We, of course, will have the problem which we have already recognized, that these employers are in no way controlled by us. These are agencies with controls from many other places. We find that on occasion they would fail to notify us of termination, this type of thing, unless we kept up a constant supervision of what is going on.

Mr. WIGGINS. Does the employer submit any certificate or letter or some evidence of satisfactory completion of employment to you?

Mr. PEPITONE. Well, only that the individual continues to work satisfactorily for whatever period of time is concerned. Then we render the certificate of adequate completion of the term of service, so long as the man is employed in the job, and it is unlikely that he would stay in the job if he was not satisfactory because the employer is paying him.

Mr. WIGGINS. I understand that, but I want to be sure I understand your answer, which is that the employer gives you some evidence that the employee has served the requisite period of employment with him. Mr. PEPITONE. That is right.

Mr. WIGGINS. Written evidence?

Mr. PEPITONE. That is right.

Mr. WIGGINS. I want you now to focus in on that category which is referred to you from the U.S. attorneys. Are you familiar with what is the status of their employment with the U.S. attorney when they come to you?

Mr. PEPITONE. At the time they come to us they have, and they bring with them, a contract which they have executed with the U.S. attorney wherein they have agreed to perform a given amount of alternate service; and wherein the U.S. attorney has by precise date indicated how long it is that he will defer prosecution of that individual so that he might perform the service.

Mr. WIGGINS. Then the prosecution pending is deferred until the successful completion of the alternative service?

Mr. PEPITONE. That is correct.

Mr. WIGGINS. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Pattison. Mr. PATTISON. I have no questions at this point.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Drinan. Mr. DRINAN. Thank you very much, sir, for your testimony.

What is the entire budget of the Selective Service now across the country?

Mr. PEPITONE. In fiscal year 1975, the budget of the Selective Service System was $45 million.

Mr. DRINAN. Will the agency be asking for additional funds because of this new assignment?

Mr. PEPITONE. The agency will not be asking for additional funds because of the assignment; but the language of the request made to the Congress for the budget for the forthcoming year has specifically pointed out to the Appropriations Committee, what portion of the funds be devoted to this assignment in two ways-informative to the committee and limiting unto me insofar as how much I might spend. Mr. DRINAN. Will more than $45 million be requested?

Mr. PEPITONE. For the agency itself, yes; approximately the same amount as last year, $47 million plus.

Mr. DRINAN. On page 6 of your testimony, I seem to see really a basic contradiction. If these people are largely unskilled, how can you really find jobs for them if you follow the policy of noninterference with competitive labor markets and with 7 or 8 million people unemployed? How really can you say that you are not interfering with the labor market?

Mr. PEPITONE. Up to this point in time, Mr. Drinan, I have no indication of interference, although I have seen specific cases wherein agencies and organizations have protested the work of some people. I can give you an example of what I am talking about.

Yesterday I was talking with one of the State directors of Selective Service. He told me he knew of 70 jobs which would be available in one of the large cities of the United States working for Goodwill Industries, in which we think we can place the people. Goodwill Industries does not seem to have been able to find employees in the city.

Mr. DRINAN. Have they advertised with the other competing organizations such as the U.S. Employment Service?

Mr. PEPITONE. I cannot answer the question, but I assume they would.

Mr. DRINAN. You have not resolved the contradiction in my mind, sir, that these people are taking jobs at normal pay that other rather low-skilled people could take.

Now, on the actual numbers, you say on page 9 that 4,218 have reported. You tell us on the next page that 1,600 have been placed; then. at the bottom of that page, that 971 have dropped out. So do I take it that of the 4,200, 971 have already dropped out and do not want to participate, and that 1,600 are employed and the others are pending? Mr. PEPITONE. That is right, sir. There are about 1,200 who are with us approximately 60 days that we have not placed.

Mr. DRINAN. Your language on the bottom of page 10 sounds a bit ominous. You are telling us that there are a lot of people in this program who are not going to cooperate, and you already have 971, which is roughly one-fourth of the 4,200, almost that. Do you expect that it will be one-fourth or more? What happens to these people who drop out? Are they going to be criminally prosecuted or what?

