He spoke his historic plea for unity in these words:

"With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we're in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan . . . to do that which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

This great teaching of Lincoln should be followed today in binding up the wounds of our nation created by the Vietnam war. Those who served in it, and their families, deserve to receive from our country all the care and assistance suggested by Lincoln's great statement. Likewise, if we are to have a united country again, those who for reasons of conscience based upon deep conviction of opposition to our country's military intervention into Indo-China, should be brought back into our American family with restored rights of citizenship through the granting of a general amnesty law.

Mr. PORTER. Because of the excellence of the testimony and the questioning, I will skip certain paragraphs.

STATEMENT OF MR. CHARLES 0. PORTER, EUGENE, OREGON, ATTORNEY, FORMER MEMBER OF CONGRESS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE STAFF MEMBER, MAJOR (AIR FORCE, RETIRED), AND CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR AMNESTY NOW Mr. PORTER. These hearings have clarified the issues in a way that needed to be done, I'm sure they are going to have far-reaching effects.

Amnesty, general, unconditional and immediate, is the threshold issue in the 1972 presidential and congressional campaigns. The granting of real amnesty will mean that this Nation, through its elected representatives in the Congress or through its President, has taken the next necessary, logical step towards healing our bitter internal divisions.

The administration and, according to the polls, most citizens now believe the Indochina war to have been a mistake. It follows that our policymakers who led us there, kept us there, and still keep us there, were and are wrong and that the young men who broke our laws resisting the war were right.

Last week in western Canada several American exiles, representing various exile organizations, made it clear to me that far more than amnesty for themselves they wanted the killing of Asians by Americans to stop. They denounced the U.S. bombing attacks.

Stopping this shameful war can be hastened by promoting support for general amnesty. The chances that our leaders will one day again embark on such a self-righteous, arrogant and ill-advised venture will be vastly reduced if we restore full legal rights to the more than 200,000 young men who broke our laws in protesting or not participating in the Indo-China war.

The war needs a new focus. The troops are coming home. The draft is all but inactive and is on its way out. This chapter of U.S. history must not be closed without a formal, national judgment that our government was wrong. The tired, empty justifications have all been repudiated. Communism was not about to engulf our allies, nor the United States. Our commitments did not bind us to fight a war. South Vietnam's self-determination was not at stake. We were not protecting our boys. And the way to get the prisoners of war home. is to stop fighting and get out of the area.

As the war, we hope, grinds to a conclusion, we cannot shrug off its immoral nature and leave its characterization as such to the rest of the world now and to our historians 50 years from now. We don't do that if we want the unity that only realization, repentance, rededication and reconciliation can bring through the national debate that must precede the granting of a general amnesty, and that debate has begun in earnest in this room in the last few days.

The issue is not whether or not to grant amnesty to war resisters. It is between granting the real amnesty that will bring us together again and the granting of the limited, conditional amnesty endorsed by President Nixon and substantially embodied in Senator Taft's bill.

A copy of the draft of the legislation proposed by the National Committee for Amnesty Now is attached to this statement. I understand the purpose of this committee-and I might say we do incorporate the Administrative Procedure Act as part of our bill. A number of Congressmen and Congresswomen have assured me in the last few days that they are going to introduce a bill which will contain the main features of this bill.

I think there will be legislation filed in the House of Representatives soon. Chairman Celler yesterday assured me that he would look favorably toward having hearings over there.

This proposal, which is still subject to improvement, includes three features which we believe to be essential:

First, amnesty is granted by our proposed legislation to every person who violated laws in protesting or not participating in the Indochina war, not just to the selective service law violators as in the Taft bill. Our amnesty is universal and automatic except where significant property damage or substantial personal injury was caused to others. In those cases an Amnesty Commission will decide. From the DOD representative we had some figures about the number of military deserters. The Department of Defense told this committee that there are 30,000 military deserters now. I've tried to get good figures. I know that the figures of the New York Times and Newsweek and others which they've got from about the same sources I've been trying to get them, have different figures. I suggest that the DOD has had problems with the accuracy of other body counts in other continents. Perhaps their body count there could also be as grossly inaccurate.

Certainly, as the Senator pointed out, the study they made about deserters was based on those who came back, and not on those who stayed away; so that 4.1 percent figure is suspected. Dr. Gaylin also indicated that it is probably not one that should be relied on.

But regardless of the number, the principles are still the same. Second, ours is nonpunitive and with the stated purpose of being a first step towards reconciliation and recompense for war resisters. The Taft bill requires 3 years of alternative service at minimum pay

rates.

Third, ours becomes effective upon enactment, as does the limited Taft bill, but President Nixon and Secretary of Defense Laird want to wait until the war is over, the prisoners returned and the missing in action accounted for.

General Benade testified after the requirements for Vietnam have been met we should consider amnesty for desertion. That was an ominous thing for me to hear, because, as I reminded him in a break, that the Commander in Chief has told us we are withdrawing from Vietnam. I think that our troop requirements in Vietnam have passed at this point, unless the White House has perhaps a different policy than the one that has been enunciated.

While Senator Taft deserves thanks for his attention to this vital issue, his bill is defective in several respects: It misplaces the blame by requiring penance from the war resisters, not the policymakers. Almost all war resisters, in this country or in exile, will refuse to accept any such penalty for doing what they thought was right and what now, after the Calley trial and the Pentagon papers, most Americans have come to realize was right.

