Amnesty: Eddie McNally Comes Home

...An amnesty based on alternative service would take jobs away from those who need them...

...To Safe Return, one of the many groups seeking an unprecedented universal and unconditional amnesty for Vietnam war resisters, Eddie and Lew are symbols of the more than half million Americans who would benefit from such an amnesty...

...The haggling over the number of Americans who would benefit from amnesty bears a grisly resemblance to the Vietnam body count: The Government minimizes...

...I almost forgot that I was a deserter," says Eddie...

...There are nine amnesty-related measures pending before Congress—seven in favor and two opposed...

...Eddie then realized that he had to resolve his situation...

...Men who refused to serve are not draft "dodgers" or "evaders" but war "resisters," who may eventually emerge as the nation's "moral heroes...

...But his drug habit was getting worse...

...Some NCUUA members, however, continue to view Safe Return's tactics and politics as too "radical," and fear that the intensely independent group will not cooperate with committee actions...

...I would have remained the goof-up the Army said I was...

...Thank God those days are over...

...Although amnesty organizations agree on their objective—a blanket, unconditional amnesty applicable to all war resisters and vets with dishonorable discharges —they differ markedly on strategies for achieving it...

...They may receive dishonorable discharges, or they may spend up to three years in prison...

...For Sowders, for example, being underground meant living in three different cities in three years, never spending more than thirty days in one house...

...He dropped out of school at sixteen, and by the time he enlisted in the Army a year later, the self-described black sheep of the family was already on probation for auto theft...

...Such an amnesty, though more politically palatable in the prevailing political climate, is unacceptable to many who fled to Canada and do not perceive their actions as criminal...

...Olsen, a former Chicago-based anti-war activist, was brought in primarily to get the committee moving and to mediate among the feuding factions...

...He saw no future in Canada and headed home...

...Safe Return believes the public must be convinced that Vietnam deserters and resisters are not criminals...

...The staged surrender gives deserters a forum from which they can explain why they fled...

...She told Mrs...

...As they spoke, the building was surrounded by FBI agents, apparently still unconvinced that the men would surrender peacefully...

...Several supposedly sympathetic Senators believe the issue itself does not warrant immediate attention...

...Safe Return, on the other hand, has its doubts about the committee's prospects and deeply resents the duplication of many of its projects by NCUUA groups...

...Prospects for amnesty legislation in the House are also bleak...

...Rather than be caught, Sowders surrendered through Safe Return...

...Their surrender was arranged by Safe Return to help publicize the need for amnesty, and to win for them dishonorable discharges in lieu of prison terms...

...Some members of the coalition, such as Clergy and Laity Concerned, view amnesty as a moral, religious, and reconciliatory objective...

...Sometimes I wonder how it is possible that we learned so little from the peace movement experience," Olsen says...

...In addition, no Confederate leader was ever tried for high treason after the Civil War...

...This work enabled Safe Return members to establish useful contacts in the resistance, among Vietnam veterans, and in military communities, and taught them that slogans and rhetoric are less effective as a means of communication than drawing public attention to the cases of individuals with whom Americans can sympathize...

...They will remain there until the military has decided what to do with them...

...Once Americans see that war resisters are not monsters or hippies who would rather smoke dope than defend their country," said Safe Return worker Uhl, "they become more responsive to amnesty...

...He argues that amnesty would erase the double standard of punishing those who refused to fight and kill while failing to punish those who apparently violated constitutional provisions with respect to war...

...Eddie's toughness and superficial calm, Sowders knows, is a facade, a self-protective front which has kept him going and helped him survive...

...Several weeks later, however, the FBI reminded him by visiting his sister and inquiring about his whereabouts...

...The only real criminals, the movement argues, are those political leaders who initiated and waged the undeclared Vietnam war and those still at the White House struggling to escape indictment for Watergate-related crimes and misdemeanors...

...NCUUA has many of the strengths and weaknesses that characterized the late anti-war movement...

...There Eddie not only kicked his habit, but discovered that he had a talent for helping other kids get off drugs...

...Eddie was able to function in this fashion because his family and friends in the neighborhood protected him...

...An unknown number, probably in the thousands, never registered for the draft and, as a consequence, are subject to prosecution whenever their delinquency comes to the attention of Government officials...

...Though it benefits from the organizational skills of former peace activists, it is plagued by the ideological quarrels that the peace movement never was able to overcome...

