June 24, 2025 • 40 mins
During Vietnam, the U.S. lowered the IQ standards for the draft in order to bulk up their front lines. This put thousands of men in harm's way and was a complete disaster. It was called project 100,000.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Should Know with a happy, fun, upbeat edition of Stuff
you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Another entry in the shameful American history? Yea bucket? Do
you want to thank a listener for this idea? By
the way, this came from David Bryant? No relation, are
you sure? Yeah? I don't have any. The only David
in my family's my cousin, and he is a Mills, Okay,
(00:42):
but specifically David Bryant's mom I believe gave David this
idea or asked David if those boys ever did a
show on the one Project one hundred thousand. And we
also should shout out a writer, Hamilton Gregory, who was
a Vietnam vett and journalist and who wrote a book
McNamara's follow colon the use of low IQ troops in
(01:03):
the Vietnam War, which I guess sort of gives away
what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, because the name of the project Project one hundred
thousand certainly doesn't.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, I mean another name of it was McNamara's Morons
from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But that name is awful,
so I'd love to not use it again.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, it's ridiculously derogatory. Even when this was going on
in the mid sixties to the very early seventies, it
was still quite derogatory. It hadn't been like a medical
term since like the nineteen teen so it was just
mean all around. And that's pretty appropriate because this whole
idea of this project, which was a wartime effort to
(01:46):
essentially lower the standards for military recruitment so that people
with low enough IQs that they were either borderlined or
mildly cognitively challenged would be acceptable into military se And
it depends on who you ask what the purpose was.
We'll go into both of them. Yeah, but for the
most part, it seems like it probably was as bad
(02:09):
as it seems on its face, that it wasn't an actual,
like good idea ever among anybody.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah. I mean, that's a great setup for a change
for us. You know, usually people are like, what is
this even you're talking about?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, and how'd you guys confuse me already? We're only
in a minute two Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So I guess we'll just dive right in. I mentioned
Robert McNamara, who was during the Vietnam War was the
Secretary of Defense, and this was an idea that wasn't
something that he just thought of then we'll get into it.
But he had thought of this idea previously. But it
was also something the US military had faced previously when
(02:51):
it came wartime and they found out that like, hey,
we had a real problem with not having enough soldiers.
We really overestimated how many like you know, fit literate
men were qualified to serve because this is what's what
a time when it was I mean, was it exclusively men?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah? World War two for sure, at least for combat roles.
I think there were other roles for women. But as
far as combats concerned, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, And so they h and that was also the
first war, which is one reason they had this shortage
that the first war that they had these really kind
of big leaps forward in technology with you know, weaponry
and communications to where they had specialists that you know,
the brightest of the bright that did that stuff right,
and everyone else is in combat. So once they had
the specialists assign they were like, hey, we don't have
(03:37):
enough like front line dudes.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
No, So they had a choice. They could either say,
some of you specialists, we may have assigned you to
radar duty too hastily. We need you to be on
the front lines because we don't have enough combat soldiers.
Or they could lower their standards to allow more people
into the army or infantry so they would automatically be
(04:00):
combat soldiers.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, and one guy said, but my name is radar, right,
and he said, well, just get over to the Mash unit. Then.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, man, that show was not funny to me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is this the first time I'm hearing this.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Maybe you're not a Mash fan. No, I thought you
love Mash.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
No. I remember like hanging out with my dad. Well
he watched it and he would like laugh and clap
and everything, and I'd be like, this is not funny.
And then I grew up and I'm still like, this
is not funny.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Wow, that's funny, because the other day Rip Loretta Swit
who just passed away Hotcholahan. I was remarking on Paula
Tompkin's Instagram page because he did a little tribute to
her that it's like, it's so funny for me to
think back of being like a twelve year old kid
watching a movie about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War
on Thursdays five times a day, every other day of
(04:52):
the week, four times a day. I ate it up.
