Whether Bill Clinton and George Bush had legally avoided being sent overseas was still a contentious issue in both men’s Presidencies.
Kaplan writes that the war was, by 1977, “widely reviled,” but so, in many quarters, were draft evaders. Those wounds were still unhealed during the Carter Presidency, and, decades later, some never have closed up. Nixon and my honest and conscientious effort to heal the wounds for those who had deserted military service or dodged the draft.” A Times story from 1974 quoted Ford as saying, at a press conference, “Well, the only connection between those two cases is the effort that I made in the one to heal the wounds involving charges against Mr. Introducing the plan, Ford spoke of his hope that it would be a step toward “a calmer and cooler appreciation of our individual rights and responsibilities.” That is as a pretty clear statement of what we can also hope to get from the Snowden case.įord’s clemency offer came a month after he’d pardoned Nixon-a man of many oaths. In other words, the historical reality appears to be pretty much the opposite of what Kaplan writes: Snowden, as far as one can tell, didn’t take an “oath” not to disclose classified information, and some Vietnam-era deserters who received clemency did take and violate their own oath.
(And I do think, lest this be misconstrued, was a just cause deserving a pardon.) Not everybody who tried to get out of the draft was motivated by principle, though draft resistance was integral to the movement to end the war. Some were prosecuted for doing so, and then some were pardoned for the act.Ĭarter’s pardon was broad: you didn’t have to show that you’d opposed the war. (If by “oath” Kaplan just means a harshly worded document, they both count.) Young men tried to evade the draft by, among other things, lying on this form. In that sense, it is more stringent than Form 312. This is no civil contract the signature line mentions criminal penalties, and there are bonus warnings for anyone seeking conscientious objector status. Even before being examined by a draft board, they would have had to fill out Form 100, a questionnaire to help determine their draft classification. Some tried every trick in the book to get a deferment, including submitting false statements. Still, as it happens, a lot of dodgers did put their names on a lot of documents along the way. How could it be extenuated by the fact that it took place? In any event, except when talking about, say, mail fraud, the notion that the comparative severity of crimes can be measured by the number of papers signed beforehand is a strange one (murderers don’t usually sign non-murder agreements). Legally speaking, this is circular: the criminal act in draft-dodging was refusing to join the military. What about the draft dodgers? Kaplan considers it an extenuating factor that they acted before taking an oath to join the military. Snowden had taken an oath-the Oath of Office, or appointment affidavit, given to all federal employees : But the penalties for violating agreement alone are civil: for example, the government can go after any book royalties he might get for publishing secrets. By signing it, Snowden agreed that he was aware that there were federal laws against disclosing classified information. Snowden told the Washington Post’ s Barton Gellman that the document he signed, as what Kaplan calls “a condition of his employment,” was Standard Form 312, a contract in which the signatory says he will “accept” the terms, rather than swearing to them. To begin with, did Snowden sign “an oath…not to disclose classified information”? He says that he did not, and that does not appear to have been contradicted. There is also the question of why an oath matters, in a different way than a serious federal law like the Selective Service Act-but first the facts. The errors illustrate how we tend to misremember the past, and misjudge its passions when comparing them to our own.
This is an odd and flawed argument-logically and legally, but also historically and factually.
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