this is the first experience.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. This is, I understand, a profile only of this particular group.

Could you also give us some idea as to whether this profile is generally typical of all those rejected? I mean specifically whether a high percent of those rejected are interested in the Armed Forces of our country, but for one reason or other lack the mental or physical standards qualifications but would serve in the Armed Forces if they were rehabilitable.

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, I believe the other quick indicators I can give may cast light on this. In terms of education for this new and special group, 68 percent lacked a high school diploma.

One-third had a diploma, two-thirds did not. This is definitely not typical of our general force. Today, about 75 percent of the men entering from all sources have a high school diploma or better.

In terms of previous employment we found that 38 percent of these men were unemployed at the time they came to us. Another 30 percent had been drawing less than the minimum wage. So, altogether, about 68 percent were either unemployed or not drawing substantial wages. We found that about 41 percent are nonwhite, about 59 percent are Caucasians.

In terms of their skill areas we found a very interesting distribution over a wide number of aptitudes, the least of which happens to be the combat skill.

The highest percentages were found to have an aptitude for motor maintenance activity. Another very high percentage for general maintenance work. A very good percent for clerical work. We are encouraged to feel we are going to find a wide range of aptitudes among these individuals.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Do you also find that these individuals will be able to perform useful work; that you will be able to rehabilitate men for noncombatant jobs, thereby freeing those who

might now be functioning in clerical or support function for greater line responsibility?

Mr. MORRIS. Yes, sir; we feel these individuals will be generally qualified as fully satisfactory soldiers. They will accept the assignments for which their aptitude best suits them and they will go anywhere in the world in which they are needed. They will not be limited duty people, in other words.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Has the Department of Defense made an effort to correlate the training and educational programs received in the Armed Forces with civilian job skills?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, my statement does make reference to the fact that a very high percent of our some 2,000 training areas have transferability to the civilian world. Our survey of our retired personnel conducted in 1964 indicated that 50 percent said their military occupational background had been of definite assistance to them in locating in the civilian market and another 20 percent felt they had been assisted in some respect.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Did you make any effort at all to try to take into consideration in your own planning and training programs the civilian needs, or are your job programs strictly related to military needs and only incidentally spill over into the civilian field? Mr. MORRIS. Necessarily, Mr. Chairman, it is the latter case.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I would like to ask you some questions with regard to the recent reports and to the President's message. You indicated in your testimony that military commanders prefer to have the younger recruits. Is that not so?

Mr. MORRIS. I indicated that this has been a general point of view, sir, that has been encountered over the years. You might be interested in a statement that General Wheeler made just a few days ago in response to this same question. He put it this way:

I have had a lot of experience in training young men. I find that the younger ones are eager, they are sturdy, they learn quickly. Sometimes the older men who have taken on the responsibilities of a family or have other draw downs on their means are not as eager, not as willing to understand the military service as the younger men.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Do you think that taking the younger first will have any effect on the Reserve capacity of the United States?

Mr. MORRIS. No, sir. In accordance with the President's message we are currently in process of issuing instructions that the first priority for Reserve enlistment deferments will be given to men under draft age; that is between the ages of 17 and 1812. We believe this to be a sound policy. It will not preclude, however, men at draft age liability also enlisting if there are vacancies in the Reserve.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Do you feel it is essential to provide the educational deferment for dentists and doctors?

Mr. MORRIS. Yes, indeed, sir.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. You would favor the elimination of the postgraduate deferment.

Mr. MORRIS. This decision has been made. We do favor it with the exception of doctors and dentists.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Would you care to express an opinion with regard to undergraduate deferment?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, we are fully on record in the report of the Marshall commission. They printed a statement which we submitted in this respect as saying that the current procedures of liberal deferment for undergraduates were conducive to obtaining higher enrollments in ROTC programs and to our ability to attract other college graduates for our officer candidate programs.

