I could cite a number of examples historically, having done some work on this in the writing of my own book. There are exceptions to this rule, but as a general basis of civil disobedience, individuals step forward and are willing to accept their punishment as part of their demonstration of opposition to law or policy.

The program administered by the Presidential Clemency Board is a means of relieving, as much as the law can, the legal consequences borne by those who were punished for their AWOL or draft evasion. Irrespective of the law's punishment, however, the country imposes a duty of service upon each citizen, and that service remains unfulfilled by those who refused military duty.

However imperfect the draft system-and I make no spirited defense of how the Government over the years, particularly the Vietnam years, has implemented the draft-alternative service is designed to provide a means of satisfying this obligation of citizenship. It is not punishment. It is not retribution. Alternative service under the Presidential clemency program is the same service that thousands upon thousands of conscientious objectors have performed ever since the principles of conscientious objection were incorporated into our law in World War I.

Recognition of the moral content of their disobedience does not place those persons who acted in protest to the Vietnam war in a class better than the others who objected to war but who performed alternative service, nor does it place them in a class better than those who served in Vietnam even though they, too, may have had deep and profound feelings of opposition to the war. I must say that I do not know very many who went and fought in Vietnam who wanted to risk their lives or lose their lives, and we all must be profoundly aware as we consider what can be done in terms of amnesty or clemency in reconciling our country that 55,000 men died in Vietnam.

Total and unconditional amnesty in the guise of seeking to do justice, in my opinion, would create additional injustice. We should not be misled into thinking that every person who refused service did so out of the highest moral feelings. Many persons acted out of selfish or personal reasons, having nothing to do with ethical considerations. Some may deserve no clemency at all. The circumstances of each person before the Presidential Clemency Board are different, and any clemency program must recognize those differences.

Consider the case of the serviceman stationed in Germany who traffics in hard drugs. Faced with a threatened court-martial, he escapes to Sweden. There he joins an antiwar commune and turns informer and provocateur on his fellows. He pushes drugs; he robs and steals. He is tried, convicted, and escorted to the Swedish border where he is returned to American authorities. He is court-martialed for AWOL and convicted. Now he applies to the Presidential Clemency Board. That is an actual case of an application before the Clemency Board.

This man does not deserve clemency. The Clemency Board has recommended to the President that clemency be denied. It would be an injustice, in our opinion, to treat him the same way as others whose reasons and conduct were, under all the circumstances, understandable.

A program of total and indiscriminate amnesty would be wrong because it cannot avoid equating this person with the Jehovah's Witness, son of a religious family. He applies for conscientious objector status and is granted it, but he refuses to perform alternative service because his faith considers alternative service by order of the Selective Service System to be part of the military. He would, however, consistent with his faith, perform alternative service if so ordered by a judge. Instead he is tried for failing to perform and serves 5 years in prison. That also is an actual applicant to our Board.

Compare yet another case. This individual enlists, serves for a few months, then wanders off for a few months. He is immature and cannot adjust to service. He returns and goes AWOL again. Finally he is discharged for a series of AWOL's and for failure to perform adequately. This person has no good reason for his failure to perform satisfactorily except his immaturity. He is not a conscientious objector. He merely has failed to do his 2 years' obligation. It is right and necessary, in my opinion, to call upon him to perform some alternative service in the public interest, not as a penalty, but as a means of discharging the obligation to his country which he failed to fulfill. Any system of universal, unconditional amnesty by definition must treat these different individuals and their circumstances the same. It would do injustice by treating unlike cases alike, and that is an injustice no less than treating alike cases in an unequal manner. The conditional program of President Ford enables the Board to consider recommending no clemency in the first case, an immediate pardon in the second case, and a requirement of some period of alternative service in the third. It permits us to deal with applicants as individuals, not as an undifferentiated mass. That, it seems to me, is a goal every Government program should aim to achieve.