I thought it was the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Well, I liked the movie.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Why do you dislike the movie but like this show? No.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I mean the movie is just the great Robert Altman,
so I certainly love it, but I just think it's interesting. Yeah,
I thought you were a Mash guy.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I mean, once they got rid of Trapper John, I
was like, I'm done with even giving this a chance.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
But this is what I like about our friendship is
we're still learning about each other after all these years.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, and we can still get along despite our views
on Mash.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
This is gonna take me a minute, but it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So we left off basically before this little tangent that
the army had a decision either lower their standards to
allow more combat troops in or get some of those
specialists stuff to the front lines. And they're like, we'll
just go ahead and lower our standards.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, And they did that. They lowered the intelligence standards
and they were pretty surprised. They're like, wow, a lot
of you guys maybe are illiterate and can't read, maybe
you can't understand basic orders. Even we knew obviously this
is the nineteen forties, so much less about mental challenges
(06:03):
and different intelligences and learning disabilities and like you were
either this or you were that back then, And so
all of a sudden they said, oh, well, we had
a lot of that, and we thought it would be
a little more like guys like.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
This, right, So I think they managed to get three
hundred and fifty thousand men at least they kind of
opened the floodgates during World War Two. This is just
between forty two and forty five. But the caveat to
this is that the military provided remedial education classes. Like
(06:37):
you would sign up for three years, they would teach you.
They'd spend some of this time teaching you what you
didn't learn in high school because maybe you dropped out,
or maybe your high school sucked, maybe you had to
work in the fields half of the day so you
didn't get a full education. The army educated them to
bring them up to the level that their former standards met, right.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, or try to at least.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, they did their best. And then after War two
ended and Hitler was dead, dead, dead, the army was like, well,
the military in general said, we're gonna re raise our
standards back to where they were before.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, exactly, and then they needed to make the movie
mash and then later the TV show. So they started
the Korean War.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well wait, the Rosenberg started the Korean War, don't forget
that's right.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
No, the Korean War came along and they had the
same problem, of course, so they lowered the standards again,
of course, and there was another scramble to kind of
get ready, and so they were like, you know, guys,
before we go into our next war, which we should
do pretty soon, we need to like have a real
plan in place for this and and you know, get
the manpower we need the right way. And so part
(07:47):
of that was, you know, led into what led to
Project one hundred thousand. Yeah that wasn't all, though.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
No, that wasn't all. There was this this I don't
know how much faith to put in this. Let's just
present it as if it's real and we'll let the
listeners decide. Okay, But there's a senator named Daniel Patrick moynihan.
He was a longtime sitting Senator for New York. Prior
to that, in the era that we're talking about, he
(08:16):
was assistant Secretary of Labor under both Kennedy and LBJ.
He was actually one of the architects of the War
on Poverty. And I don't know if it was his
idea or he just really bought into this idea, but
it was that there's a bunch of people who aren't
fit for military service, either because they're overweight or underweight,
(08:36):
or because they're not intelligent enough to pass the basic
intelligence standards. I think he found like thirty percent of
American men weren't fit for military service because of those standards.
So he said, Okay, rather than go back to the
beginning and try to fix the educational system, let's just
get these people into the army and let the army
(08:58):
kind of like polish them up so that once they're
done with their hitch, they can become productive members of society.
And even better, we're taking people out of like abject poverty,
giving them a chance to have like a life for
themselves and provide a stable a stable home for their children,
(09:19):
who can then go on to become middle class and
so on and so forth in the cycle of poverty
will be broken. That's what Daniel Patrick Boynihan was saying.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he had a lot of people on his side.