...The FBI came once to see his mother at the bar where she worked, but no one there was willing to turn him in...

...Eddie McNally was also afraid...

...It has a twelve-member steering committee, six of whom represent groups composed of potential beneficiaries of a general amnesty...

...He hopes the committee will be able to resolve many of the political differences that hinder meaningful action, but he admits the task is difficult...

...Safe Return has been the most successful in attracting media attention and promoting local organizing...

...The Army trained him as an "ordnance repair part specialist," which Eddie observed was not a particularly useful skill in civilian life...

...Having discovered that he wanted to counsel youngsters in trouble, he enrolled at the State University at Old Westbury as a sociology major...

...In June 1972, thirty-eight per cent of those polled favored amnesty for war resisters, fifty-three per cent were opposed, and nine per cent were uncertain...

...Moreover, amnesty, it is argued, is part of the American tradition: George Washington granted amnesty to participants in the Whiskey Rebellion...

...I was a glorified porter in the U.S...

...Living "underground" conjures up images of French resistance-style clandestine meetings, counterfeit identifications, and code names...

...Eddie and Lew spent Christmas in jail...

...In order to win converts, the movement has had to respond to questions and arguments raised by the opposition: Would not a general amnesty lower the morale of the armed forces...

...Why should amnesty be granted to those who deserted their country when 50,000 American men died in Vietnam...

...You've got to be scared...

...A SPN classification, which identifies the reason for discharge—including such categories as bedwetting, homosexual tendencies, drugs, and apathy—is assigned to all honorable and dishonorable discharges...

...Eddie and Lew were immediately flanked by agents, separated, and arrested...

...Senator Robert Taft Jr...

...Through a temporary job agency which asked few questions, he got dozens of two-week job stints using his real name, doing clerical work in post-offices, real estate agencies, and moving companies...

...The National Committee for Universal and Uncon-Judith Miller is The Progressive's Washington correspondent...

...The nascent committee has also failed to include in its membership the most active and important pro-amnesty organization: Safe Return...

...After all," said a Senate committee aide, "these boys aren't in concentration camps, they're in nice countries...

...According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 5,700 draft indictments are pending...

...He found the racism within the military and the cruelty towards the Vietnamese intolerable...

...In addition to soliciting support from likely political allies, Schwartzschild has approached labor unions, the League of Women Voters, and the YMCA, attempting to interest them in the issue...

...Eddie and his friends found their spiritual home in the streets...

...After the speeches and a last embrace with relatives, the two former soldiers walked out of the Village Gate...

...During the past year, more than 200 groups have been organized to work in behalf of what they call America's only remaining prisoners of war—the Vietnam war resisters...

...These numbers and corresponding classifications often find their way into the hands of personnel and employment agencies...

...For these two young men, the running, the hiding, and the anguish caused by their desertion are over...

...Eddie, twenty-four, had been living underground in the United States for four years...

...Congressional reluctance to consider the issue is readily explained by public opinion polls which indicate a hardening of opposition to amnesty over the past two years...

...Last December, Safe Return sponsored a successful "Bring 'Em Home" Christmas card campaign, selling 4,800 of its 5,000 amnesty greeting cards...

...Safe Return has conducted three other successful surrenders, including one on the floor of the Democratic Party's 1972 National Convention, another during Congressional hearings on amnesty...

...He lectured at junior high and high schools about turning off drugs and onto life, wrote poetry, participated in the program's theatrical ventures, and met the woman he is planning to marry...

...According to the Department of Defense, more than 32,000 deserters are now at large...

...Ironically, Safe Return has imitated many of the successful tactics employed by VIVA and other POW support groups...

...army," said Eddie...

...The work continued...

...He began working with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and joined the peace demonstrations in Washington...

...Since White House aide James Buchanan has labeled resisters "malingerers, opportunists, criminals, and cowards," the amnesty movement has responded by issuing its own set of accusations and labels...

...John Swomley, a member of Clergy and Laity Concerned, has attempted to provide answers to some of these questions in his essay, "Amnesty: The Record and the Need," in which he notes that none of the amnesties of the past resulted in a lowering of morale in the armed services...

...We are a divided, corrupted, bloodstained nation...

...He has also tried to gather support in Congress, but with less success...

...Others, like Safe Return, have little faith in the willingness of Congress to intervene in this emotion-charged issue, and prefer grass-roots organizing and indirect pressure on Congress through constituents...