Finally, I believe the President's program accomplishes for the Nation's well-being what unconditional amnesty could not. One of the President's goals was to try to heal the division amongst our people on the amnesty/clemency issue. There are strong feelings on this question on both sides. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country with sons, husbands, other relatives, who were seriously wounded in Vietnam, or who did not return from Vietnam. We owe those people respect for their feelings and for the pain from which their feelings and their tears arise. For those who feel deeply about the sacrifices paid by those who served, those who died, and those who suffered grievous wounds, clemency means that those who did not serve are rewarded in place of those who went in their stead.

For others, who feel deeply about the moral questions of the war and of the sacrifices made by those whose conscience made them protest against what they saw was immoral and unjustified policy, anything less than full restitution and a confession of error by the President is unsatisfactory.

These two views, deeply held and certainly understandable, cannot be completely reconciled. To deny any kind of clemency is to perpetuate the divisions in our country. To declare unconditional amnesty would create new ones. The President's goal of bringing reconciliation by a conditional program is the proper approach, in my opinion. I think it is well on the way to achieving that goal.

Let me now turn quickly to a discussion of the Clemency Board's jurisdictions, the remedies we offer, the administrative procedures we have established.

First of all, the Clemency Board has nine members. The proclamation divided the program into three main parts, and they can be quite simply described.

The first part for those who are draft evaders, who are fugitives, and who had never been picked up, they could return and go through the Department of Justice and receive normally 2 years of alternative service. If they completed that alternative service successfully, all charges were dropped and they have no criminal records. They have a clean record.

The second phase is for those deserters who were fugitives and who had never been picked up. They could return to the Defense Department. They would be processed through a period of 2 to 3 days, receive an undesirable discharge, and then normally be assigned 2 years of alternative service, upon completion of which they would be given a clemency discharge.

The third phase of the program is that involving the Clemency Board itself. We deal with the same offenses, those who committed draft evasion offenses or deserted from the military. The distinction in the Clemency Board program is that our individuals are not fugitives. They have already been punished for their offenses. They have received a bad discharge from the military for AWOL or desertion, either after court-martial or through the administrative process, or they have been convicted in Federal court and have criminal records for draft evasion.

To the civilian applicant for clemency to the Clemency Board, the Board can offer a variety of things. We can offer an outright pardon without alternative service. We can offer a pardon after performance of a period of alternative service, or we can deny any clemency whatsoever.

A pardon is a very important help to the individuals who are under the clemency program. A pardon restores Federal civil rights. Most States recognize a Presidential pardon as a matter of comity, and it serves to remove the civil disabilities that the State may have imposed as a result of the Federal conviction.

Perhaps even more importantly, licensing restrictions which prevent ex-convicts from working in a variety of occupations, are also removed. Without a pardon, the typical ex-offender cannot work in any professional occupation or, in many States, as an ambulance attendant, a watchmaker, a tourist camp operator, a garbage collector, a barber or beautician, a practical nurse, or a plumber.

While we cannot ignore or demean the symbolic importance of an act of personal grace by the President, we should also recognize that the receipt of a Presidential pardon also removes the social stigma that inevitably attaches to a draft evader and a deserter and has the practical effect of making the ex-offender employable again.

The military applicant for clemency comes to us worse off than the civilian applicant. Not only does he have a Federal felony conviction, he also has the stigma of a "bad paper" discharge.

To the former serviceman who applies, we offer a full pardon, plus an upgrading of his discharge to a clemency discharge, either uncondi

tionally or conditioned upon alternative service. Whatever one's feelings about the practical or symbolic importance of the clemency discharge, the pardon here, too, serves to remove the legal and social disabilities of the bad discharge.

As of April 7, the President had acted on 65 cases. An additional 114 have been recommended to the President and further will be recommended on a further basis from this point on. In the first 65 cases, 20 received a full and immediate pardon without alternative service; 20 received 3 months alternative service; 12 were asked to do 6 months alternative service; 12 were asked to do 1 year of alternative service. Although I cannot disclose the recommendations of the 114 additional cases, the breakdown is very much as in the first 65, and that is also true of the subsequent cases the Board has heard and is about to recommend to the President.