It wasn't some hugely controversial thing to propose. It was
at a time when it was like, you know, you
got a kid who's a problem, send them into the army,
and you know they'll they'll shape you up into a
real man and a productive member of society. It was
kind of the way of thinking at the time, so
much so that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Mains Johnson,
(09:47):
they were big time believers in this. They were both
like fully fully on board. So we just want to
make that clear. It wasn't just one or two people
making these decisions, and there were presidents going, I don't
know about that. That doesn't sound like the idea, right. We
will kind of hit some early critics because there were some,
but people were kind of steaming ahead, you know, full
(10:08):
steam ahead with this steaming ahead, full steam.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Ahead, that's really steamy, that's full steam. Yeah, Kennedy said
in nineteen sixty three. Are today's military rejects include Tomorrow's
or hardcore unemployed.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know, it's funny I have written down on my thing.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Do you really?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, that was the worst Kennedy anyone's ever done. But
that was my best.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I know. We're all frightened and horny. And the LBJ
for his part, can I do? LBJ?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
He was a country guy.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Right Texan?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll teach him to get up at daylight
and work till dark and shave and bathe, and when
when we turn them out, we'll have them prepared at
least to drive a truck or a bakery wagon or
stand at a gate.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
That was more a gentleman dressed in a seersucker suit
at a Kentucky derby. I think all.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Right either, WELLBJ did that?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Hey it was better than Mike Kennedy. How about that?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It was fine?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So you mentioned that we were going to kind of
run into some of the critics early to this idea,
and the first vocal critics were the military leaders themselves.
They were like, this is no, we don't want to
do this. Were not the armies, not to rehabilitate and
educate people who got left behind in school, do something
(11:25):
else with them. There were other people who were like Yeah,
there's this thing called job corps. If you heard a
job corps, that's what that's for. Don't send them to
the military. So it wasn't like a home run once
it left the Oval Office and started to spread outward
on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, for sure. But that's where it did go because
in nineteen sixty six is when Robert McNamara formally announced
Project one hundred thousand. But this was, like I mentioned,
not only the US military tried to this before, but
McNamara himself had tried this before two years earlier. In
sixty four, he proposed something called the Special Training Enlistment Program,
(12:03):
or the STEP program, And this was not full project
from one hundred thousand. It was a little more like, hey,
we got a like forty thousand guys that didn't meet
the standards, but they're super close. Maybe they're just below
the IQ test level, or maybe they need to put
on a few pounds or shave a few pounds, And
(12:25):
the STEP program was intended to kind of correct those
guys up quickly in getting on board, but it would
cost a little bit of money. They would enlist for
three years receive this special training, and that special training
was going to cost about sixteen million bucks. So Congress said, no,
we're not going to pay for that. No.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And one other thing you kind of mentioned it is
that they were going to get remedial instruction like the
soldiers in World War two got right. That was part
of the program.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
That was what the sixteen million was for.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Okay. So Congress said no, like you said, and mac
namara is like, okay, whatever, I'm just gonna move on
any of other things to do right now, like agitate
for escalation in Vietnam. And in nineteen sixty six, apparently
he was chatting with some Marines and they made mention
that they had actually set up their own little special
(13:13):
training program so that the recruits who weren't cutting it
hacking it could be kind of like brought up to
minimum standards themselves. And he had a a Eureka light
bulb moment basically saying like, I'm going to steal the
idea and make it military wide, and that way Congress
doesn't have to have their greedy little fingers in it,
because I can just use their regular training budget for
(13:35):
this kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, and they can. You know, those Marines had their
private piles that they got up to speed and turned
them into killing machines, just like in the movie.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean Private Pile is based on this Project
one hundred thousand, and we're about to talk about like
one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, And I feel like Forrest Gump has got to
be inspired by this, even though that was now were
a part of the movie that at least made it
into the movie. I don't know about original script, if
he had any kind of special training or anything.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I don't know, or the book by Winston Groom. It's
possible that he ran across that in the research, but
not just Force but Bubba as well.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So I say we took a break and come back
and talk about how Project one hundred thousand actually kind
