4 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
21. General Hershey elaborated on the advantages of such a system: "No
system of compulsory service could long endure without the support of
the people . . . The Selective Service System is, therefore, founded
upon the grass roots principle, in which boards made up of citizens in
each community determine when registrants should be made available for
military service." Ibid., p. 6. General Hershey further commented
upon this and other aspects of the Selective Service system in a
series of interviews in 1975 made as part of the US Army Military
History Research Collection Senior Officers Debriefing Program. On
the necessity of flexibility at the local level, Hershey observed that
this was so essential that he doubted that a computerized system could
successfully be substituted for it. See transcripts for further
comments.
22. Roger W. Little, ed., Selective Service and American Society (New
York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1969), p. 87.
23. Hodgson, America in Our Time, p. 244.
24. Robert S. McNamara, US Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services:
Hearings on Military Posture, February 22, 1965, (US GPO, AR 4016).
25. Leslie Gelb, "Vietnam; the System Worked," in Tucker and Watts,
Beyond Containment, p. 32.
26. Douglas Kinnard. The War Managers (Hanover, New Hampshire: University
Press of New-England, 1977), p. 32.
27. General Donald V. Bennett, US Army Military Research Collection,
Senior Officers Debriefing Program Interview AY 1976, Tape 7,
(pp. 22-23).
28. Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1971), p. 143.
29. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York:
Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 260-285.
30. William F. Levantrosser, Congress and the Citizen-Soldier (Columbus:
Ohio State University Press, 1967), p. 226.
31. Kinnard, War Managers, p. 119.
32. Pentagon Papers, Vol. 4, p. 314.
33. "One such was the 1002nd Supply and Service Company, which had its
movement to Vietnam held up by Justice William 0. Douglas in September
1968. In the end, the Supreme Court denied the plea and declared the
mobilization legal, and units earmarked for Vietnam were sent there as
rapidly as possible. Most Reserve units that served in Vietnam did
well. A few were excellent." Kinnard, War Managers, p. 122.
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