Let me turn quickly to our procedures. We asked for and received many suggestions and criticisms from appropriate groups who were interested in the clemency program. It took some time to develop our regulations, partly because we had no historical model upon which to proceed and no clear precedents. We also wished to become very familiar with the cases before we made dispositions.

In the early weeks, a month and a half to 2 months, we withheld any recommendations because obviously we did not want to proceed on the basis of rules that were tentative at the beginning and would be changed so that later applicants would be considered under different rules than the early applicants. Our main goal was to make the Board's rules as simple and easy to understand as possible. In particular, we tried to make applying to the Board as uncomplicated as we could.

An individual who wrote a letter, called on the telephone was considered an applicant, and we would send him an instruction sheet and, if he gave us sufficient information to find his files, either his criminal files in the Federal court system, or his military files, that was an application. We sent him instructions, urged him to get counsel of one nature or another and referred him to private sources of counseling where possible. Each applicant was not only informed of his right to counsel, but encouraged to get counsel, either legal or otherwise. For those who had no resources, we urged the volunteer groups to provide us assistance, and we mailed a list of these agencies to every person who applied.

Once the necessary information is obtained from an applicant and his files are obtained, we have an elaborate internal procedure. A summary is prepared on each case. This summary is then mailed to the applicant along with a copy of our regulations and simplified instructions. The applicant is urged to give us whatever information he desires, correcting the information that may be wrong in the summary or supplementing. Once this process is completed, the case is presented to the Board.

After the Board examines the case and makes a recommnendation, the President reviews that recommendation and issues his decision. Thereafter the applicant has 30 days to ask for reconsideration, 30 days after he is informed of the President's decision.

Once service is satisfactorily completed, the Board confirms that the clemency has been earned and a pardon is automatically issued.

The President's proclamation contemplates a case-by-case evaluation, rather than blanket treatment of whole classes of people. We have carefully drawn our substantive standards so that they are a tool to assist the Board in weighing each case on its merits. Standards help us to separate out cases which should be treated differently, to treat with consistency and equity those which are similarly situated.

In deciding appropriate lengths of alternative service, we give special weight to time already spent in prison and to alternative service, probation and parole which has been satisfactorily completed.

Equity compels us to consider factors beyond simply time spent in prison. For this reason, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses and members of other special religious communities who have served little time in prison, but whose violations of law were clearly motivated by deeply held religious beliefs, typically have been offered outright pardons, or have been asked to serve minimal amounts of time where aggravating circumstances have also existed.

Individuals with similarly held moral or ethical beliefs, but who are not members of any religious faith, are treated in the same way. On the other hand, persons who acted from no apparent sincerely-held ethical or religious convictions about the war have normally received clemency contingent upon longer lengths of alternative service, even when they have served some time in prison.

The other factors which the Board weighs appear in the regulations as are before you.

The Board has been diligent in creating procedural and substantive rules which can be readily understood by a layman. We have tried to use simple and clear language. We have tried to bring the greatest practical degree of due process to a procedure which is constitutionally, inherently discretionary on the part of the President.

Anyone calling or writing in to the Presidential Clemency Board is guaranteed that his name, address, telephone number, and any other information which he gives us will be held in strictest confidence unless he has committed a serious non-draft-related or non-AWOL-related criminal offense such as homicide. The Justice Department has agreed that, with this exception, we may keep our own records completely sealed to other agencies.

Since most evaders and deserters within our jurisdiction apparently do not read the Washington Post or watch Harry Reasoner frequently, we took pains to spread information as widely as possible to persons who might be eligible for the President's program. We mailed information about the program to the last known addresses of 7,000 persons convicted of draft evasion and eligible for Board consideration, thanks to the very fine cooperation of the Federal Probation Service and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. We then arranged with the Defense Department to review each court-martial record between 1964 and 1973. They retrieved some 28,500 records. Over 20,000 appeared to have some possibility of eligibility, and they received a mailing from the Board.

In addition, the Board prepared public service announcements, which I have referred to earlier in my testimony.

Considering the short time available to inform the public of the program, the fact that we have had a small staff and a limited budget, our efforts to inform, I believe, were extraordinarily successful. As the