of made it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Let's do it all right. So where we left off,
(14:51):
as McNamara found a work around from the official Step
program to basically an unofficial Step program, And in nineteen
sixty six, they found that they really needed this because
they had a pretty dire manpower situation. Because one reason
is because of the incredible amount of deferments. I saw
some stats that from draft eligible men in nineteen sixty six,
(15:15):
sixty percent of them took some sort of action to
gain a deferment. A lot of them rushed off to
get married because initially there was a marriage deferment. A
lot of them went to college that maybe weren't too
keen on it because there was a college deferment. There
were medical deferments. They were certainly wealthy kids who had
their parents pay their way out of the war with
(15:36):
things like medical deferments. There were conscientious objector deferments, like
one hundred and seventy thousand of those people having kids
like they could. They sort of started moving the goalpost
a little bit with the marriage and kids thing, because
at first it was like if you're married or not going,
But then they're like, actually we need to marry you guys,
maybe if you just don't have kids. So guys started
(15:56):
having kids so long way of saying they needed they
needed infantrymen on the front line. Another way to avoid
it was obviously joining something like the National Guard or
the Coast Guard.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, because then you could be like, the Coast Guard
is almost certainly not going to Vietnam. I'll join the
Coast Guard so I can serve and help out, but
I'm not going to be shipped off to Vietnam. Some
people also just fled the country, went to Canada. Sweden
was another place where what are called draft dodgers ran
off to. So yeah, there were a lot of people,
(16:27):
particularly middle class and hire who were just basically not
having to go fight in Vietnam. Right. And the other
reason why they needed people, or the basic reason why
they needed a bunch of people all of a sudden,
or fighting men, I should say, on the front lines,
is because in nineteen sixty six, the US sent combat
(16:47):
troops to the ground in Vietnam, in South Vietnam. To
that point, the US had been nothing but advisors and trainers.
And then there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident where
a Navy ship was fired upon. That kind of brought
the US into the war and we started like doing
firebombing raids. And then finally they were like, we need
infantry men. And that's when they really needed a bunch
(17:11):
of people to go fight in Vietnam. And that's when
Project one hundred thousand was like, yeah, let's let's do
this because we need to.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, And i' mean I didn't even look it up,
but I imagine were they trying to get one hundred
thousand soldiers. Was that that number per year? Oh, per year? Okay,
because they ended up getting far more than that they did.
They were officially active with this project from October first,
sixty six through the end of the year seventy one,
so about five years. And there were early critics of
(17:39):
this you know, official program as well, and a lot
of them, you know, kind of makes sense, but a
lot of them early on were civil rights leaders. There
was a congressman named Adam Clayton Powell who said, this
is genocide for poor black Americans. It's nothing more than
killing off human beings that are not members of the elite.
But nevertheless they pushed on.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yeah. I mean, the very fact that these these men
came from high levels of poverty and had learning disabilities
in a lot of cases meant that they were not
going to get any kind of college deferment. They were
almost certainly not in college, and even if they were,
they weren't doing a good enough job to get a deferment.
And then secondly, national guards, almost to a state were
(18:21):
still segregated, so if you were black, you couldn't go
join the National Guard and not be shipped off to Vietnam.
So these were really vulnerable population of people that they
tapped into with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, and they called these guys the New Standards recruits
Capital and Capital S and most of those New Standards
guys were sent to Vietnam. Out of those guys, about
half of them served in combat roles. And this is
what that looked like.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. I think there were a total of three hundred
and fifty four thousand men who were admitted in that time.
Ninety one percent hadn't met the previous minimum i CUE requirements,
and the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which
measured intelligence among other things, was thirteen point six, which
meant that the New Standards men had an IQ average
(19:12):
around seventy five, whereas for all recruits the average was
IQ of about one hundred. And that's the average IQ.
I saw that seventy is the cutoff the beginning of
mild cognitive disabilities. So if seventy five is the average,
that means there were people with real cognitive disabilities who
were in this three hundred and fifty four thousand men
(19:34):
who were part of Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah. Forty eight percent of those guys were from the
South compared to twenty eight percent of the total recruits,
and thirty eight percent were non white, when minorities at
the time made up just about ten percent overall.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Right, so you can imagine that these men who didn't
meet the minimum requirements that had previously been met, some
of them couldn't even meet these new lowered requirements, and
so recruiters stepped in and did some really shady stuff
to get people into this project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Shoot, yeah, recruiters. I mean they can say whatever they
want because they're not you know, you can't go back
and say, oh, well, my recruiter said I wasn't supposed
to go to the front line. That just doesn't fly.
