Birdbrained

When it comes to writing manuals, the U.S. Air Force is very good at flying airplanes and setting off missiles. That is not to say that the Air Force does not try. It supports a stable of authors so large and imaginative that it also needs a squadron of printers--the 2220th Printing Squadron at Langley Air Base, Va.--to keep up with them. Off its fecund presses roll official booklets on insurance, on citizenship, on adoption. There is one Air Force manual tersely titled "Plumbing," another on "Planting and Maintenance of Trees, Shrubs and Vines," and one on "Recreational and Social Programs for Children of Air Force Families." There is also a manual that tells the manual writers how to write other manuals, and still another manual telling how to distribute all the manuals.

A few manuals also talk about flying.

Among the 500-odd manuals in current circulation, 18 cover flight training, 22 technical training.

Bomb on the Church. Last week one of the Air Force manuals flipped open into a full-blown flap. It was Student Text NR. 45-0050, INCR.V, Vol. 7, a 250-page guide for reserve noncoms, from the manual writing section (19 civilians, six noncoms) at the Air Force's Lackland Military Training Center in San Antonio.

Subject: "Individual and Group Defense" --in particular, defense against Communist subversives.

The manual had a global sweep of a sort ("Today a Red sympathizer can be of almost any nationality"). And it warned the reserve airman to see Red behind the seductive smile ("Women subversives work in servicemen's hospitality groups, in USOs, in bars . . ."). It urged him to beware of prying journalists ("Another rather foolish remark often heard is that Americans have a right to know what's going on. Most people realize the foolhardiness of such a suggestion"). In particular, it warned against all those Communists in shepherds' clothing: "Does any sizable group of Americans ever fall for the Communist line, you may ask? Unfortunately, the answer is 'yes' . . . Communists and Communist fellow travelers have successfully infiltrated into our churches ... It is known that even the pastors of certain of our churches are card-carrying Communists." Then the manual strafed an organization that embraces most Protestant denominations and 39 million American churchgoers: "The National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. officially sponsored the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Of the 95 persons who served in this project, 30 have been affiliated with pro-Communist fronts, projects and publications . . ." "I Wrote It." Even the brotherly National Council could not turn its cheek to that silly slap. Its associate general secretary, James W. Wine, hustled into Washington to protest, got a private audience with Defense Secretary Thomas Gates and Air Force Secretary Dudley Sharp (both members of churches affiliated with the National Council). Gates owned up to being "startled and stunned" by the manual; a week earlier a sharp-eyed, low-ranking Pentagon Air Force officer had ordered it withdrawn without worrying his seniors. Nervous Air Force publicists spread word that the whole thing was just an isolated case of folly, perpetrated by a lone dunderhead. Naturally, he would have to be some civilian.

Sure enough, back at Lackland in San Antonio, up popped a mild-mannered, $8,000-a-year Civil Service writer named Homer H. Hyde, 54, who learned the trade in the 1920s back at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, where he worked on the school paper with another bright young Texan named Lyndon Baines Johnson, now the powerful Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate. Boasted Baptist Hyde: "I wrote 75% of it. It was my idea." Not quite. Hyde had cribbed most of his lines on Reds-in-religion from the obscure writings of a tub-thumping fundamentalist Tulsa evangelist named Billy James Hargis, who fundamentally opposes the National Council for its revision of the King James Bible. As for the 30-Communists-out-of-95 charge, Hyde lifted that from a right-wing Methodist group, Circuit Riders, Inc., which lists everyone who ever signed a left-wing petition. It was a frivolous charge, and as one pink-faced Lackland spokesman earnestly admitted later, "real bad documentation."

The House Armed Services Committee, up in arms, deputized Illinois Democrat Melvin Price to investigate all the Air Force manuals. The Air Force started its own investigation, named its deputy chief, General Curtis LeMay, who has better things to do, to lead it. Defense Secretary Gates ordered an investigation of all nontechnical manuals in all the services, with special instructions to blue-pencil any lines that are "lacking in good taste or common sense." Said one Congressman with commendable restraint: "Somehow we've got to switch our attention from gracious living to the missile gap."

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