...Moments before his arrest, Eddie McNally said his years underground had toughened him...

...Amnesty supporters also point out that amnesty— which means forgetting, not forgiving—is essentially an instrument for reconciliation within a divided political community...

...Amnesty groups see the task ahead in terms of "educating" the public and its representatives in Congress about the issue, or—as Henry Schwarzschild, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Project on Amnesty, puts it—making the issue "respectable" by putting it on the agenda of public concerns...

...He always believed that the Army would eventually catch up with him...

...Meetings of the NCUUA steering committee are marked by bitter personal disputes and endless ideological debates over the wording of petitions and statements...

...When you're underground," says Sowders, "you can't afford to admit how afraid you really are...

...The Chicago Peace Council, for example, believes that the movement needs to rally behind Congressional legislation...

...When he is freed, he intends to help Safe Return lobby for amnesty...

...A year ago, Safe Return set up Families of Resisters for Amnesty (FORA), a solidarity and lobby group composed of resisters' relatives...

...Eddie's experience, however, differs substantially from that of many of his fellow deserters in one respect: While he has been underground, he has not been in hiding...

...For four years, Sowders forged IDs, never held a job that demanded a Social Security number, and never held any job for more than a couple of weeks...

...He believes his hatred of the military and his opposition to the Indochina war began there...

...others see amnesty as a means of raising the revolutionary consciousness of the oppressed working class, whose sons died and deserted during the war...

...But none has gathered significant support...

...Mike Uhl claims that thousands of Vietnam vets with supposedly honorable discharges have negative SPN classifications which limit employment opportunities...

...Estimates range from President Nixon's "few hundred" who refused to serve their country to NCUUA's figure of nearly a million...

...NCUUA has had considerable difficulty in getting off the ground...

...The unlikely setting of the surrender was the Village Gate, a New York nightclub which has hosted many of America's counter-culture entertainers...

...Soldiers who left the Army without leave are not "deserters" but "self-retired veterans...

...has introduced legislation calling for amnesty for draft evaders contingent on three years of alternative service...

...While hitchhiking through New York State, he was arrested and sent to the stockade at Fort Dix...

...Eddie has succeeded in changing his life, but in many ways, he is still the tough little kid from the block...

...However, Congress has shown little interest in pushing the issue...

...Eddie McNally has come home...

...Although it is impossible to verify the whereabouts of deserters at large, Safe Return and Eddie believe, on the basis of their contacts with others in hiding, that most have remained in this country, unable to fly to Canada on their fathers' airline credit cards...

...Like most of them, he is from a working class family and poorly educated...

...Consideration of individual cases, he argues, would simply be too burdensome in view of the number of people who need amnesty—more than ten times the number of World War II cases that the Truman Administration's amnesty board considered in the early 1950s...

...How many young men like Eddie and Lew are living underground or in exile...

...But for Eddie and many others, living underground implies not so much a physical state of hiding, but a constant, nagging fear of apprehension...

...Instead, they lied and told the agents they hadn't seen him in years...

...The community provided Eddie, as it does many deserters, with invisibility and support...

...McNally that her son had been killed in the war, that punishing Eddie for deserting and not being killed could not bring back the Ransom boy...

...Limited amnesty, though, is a far cry from the movement's demand that amnesty be Universal and unconditional...

...Why should amnesty not be conditional on some kind of alternative service or decided on a case-by-case basis...

...Sowders used to sneak home late at night to see his parents in Detroit and leave long before neighbors got up for work...

...Though he talks almost flippantly about his life underground, his self-proclaimed lack of fear is betrayed by the nervous foot tapping under the table as he speaks...

...I know what you're going through now," she said...

...This is the kind of repetition of effort NCUUA was supposed to prevent," said Safe Return worker Michael Uhl...

...I know one day it will happen," he says...

...He earned enough money to Tent an apartment in Queens...

...Finally, there are 450,000 Vietnam veterans who have been given less than honorable discharges, depriving them of veterans' benefits and limiting their job opportunities...

...Louise Ransom, director of Americans for Amnesty, whose son was killed in Vietnam, provides the best response to President Nixon's position that amnesty would dishonor those who died for their country in Vietnam...

...I shall do all I can to help and support you...

...However, a recent study of Congressional attitudes toward amnesty lifted the spirits of amnesty supporters...