So they could say whatever they want. They could say,
you're not going to go to the front line. Maybe
you won't even go to Vietnam. You may be you know,
you're going to get really great job training and set
(20:31):
you up great for later in life after you get
out of the army. Their job is to recruit you,
not to be held to anything that they say.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So wrong, man, especially when you're dealing with people with
cognitive disabilities, you know, for sure, especially people who are illiterate,
and some of them were illiterate, so the recruiters would
bring in ringers, people they paid to take the tests
for the qualification tests for these men who were the
new standards men, and they I mean that's just fraud,
(21:03):
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, for sure, they were you know, once they got
to basic training, they were bullied. They were obviously the
object of ire from their you know, drill sergeants and
stuff like that, but they were also bullied you know,
physically and you know, emotionally within their you know, platoons,
and they didn't have any understanding a lot of times
(21:25):
of even what was going on when this is happening.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, that writer Hamilton Gregory recounted the story of one
recruit who couldn't tell you what state he was from,
didn't know his left from his right, wasn't aware that
the US was at war. I mean, like really profoundly
cognitively challenged men in some cases who had no business
being in the military. Not just because they were potentially
(21:51):
in danger or most certainly in danger in a lot
of cases, but they also posed a danger to other
people in their platoon as well because they didn't know
what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, for sure, they did have the special training companies
set up like you know McNamara had envisioned, you know
from the tip from those Marines, but a lot of times,
you know, that didn't work. And even when they failed
to get through basic training, they would just recycle them
back through until they pass or just say you passed.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah. Those recruiters also they used something called administrative acceptance,
that's what it was, where they were given the power
to say, I think you're flunking this test on purpose,
so you're actually going to be admitted anyway. They could
use that to assign or to get these cognitively challenged
men into the army, basically saying like I think you're
(22:39):
smarter than your test reflects, right, So there was just
no way that they weren't going to make it into
the army and then through basic training, and I mean
once they got through basic training, I think you said
half or more of them were shipped off to Vietnam,
and I think the majority of them ended up on
the front lines. And the statistics about what happened to
(23:02):
these men in Vietnam are just shocking, especially when you
compare them to the statistics for just the military of
the Army as a whole.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, four hundred and seventy eight of them were killed
in Vietnam, which was a fatality rate three times higher
than your average soldier. Thirteen hundred those were killed by
mines in booby traps, because a lot of times they
were like, just put one of those guys up front
and if they step on the land mine, then it's
no big loss for us. Twenty thousand of them were injured,
(23:34):
including five hundred amputees, which is again at a higher
rate than other gis.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, I think I saw like fifty something thousand people
were killed. Americans were killed in Vietnam, so like the
new standards men made up like ten percent of that, which, yeah,
I mean, that's just crazy. There are also like a
lot of horror stories about these poor guys and just
what happened to them over there. There was one who
(24:03):
Hamilton Gregory wrote about he would change the names of
these men, and he changed one of their names to Jerry.
And Jerry was on night guard duty at his posts
in Vietnam, and he was told that if he saw
anybody coming up to the fort that he was to
say halt and tell them to say who they were,
(24:24):
to identify themselves right, and even this basic order, Jerry
couldn't follow it because when he saw somebody moving in
the jungle, he just started opening fire and it turned
out it was an officer from his camp and he
killed them. He accidentally killed this officer because he just
started shooting because he didn't know how to follow orders.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know why guys like you and I aren't fit
for the military. Why because you had a hard time
coming with the word order. Yeah, what's it called with that? Sara?