Mr. PEPITONE. The people, for the purposes of answering your question, fall into different categories. Those who are evaders, if they fail to participate, they are reported back to the U.S. attorney and the action upon them is his. For the people who are deserters, they are reported back to the Department of Defense as nonperformers on the program. I would just say that many of those will be able to keep the undesirable discharge they have, and that is the last anyone will hear

from them.

The reason, in my judgment, for the number already identified as nonperformers so early in the game stems from the fact that there were several hundred people already at hand in September when the program was announced-principally military types who immediately flocked to the program and then just declined to participate. The numbers processed and the numbers enrolled differ considerably. It is pretty much generally the numbers that were already in the hands of the military in September.

Mr. DRINAN. Do you think that the people who drop out have some hope that amnesty might come about in the full sense in that they would not have to go through this alternative service?

Mr. PEPITONE. I would doubt, Mr. Drinan, that that is the reason. Mr. DRINAN. Well, you are making a comprehensive survey. What are you finding out? You say you have this vast study going, that we have established a rather comprehensive procedure whereby we intend to document the records of those who enroll and those who drop out. Can you tell us anything about why they drop out?

Mr. PEPITONE. Yes, we can. It is beginning to appear that the people who are dropping out of the program are much like the people that Senator Goodell talked about a little bit ago. They are not, as he said, as I recall in his testimony, not part of the system. They are just happy to go away with their undesirable discharge. They just do not care

about it.

Mr. DRINAN. Except that they applied for this program, did they not?

Mr. PEPITONE. Yes.

Mr. DRINAN. So how can you say they are not a part of the program. They had initiative enough to write to Washington to get themselves involved in this thing. Then when they find out what it is, they just drop out again.

Mr. PEPITONE. Well, they got a benefit before they dropped out, in the case of many of them. They got an undesirable discharge and they ceased having to look over their shoulders to see if anybody was going to pick them up as a deserter. They have already gained in some cases what many of them sought.

Mr. DRINAN. What a way to waste thousands of dollars, trying to make them work for 2 years, when we know ahead of time that onefourth of them is going to drop out.

Mr. PEPITONE. I do not think we waste thousands of dollars trying to make them work. This is a voluntary program in the fullest sense of the word. If the man will come in and tell me he does not want to work, that is the last time we will spend a nickel on him.

Mr. DRINAN. I wonder, sir, among the Federal agencies that you mention at the bottom of page 11, are congressional offices involved in that? Have you ever tried to place some of these people in the offices of Members of Congress?

Mr. PEPITONE. I have not; but some congressional offices have offered their help in suggesting placing to which we might put the people, none of them in their offices, but in connections that the congressional offices have had around the country.

Mr. DRINAN. I think it might be a good idea if some Members of Congress learned what these people are thinking.

One last question.

When you say that you seek, and your board seeks, to develop the skills that a returnee has, does that ever include the possibility that he can go to graduate school?

Mr. PEPITONE. Not as part of his alternate service. We have deferred alternate service for people so they could continue their education in some cases. A good example of the utilization of the skills that comes immediately to my mind is a case which made the press on the east coast of Florida, where a young engineer, a masters level engineer took employment with a county down there. He lost his job. ultimately because of the furor within the local community. It is too bad he did because he was willing to work for that county in a posi

tion that they had been unable to fill for some long period of time, even though they advertised at considerably less money than they were willing to pay at the outset. In my judgment it would have been a good place and it would have been a good program for the man and the county.

We do try to us their skills and we do use them.

Mr. DRINAN. What do you mean when you say at the bottom of page 6, a returnee will be permitted to utilize his special skills? In fact we seek to assure this utilization where we can. Does that mean that he can use all the skills except that he cannot go to college or finish high school?

Mr. PEPITONE. Well he cannot work in the national health and interest while going to college and high school.