...In 1972, Senator Edward Kennedy held hearings on amnesty, and was severely criticized by an anti-amnesty witness for even raising the issue before the POWs had come home...

...After serving thirteen months in the Central Highlands, he came home, vowing never to put on the uniform again...

...Once, he even helped foil a robbery attempt...

...He has managed to live in close proximity to his parents, obtain a driver's license, pay taxes, and even vote for George McGovern—all under his real name...

...Although Safe Return has been working for amnesty for more than two years, when a representative of the group attempted to attend a NCUUA steering committee meeting, he was promptly expelled...

...And like most of them, he has been living underground in the United States...

...To the military, the surrender of Eddie and Lew a few days before Christmas merely meant a reduction by two in the number of men still at large—some 39,000— who deserted from the armed forces during the Vietnam era...

...A universal and unconditional amnesty for men who refused to fight in the war—the ghastly symbol of all that is wrong—might just be the very element that could help heal us...

...In Germany, he started using drugs again...

...But because his family and friends protected him, he was able to function more openly...

...The Selective Service System has referred to the Justice Department for prosecution some 39,000 additional draft violators...

...As Safe Return worker and former deserter Sowders put it, "Living underground means being afraid to jaywalk...

...Amnesty was eventually considered during the 1920s on an individual case basis for those who resisted in World War I, and was granted to some, the best known being Eugene V. Debs...

...Given the legislative outlook, most politically realistic groups believe Congress will act only if public opinion changes, and are, therefore, pouring time and money into changing that opinion...

...Nor have the Senators who led opposition to the war: J. William Ful-bright, Mike Gravel, Philip Hart, or Frank Church...

...Even the American Legion, ironically, argues that the quality of service in VA hospitals and other agencies would deteriorate if positions were staffed by men who viewed "government service as a sort of punishment...

...Eddie was scared," Sowders recalls...

...After three months, he was released, still determined to discharge himself from military service...

...Beneath a "Welcome Home" banner, the two young men, surrounded by family and friends, told reporters what had motivated their decisions to desert and now, to surrender...

...He thought he had built a new life, and suddenly he realized that the military would never let him live it...

...On December 19, Safe Return rented the club to give Eddie and Lew a Christmas homecoming party...

...Eddie is one of seven children...

...Moreover, no one knows how many unexamined draft board files throughout the country will reveal violations if checked...

...it found that a majority in Congress favor at least a limited form of amnesty...

...The group evolved from the Citizens Commission of Inquiry into U.S...

...One of them, Ed Sowders, now works with Safe Return and helped arrange Eddie's and Lew's surrender...

...His mother, a warm-hearted, cigar-smoking, retired barmaid, and his father, a former trucker, were separated when he was young...

...Although it met for the first time last May, its first and only salaried staff member, Jerry Ol-sen, was hired barely two months ago...

...War Crimes in Indochina, which helped turn many Americans against the war by publicizing war atrocities...

...ditional Amnesty (NCUUA)—a political coalition of some seventy religious, peace, resistance, and civil liberties groups—is the central co-ordinating committee of the amnesty movement...

...The only way we can dishonor those who died is to learn nothing from them—to repeat the past and continue our present course of action," she says...

...Since this is an election year, incumbents facing re-election are reluctant to embrace a cause they believe to be unpopular, and one their opponents might exploit against them...

...Amnesty workers are clearly dissatisfied with Congressional reflection of public opposition...

...President Jackson granted it to those who deserted during the Mexican war, on condition that they would never re-enlist in the armed forces—the only condition which amnesty seekers seem willing, indeed eager, to accept...

...Eddie went underground...

...I lived in fear for four years," he says...

...We welcome anyone willing to work in the movement, but not merely to duplicate our past work...

...Safe Return hopes that a general amnesty would be accompanied by the abolition of the SPN system...

...He hopes his surrender will help others to return...

...However, he never even got to fix weapons in Germany, his first post...

...The committee's principal activity so far has been to fly its members from Canada and all sections of the United States to the monthly committee meetings...

...The organization understands it is playing a dangerous game with young men's lives: A deserter faces up to three years in prison if he is apprehended...

...He befriended Vietnamese who, in turn, supplied his friends and him with all the comforts of home: drugs, women, and the street life he thought he had left behind...

...But Olsen has been planning new projects, such as publication of an amnesty newsletter for distribution to more than a thousand groups...