Jealous about the thing he wants us to do.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, the instruction. But like anger instruction, anng re instruction.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I think that's the definition of orders, an angry instruction.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I think that too.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
They also and this is you know, it gets even
sadder new Standardsmen were referred for psychiatric evaluation ten times
as frequently as other troops. And you know, they were
obviously going through a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression,
extreme agitation, and some of them frequently attempted suicide or
you know when a wall or attack their filler soldiers,
(25:28):
which all of a sudden you're in the stockade. You're
getting a conviction and a dishonorable discharge, which we're going
to talk more about.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, that was a big issue. But I mean I
saw the a wall thing described as like, I mean, imagine,
if everybody's really mean to you, beats you up, and
you just don't understand why, of course you're going to
want to get away from it. If you just can't
make sense of that, heads or tails, right, So a wall,
I mean there was a pretty good reason for a
lot of these guys to go a wall. And again,
(25:58):
I think Private piles experience in basic training was like
pretty true to life for what happened to some of
these guys. And you know, Private Pile chose kill and
then die himself rather than a wall, but a lot
of them chose a wall instead.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
What a movie?
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, man, that movie is just amazing.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
We're talking about The Full Metal Jacket. By the way,
just in case people are like, what movie?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yes, so good, good call man.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
The Great Stanley Kubrick. Should we take our second break?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think we should.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yes, all right, We'll be right back and finish up
with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So I said, there are a lot of horror stories
and there are a plenty for the McNamara boys or
Project one hundred thousand men. What's much harder to find
are positive stories, like hopeful stories. I could find two,
but it turned out they were actually the same guy.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, this isn't a silver lining situation.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
No, definitely not. But the guy his name was Mike Sanchez,
not his real name, and he had two different experiences
while he was in Vietnam, and both of them were
because he was essentially adopted by his commanding officers at
both of his posts.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, which I mean, that's still not a silver lining,
but at least there were some compassionate officers who took
these guys under their wing and were like, I'm going
to try and see that this kid doesn't go home
in a pine box. So thankful for that obviously. But
one of the things that happened was a soldier like this,
(28:06):
and you know, apparently it happened to others. Is there
they were given assignments sort of under the wing of
that officer, like maybe be their driver. And in this case,
this guy was assigned to drive an officer but couldn't
drive and didn't have the capacity to learn how to drive,
so that instead of just you know, sticking him back
on the front line, this officer drove himself and just
had this guy sit next to him in the passenger seat.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah. So I mean, like, that's really taking a soldier
under your wing, Like, yeah, that is just straight up
protecting him. That was after That was the second part
of Mike Sanchez's stint in Vietnam. The first part of it,
he actually distinguished himself in battle. And this is actually
pretty similar to Forrest Gump if you think about it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, I think this might have been directly inspired by that.
That was my feeling.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Okay, So Mike Sanchez when he first got to Vietnam,
his first commanding officer also took him under his wing
to protect him and was like, you have no business
being here. I'm going to see to it that you
make it out of here alive. And Mike Sanchez was
the kind of guy who just if you were nice
to him, if you were kind to him, if you
treated him with respect, he would he would loyal to
(29:17):
you to the end, like you just captured his heart.
And that happened with his first commanding officer. He felt
deeply loyal to them, and they ended up in a firefight.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Together, right, Yeah, and kind of just like out of
the movie Forrest Gump. The officer ended up in big trouble.
Mike couldn't find him. Everyone said he's back there, he
got hit, but no one was going back to get him.
So that's what this guy did. He ran back, ran back,
you know, foregoing his own safety, called out for him,
(29:47):
found him wounded he couldn't move, and carried him to
safety through some serious, you know, bullet fire and was
got the Silver Star for that action.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, isn't that cool?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
It's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, Mike Santez, he's just one of those rare, hopeful
or nice stories. He actually went on to become a barber,
which was his dream because his brother was a barber,
so he got to go work with them after the army.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, and again, don't bother googling because his name is
not Mike Sanchez.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
No, but you can find an account of this by
the second CEO who he was the driver for. His
name was Jim Bracewell. He wrote an account about Mike Sanchez.
