"We Are Professional Men"

Smiling politely, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara reminded Mississippi's Senator John Stennis to swear him in as a witness before the subcommittee investigating military "muzzling." McNamara wanted everything on the record for the showdown he knew was coming. Then McNamara respectfully declined to name the particular censors who had deleted particular passages from particular speeches by military leaders. To justify his position, McNamara read a letter from President Kennedy asserting that such information would be "contrary to the public interest" and invoking the right, long upheld by the courts, of "executive privilege" to withhold it.

Fool's Errand. By his stand, McNamara (who had given the subcommittee the names and backgrounds of all 14 Pentagon censors, and had offered to explain himself why specific deletions had been made in military speeches) brought to a standstill the hearings that had been instigated by South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond. But there was still plenty of peripheral excitement--for a couple of subcommittee staffers had ventured forth on the most monumental fool's errand since Cohn and Schine made history as the "junketeering gumshoes." Without informing either Subcommittee Chairman Stennis or Subcommittee Counsel James Kendall, Investigators Charles A. Byrne and Ben Kaplan went to a U.S. Marine Corps post just outside Washington. There, with the full cooperation of the Corps, the pair asked for 32 marines, shut them up in a classroom, and ordered them to answer a series of written questions. The purported quest of the quiz: to see how well the marines had been instructed about the dangers of Communism. Sample questions: "What is the 'Attorney General's list'?" "Name three organizations listed as subversive." "Identify or describe the following: Karl Marx, Gus Hall, The Worker, Frol Kozlov, Mao Tse-tung, Patrice Lumumba, Moise Tshombe, Das Kapital, dialectical materialism, brainwashing, Fidel Castro." "What are the populations of Russia, China, Cuba, France, United States?"

Although he insisted that he had not sicced Byrne and Kaplan on the marines. Senator Thurmond declared: "I heartily endorse what they have done." But other Senators when they heard about it could not have disapproved more. Cried the Senate's Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, himself a former marine: "To say I was shocked and surprised at this kind of questioning is to state my position mildly. The greatest outfit in the world should not be subjected to questioning in this respect."

Unable to Answer. If Mansfield was irate. Marine Corps Commandant David ("Uncle Dave") Shoup was furious. Wrote General Shoup, an able, stumpy, blunt-spoken combat leader who won the Medal of Honor on Tarawa during World War II: "I am quick to admit that I am personally unable to fully answer all the questions. Yet. as a man who has spent his adult life in the military service of his country, and who believes he is a loyal and patriotic American willing to fight and die for his country should the need again arise, I do not believe my ability or that of any well-trained marine to answer that questionnaire has any particular bearing on the effectiveness of the Corps."

One of the bewildered marines who had been ordered to submit to the questionnaire stated the case even more succinctly. Said First Sergeant John J. Kluytman, a veteran of 17 years' service: "I am confused about why we got this test. We are professional men. When the President and General Shoup say to go somewhere, we saddle up and go."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.