Government Pushes Sign-Ups for Draft

The Justice Department is moving ahead slowly with plans to prosecute young men who failed to register for the draft, while in recent weeks the Selective Service System has significantly expanded its efforts to counter low sign-up rates with increased publicity and direct pressure on 18-year-olds.

This action comes as debate continues in the Pentagon and the White House over whether registration should be renewed after Congressional authorization expires in December and whether a draft is needed to fill new manpower requirements under the administration's plans for a military build-up.

White House Shift?

Although administration approval for the Justice Department's prosecution program appeared to be a shift away from President Reagan's opposition to peacetime draft registration, which he expressed during the election campaign last year, a White House policy adviser said last week that the President has made no decision on the future of registration and is still strongly opposed to a draft.

"He [Reagan] has always been opposed to conscription," and recent reports of rising military recruiting rates "will only serve to reinforce his conviction that a draft is not the answer to our military problems," Douglas Bandow, special assistant to the President for policy development, said.

Bandow added that Reagan will postpone his decision on registration until he receives the end-of-year recommendations of a special military manpower commission formed in May to examine the quality and number of men in the services and placed under the supervision of Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38.

Several senior military officials, including Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, chief of naval operations, have publicly supported a resumption of the draft, and others have agreed privately that Reagan's plans for more than 200,000 new enlistees will require conscription.

Meanwhile, local United States Attorneys have received specific guidelines from the Justice Department for tracking down and prosecuting non-registrants. A department spokesman said that prosecutions will not begin for several months, but John Doherty '63, assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston, said his office "is clear on the federal guidelines and fully prepared to go ahead with enforcement if necessary."

The government has distributed only 134 names to local prosecutors, and Doherty declined to say if any of the suspects live in Massachusetts. Selective Service is preparing to send a new group of names--probably fewer than 100--to the Justice Department this month. All of the names came from citizens who voluntarily turned in non-registrants, and Selective Service spokesmen said there are no immediate plans to use other means of identifying those who fail to sign up.

The latest government statistics show that less than 70 per cent of the 18-year-olds who should be registering are doing so, meaning that as many as 600,000 young men may have violated the law by the end of the year.

To combat lagging registration, the government recently mailed more than 1.2 million post cards to eligible 18-year-olds, urging them to comply with the law. Names for the mailing were purchased from the Student List Company of Great Neck, N.Y., for about $22,000, Paul Knapp, a Selective Service attorney, said.

Selective Service officials have emphasized that they do not plan to ask high schools or colleges for students' names. Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, said earlier this year that Harvard would carefully consider any such request from the government, but would not necessarily turn ove any names.

Non-registrants are subject to a five-year prison term and a $10,000 fine.

Selective Service Revitalized

Even though a draft does not appear imminent, Selective Service officials are continuing to prepare for a possible call-up and have just completed an 18-month, $4-million revitalization program. Preparations and improvements include:

The addition of 50 new employees, increasing the staff by one-third;

The recruiting of local draft boards in all states, a process spokesmen said will be completed this month;

The periodic distribution of trial induction notices; and

The opening of new computer facilities in Chicago and a new headquarters in the Georgetown area of Washington.

President Reagan's nominee to head the Selective Service System, Maj. Gen. Thomas Turnage, who recently supported the draft as an adviser in the Pentagon, is still awaiting Congressional approval