Senator Taft when he introduced the bill spoke of the 70,000 young exiles living in Canada. And I know up there people like Bob Gardner of the committee and Council of Churches, that's the figure he uses, and he's been up there for more than a year, working with them.

And he uses a figure of that size, and yet the Defense Department tells us there are only 30,000 deserters in all and it's hard to reconcile those figures.

Apparently Senator Taft did not realize that about two-thirds of them are not draft-resisters, the only ones affected by his bill, but deserters from the U.S. Armed Forces. If, as the Senator says, "we, as a nation, are so wise, strong and charitable as to offer them, the draft resisters, an opportunity to be reunified with American society," we ought not to make any distinction between a man who was in the service and another who was not. At what point on the road to Damascus these Sauls saw the light about this war is not significant. Many men indeed fought in the war and later concluded they had been deceived and ill-used by their government.

If, by some miracle, the war dead-white, black, or brown-could be brought back to life, the wounded healed and the maimed made whole, it would be done instantly. The war resisters entitled to amnesty do not deserve punishment. Most have had their lives drastically dislocated. Most have suffered the anguish of the dilemma between obeying the law or their conscience. The time for amnesty is now, not at some indefinite date in the future.

But, some ask, is amnesty fair to the 3 million men who served in Southeast Asia, some fighting, some dying, some wounded? The most direct answer to that question can be given by the veterans themselves. I have found that almost always these veterans favor general amnesty. They understand that this war, bad as it was and is, could have been, and yes, could be, ten, a hundred, even a thousand times

worse.

That our nation turned 180 degrees from a massive land war in Asia must be credited, in large measure, to the young men who resisted, who balked, who listened to their consciences who said, "Hell, no, I won't go," and instead went to prison, went underground or left the country. Their examples made a shocking impression on their relatives and friends. They woke up this country as no speeches, articles or books, or demonstrations did.

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In all fairness to all of those who did make speeches and write articles and books, we also had some part in educating these young men, but they are the ones that took the step.

This is the answer to the related question: "Is amnesty fair to the parents of sons who died in Vietnam?" Such sacrifices cannot sanctify an unjust war, but they can be of lasting value if they help end such wars once and for all. If the young war resisters had not dared to break our laws, many more parents would have been, and would be, mourning the loss of their sons.

This was unique in its scope and breadth. So are the dimensions of the proposed amnesty. Both have no precedents. We pray both will have no successors. A bad war calls for a good amnesty.

I brought one of our "Amnesty Now" bumper stickers here. The committee may recall that for a brief while the President used that slogan, "Bring Us Together"; but we felt that he hadn't used it so much so that it was used up. We intend to use it as the slogan for our campaign for amnesty now.

Amnesty stands at the threshold of the chief issues of the 1972 campaign: No more war but jobs for all. Peace and jobs. A society where we fight poverty and pollution instead of persons not aptly designated as enemies; where we build instead of destroy.

Former Senator Wayne Morse, the honorary chairman of the National Committee for Amnesty Now, told me last August when we launched this organization that amnesty was one issue on which the American young people were unanimous, firm, and unyielding. Candidates for Congress and the Presidency will take heed.

Our Nation's character was and is blemished by this misbegotten war. America teeters on the threshold of her third century as an independent democratic republic, still strong but not so proud. The bitter divisions fostered by the war can only be diminished by the granting of general amnesty, unconditional and immediate.

These hearings, for which Senator Edward Kennedy deserves our sincere thanks, will encourage the burgeoning national debate on amnesty as the vehicle for characterizing this war as a mistake, at last ending it and the possibilities of other wars like it, and making it possible for law-breaking war resisters to be called and welcomed back to full citizenship.

America needs these young men. Their courage of conviction places us all in their debt. It will be a glorious day for us and for them when their full legal rights are restored by Congress and they are once more able to contribute directly to America's goals of peace, meaningful jobs and liberty and justice for all.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much.

Senator HART. Thank you very much.

I want to say what my chairman would kick me in the shins for if he were close enough to get to me before we close.

You concluded your prepared statement by thanking Senator Kennedy. That's what I want to do as we close.

Mr. PORTER. I wanted to thank you too.

Senator HART. No, no.

The chairman of this committee has developed in these 3 days the source materials from which those who are uncertain and, indeed,

some of those who are certain about how we should handle this problem, can turn, and develop informed answers.

This record clarifies the elements and issue and competing claims, and seeming conflicting principles that are at work.

I want to thank all of those who testified, but most of all, Mr. Chairman. And I mean this without any if's, and's, or but's. I want to thank you for giving me and others the opportunity to hear what I have heard.

You have been identified as a man of compassion, based on many actions; some more dramatic than this. But in the long haul of history's judgment, I sense that your willingness to move us into this volatile area will be perhaps underscored more to a degree than we even realize now.

I have in a sense wobbled all over the lot on this question. I have been for amnesty, but what about now; how do you handle the fellow that has demonstrated his dismay and despair by blowing up a building, and all of these other things.

But you have helped me, and you've helped a lot of people. Thank you.

Mr. PORTER. May I say, I concur with the Senator from Michigan. These hearings are of vast importance.

[Applause.]

Senator KENNEDY. The subcommittee stands in recess.

(Whereupon, at 5:30 o'clock p.m., the subcommittee recessed).