4 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
TABLE 1-1. ACCESSIONS BY MENTAL GROUP, ENTRY MODE, AND SERVICE BRANCH,
1966
AFQT
Enl i stees
(Mental group,
Total
score, and ex- En- Air
pected percent) Draftees listees Army Navy Marines Force
I (93-I00) 7% 4.8% 8.2% 8.0% 10.0% 5.6% 8.4%
II (65-92) 28% 27.3 38.8 32.9 49.7 34.0 41.5
III (31-64) 34% 42.8 40.1 37.8 36.1 47.2 42.2
IV (10-30) 21% 23.2 12.9 21.3 4.2 13.2 7.9
Administrative
Acceptees: (9-0) 10% 1.9
TOTAL 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Other programs
in addition to Project 100,000 concentrated on
those from Categories IV and V.41/ At one Oakland, California office 120
of the 125 recruitc were from lower class neighborhoods,
90 percent were
from Category IV or lower, many had police records and most were black or
Hispanic. Peter Barnes in his book Pawns 42/ quotes one white Marine
recruiter as saying "We
use their language...we say 'man'...we even call
caps 'pigs'." Between 1966 and 1968 Project 100,000 brought in 240,000
recruits. Of the Category IV troops, 75 percent came from low income
backgrounds, over 80 percent were high school dropouts and half had IQs of
less than 85. Over 40 percent received combat-related assignments. This
assignment practice was reinforced by the view of some officers that low IQ
troops made good fighting men. As one officer commented, he would "prefer
a company of riflemen with fifth-grade educations over a company of college
men anytime."43/!__
However, as will be detailed in Chapter 4, troops from Project
100,000 afid similar programs caused serious disciplinary problems as well.
and such programs were phased out.42/
Fewer were recruited and more discharged.
As Baskir and Strauss detail:
the notion of using the armed forces as a part of the
Grsat Society passed with the coming of the Nixon
Administration. Project 100,000 quotas fell to 75,000
1-15
77.