...Louise Ransom comforted Eddie McNally's mother in New York City following his surrender...

...In Canada, Eddie lived on handouts and money from dead-end jobs...

...Some 7,400 men were convicted during the Vietnam war by the Federal courts for draft evasion...

...Some day all resisters will be permitted to return to America in peace...

...Had I stayed," he said, "I would have lived all my life in fear of the Army...

...Thirty-four amnesties have been granted in American history, but ACLU's Schwarzs-child and others concede that the broad amnesty they are seeking is unprecedented...

...Like VIVA, Safe Return sells its constituents bracelets—bearing the names, in this case, not of POWs but of deserters...

...With a Federal grant and night work as a cab driver, everything at last seemed to be coming together for him: a purpose, a career, and a fiancee...

...He had gone AWOL in Vietnam, but had returned...

...NCUUA now regrets the incident, has apologized, and has invited Safe Return to join the committee...

...The nature of the Vietnam war," says Schwarzschild, "requires an unprecedented response...

...In March 1973, only twenty-four per cent favored amnesty, sixty-seven per cent were opposed, and nine per cent uncertain...

...Recently, a relatively new NCUUA member, Americans for Amnesty, established a similar project...

...His inner strength derives from his belief that he has done nothing wrong by deserting...

...A House Judiciary subcommittee was scheduled to hold hearings on the measures last fall, but these were postponed because the Judiciary Committee was preoccupied with the confirmation of Vice President Gerald Ford and with Watergate-related matters, including the possible impeachment of President Nixon...

...Eddie McNally is, in many ways, representative of the majority of deserters...

...All the group can do is make certain deserters who turn themselves in under Safe Return's auspices understand the risk involved...

...For many deserters, of course, life underground has become a nightmare of running and hiding, of deadend jobs, of isolation and despair...

...This time, after consulting with his family, he left the country...

...The group's most innovative and successful tactic, however, has been the staging of deserter "surrenders," like those of Eddie and Lew...

...Eddie's family and the environment in which he was raised resemble the kind of life Archie Bunker parodies...

...It is a sad, but perhaps not unexpected, commentary on the amnesty movement to hear amnesty organizations refer to each other as "our competitors...

...The only GI benefit for which they are eligible, now that they have voluntarily returned to military control, is room and board in an Army stockade...

...Lured by a $1,000 bonus and the promise of a Christmas leave, Eddie volunteered for Vietnam...

...Congressmen and Senators are supposed to do more than read their mail," says one activist...

...We made the streets of Vietnam just like the streets of Brooklyn," he says...

...Sowders, who knows what Eddie has been through, has a deserter's perspective on Eddie's bravado...

...Eddie's job references were good...

...They are supposed to follow their consciences and help shape public opinion...

...It changes the legal status of those who refused to serve, but does not necessarily provide them with moral vindication...

...Safe Return, especially concerned about deserters and vets with bad discharges, is also seeking an end to the Army's Separation Program Numbers (SPN) system...

...Building the movement is a slow and difficult process, for amnesty is, without doubt, the most emotional issue to confront Americans since the war itself...

...For a while, he functioned quite well despite his drug habit...

...He had heard about Safe Return and got in touch with Ed Sowders...

...He joined the Army to "become a man" and learn a useful skill...

...the amnesty movement exaggerates...

...With the return of the prisoners of war and the end of direct American involvement in the Vietnam war, the amnesty movement is beginning to gain strength...

...Amnesty may be the closest thing to peace this country will ever see...

...Lew, twenty-nine, had been in Sweden for five years following his desertion from the Army...

...He started becoming the man he always wanted to be at PRICE...

...As television cameras whirred, agents wrenched Eddie's arms behind his back and threw him into the back seat of an unmarked car which raced off, television cameramen running behind...

...All three men received dishonorable discharges instead of prison sentences...

...Finally, with the help and advice of his family, he checked himself into a Nassau County drug program called PRICE...

...Would it not contribute to growing disrespect for law and order...

...Although Senator George McGovern, for example, supports in principle a general amnesty for draft resisters and case-by-case consideration for deserters, he has not introduced such legislation...

...Eddie and Lew understood the chance they were taking...

...Amnesty groups are also seeking reprieve for the 550,000 men convicted by military courts-martial of offenses that would not be crimes in civilian life—more than half of them cases of absence without leave...