We pointed out, however, that our needs are about 10 percent of the graduating group at the baccalaureate level and we did not think that these needs alone should be the major influencing factor in the final policy decision in this area. If such deferments are discontinued or sharply curtailed, we would resort to other means to induce officers to prepare themselves while in school to join the services, such as more liberal scholarships. In that connection the President has directed, and we are in process of submitting legislation to support a broadly expanded medical scholarship program.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Now, if you did not have ROTC deferments, if you eliminated all college deferments, you are satisfied that the Armed Forces would receive sufficient officers from more advanced training programs above the high school level?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, all of the discussion of this, as we understand it, would still provide for 1-D deferment of ROTC students or other students in college with a commitment to join the services as officers upon completion of their undergraduate degrees.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. If you did not have the ROTC programs in colleges, would you be able to fill the military officer requirements by developing additional programs to give young people of 19 and 20, who do sufficiently well in the examinations, the opportunity to take officer training programs?

Mr. MORRIS. First, Mr. Chairman, we don't think that we would be deprived of the ROTC programs. We would still have those available in the several hundred institutions that have them. We might have to develop additional procurement techniques such as, for example, the Marine Corps program known as the platoon leaders course. They enlist men as freshmen in college with regular Reserve enlisted status in the Marine Corps. These men come on summer duty while still in college and upon graduation enter a 5 months' training period. We might amplify that type of opportunity for men.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. If you were to move immediately to the youngest first, as recommended, how long do you think it would take to reach that position? What is the transitional period?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, as I believe General Hershey pointed out, we are actually at this position today under high draft calls. As long as they continue, we expect that the average age would be on the order of 20. We believe that there would be necessarily a transition year in the first operation of the selection system.

As indicated in our testimony, men who were in class 1-A over age 19 who had enjoyed deferment would be a part of the first year's pool so that there would be at least a 1-year transition to the new system.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. You agree with General Hershey that it does not present any real technical problem, moving to drafting the youngest first.

Mr. MORRIS. No, sir; not under the expanded inflow of young men at the 19 year age point.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. As far as the time that it would take to eliminate graduate students deferments, does this provide any technical difficulty or is it principally a policy determination? Mr. MORRIS. The considerations here now are under very active review by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Bureau of the Budget, Selective Service, and ourselves. There must be a decision made, as was outlined by the President's staff when his message was released, as to exactly when it will take effect in respect to men who are now completing their undergraduate degrees. The problem of when it should take effect, either this summer of next fall or some later point, is under study.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. There were mentioned in the President's message a number of ad hoc groups that were going to meet, one of which was to try to find a way to carry through the recommendation of the Marshall commission for a random selection system. I wonder if you know whether that task force has met yet, and how it is going to carry through the President's mandate.

Mr. MORRIS. There are two task forces called for in the President's message. One is the assignment to General Hershey with our assistance to work on the random selection procedures. The other is the formation of a group composed of the Budget Bureau, Selective Service, and ourselves to examine recommendations on organization of Selective Service. Both of these are in the process of being formed at this time.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Will you tell us whether these task forces have met? Are they now active?

Mr. MORRIS. Sir, the task force is still being formed and has not, therefore, become an actuality in terms of actual work. We expect this to occur very shortly.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Do you see any obstacles in implementing a random selective system? How long would it take to establish it?

Mr. MORRIS. We see no obstacles, sir. It is a matter of gaming it out carefully under various procedural techniques and selecting the one that appears most promising.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. As far as technical problems, then, there does not seem to be any reasons why a random selection system could not be implemented speedily, particularly if there were an Executive order to that effect or if the task force made similar recommendations, would there be any reason why it should not make its recommendations prior to 1969?

Mr. MORRIS. There is not, sir. As the President's message itself indicated the introduction of this system is part of a package of steps that need to be considered concurrently, one being, of course, student deferments, another a conclusion with respect to the organization of selective service. We feel these determinations, if possible, should take place concurrently.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. It would be extremely difficult, then, to move to drafting the youngest first unless you are going to have some kind of random selection system, would it not?

Mr. MORRIS. That is correct, sir. When our draft calls return to a normal level. The little chart illustrated that.