Mr. DRINAN. That is not in the national health or interest if he wants to do it?

Mr. PEPITONE. No; that is right.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. Just a followup question on the dialog you were pursuing with Mr. Drinan on compensation. The compensation will provide a reasonably comparable standard of living that the returnee would have enjoyed had he gone into the military service.

In a hypothetical situation, if you are dealing with a hospital, and the individual happens to be, we will say, an X-ray technician, and the hospital says we can make him an X-ray technician at $15,000 a year or he can be an orderly at $6,000; your determination is that he would have enjoyed a standard of living and pay comparable to the orderly, of course. What do you do in that case? Do you let him earn $15.000 as an X-ray technician, which he is qualified to do, or do you follow literally the mandate and compensation you suggest to us?

Mr. PEPITONE. If he could have been employed in the military service as an X-ray technician, we would let him work as an X-ray technician. in the hospital.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. If he could not have?

Mr. PEPITONE. If he could not have, we would not.

I will give you an example of why this is put together the way it is. In the conscientious objector program and the employment of alternate service, it was not beyond the realm of possibility for a man to work in civilian service in lieu of induction as a doctor in a remote area of the United States, working with the Indians or working with the impoverished in this country. It is not beyond the realm of possibility. In fact it is a case. Here in northern Virginia there is a man from this program who is working as a teaching assistant. He is well qualified to do it. They badly needed the service, and he is now performing it for them.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. The difficulty is, if the individual who violates is 18 years old, unskilled, and later as the intervening years go by, at age 24 or 25 he is skilled and could work using that skill, but under the mandate of your program you prefer to return him to the situation in which he would have found himself at age 18.

Mr. PEPITONE. I do not think that is the case, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps we are confused a little bit on the thing.

The people very readily sort themselves for our purposes in this program, and those that come back with the higher skills are rarely the ones who were confused youngsters who at the age of 18 avoided

service. By and large they are people who were in their 20's when it came time for, perhaps after college, to be drafted, or something like this; they had already acquired a skill and a level of education, which at that time, had they gone into the service, would have permitted the use of the skill at a higher level.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. That concludes the questions of the subcommittee.

Thank you very much, Mr. Pepitone, for your contribution this morning. The Chair will announce that we will hear representatives of the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense this afternoon. The subcommittee will stand in recess until 2 o'clock.

[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m. the same day.]

AFTERNOON SESSION

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. The subcommittee will come to order and resume its hearings on the question of amnesty, both in terms of oversight and in terms of potential legislation dealing with the question.

We are most pleased to welcome this afternoon the distinguished General Counsel of the Department of Defense, who once honorably served with this subcommittee many years ago, the Honorable Martin R. Hoffmann. Perhaps I should ask Mr. Hoffmann to identify the gentlemen with him.

TESTIMONY OF MARTIN R. HOFFMANN, GENERAL COUNSEL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ACCOMPANIED BY VICE ADM. JOHN FINNERAN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR MILITARY PERSONNEL POLICY

Mr. HOFFMANN. This is Vice Adm. John Finneran, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy, that office having the line responsibility, as it were, for providing guidance from the President's program to the services.

Let me say, Mr. Chairman, this is a great pleasure for me. This is my first appearance before the committee after 2 years as Minority Counsel. My time with the committee, my associations with committee members have been always very highly valued by me, and I am delighted to be back.

The Department of Defense has been responsible for implementing the clemency program as it relates to individuals subject to military jurisdiction, that is, members of the military service who, by reason of an unauthorized absence of more than 30 days during the period from August 4, 1964 to March 28, 1973, were administratively classified as deserters.

The basic principle in the DOD implementation of the President's program was to retain the framework of existing law into administrative directives as much as possible and, yet, provide clemency to those who met the program qualifications in an expeditious, minimally complicated procedure, which was fully protective of the rights and options of the returnee.

As you probably know, all procedural aspects of the Defense portion of the program was subjected to a comprehensive challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The program was