It's worth reading, for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
There was another one. This is from Dave Rus. One
of these guys, his name was Elmer. I don't know
if that's his real name or not in this case
but he was apparently just a real had a real
talent for keeping things super clean and orderly, and he
was assigned his assignment was to clean a sick bay
on a big navy ship, and he may not have
(30:48):
understood like what sterill meant and things like that, but
he really knew how to get stuff done and keep
the place clean and sterile. And he apparently had a
pretty rare positive experience, and that everyone loved this guy
and everyone thought he did a great job. And that's
sort of like, that's sort of what I was thinking earlier,
(31:08):
is you know, they knew so little about different intelligences
and things back then, and they probably could have found
a lot of roles that might have been suitable for
some of these guys. Instead, they were just like, we
want warm bodies on the front line because they're basically expendable.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, I mean, like basically booby trap catchers essentially.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So yeah, those stories are very rare. For the most part,
the Project one hundred thousand recruits suffered greatly, and not
just in battle, but also at the hands of their
own platoon members, Like they just had it horrible all
around in a lot of cases, and so it's not
(31:49):
much of a surprise that when they were studied after
they left Vietnam and came back to the United States,
they had a much harder time than even the average
Vietnam VET who had a hard time themselves. These guys
had it even harder. They were apparently significantly more likely
to suffer PTSD compared to other vets, and that they
(32:12):
had harder time holding on a job, they had a
harder time with everyday living, and that they were more
likely to experience homelessness, drug addiction, and suicide than even
the average Vietnam VET.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, which, you know, the big thumb in the alley
in all this is it was kind of posed as now,
these guys are going to be so much better off
after serving their country in the army. YEP, They're going
to get better jobs, They're going to you know, work
themselves up into a maybe lower middle class situation when
they came from poverty in a lot of cases. And
they've studied this when compared to even when compared to
(32:49):
other low IQ Americans of the same age. Yeah, this
has been the veterans had worse financial outcomes. There was
a study in the eighties that found that ten percent
of low IQ veterans were unemployed compared with only three
percent of low IQ non veterans, and earn less money
an average of eighteen thousand dollars a year compared to
twenty four thousand dollars a year for non veterans.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yes, and so again, just to clarify, they were supposed
to have a better life, like you said, after the
war than and they had a worse life. And one reason,
a huge reason why is something you touched on earlier.
A lot of them, I think something like half of
them were discharged under conditions other than honorable. And if
(33:31):
you have anything but an honorable discharge from the military,
you are stigmatized for the rest of your life. Not
only will businesses typically not hire you, there's plenty of
businesses who won't. The military itself, like the VA, will
help you less than it will help other vets, Like
it's harder to get access to healthcare and to job
(33:53):
counseling and to all the things that somebody like a
Project one hundred thousand recruit would need after they got
back to America, that was shut down to half of
them because they were discharged dishonorably.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so shameful. There was at
least one guy that was a recruiter who I guess
felt pretty bad about taking part in this. Is a
veteran named Bill Daniel, and he, you know, put a
lot of thought into this after the war and said,
you know what I'm gonna They called it bad paper
if you got a dishonorable discharge, and so he wanted
(34:26):
to appeal as many of these bad paper discharges as
he could, and he was successful in four hundred cases.
You know, one hundred and eighty thousand of them were
dishonorably discharged, So four hundred isn't much, but you know,
this for Bill Daniel to take, you know, to spend
his time and his life getting four hundred of these
(34:47):
guys cleared is pretty admirable.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah. And then one more thing about the bad paper,
the dishonorable discharges. Apparently, among Project one hundred thousand recruits,
the main reason that that was given for their dishonorable
discharge was that they were unsuitable for the military, and
that was the case from the outset. The military brought
(35:10):
them on on purpose anyway, and then spit them out
the other end, saying you should have never been in
the military in the first place, and now here's the
stigma for you to carry around for the rest of
your life.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah. Man, So did Robert McNamara feel bad about all this,
because he's certainly somebody who, maybe more so than most
secretaries of Defense, looked back a lot on his life
and he wrote about it, and it was a memoir
called In Retrospect colon the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.
He also very famously was in the Great Aarra Morris's
(35:43):
documentary The Fog of War, where he talked at length
about things that he did right and wrong. So surely
he looked back on Project one hundred thousand is a
big mistake.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Right, No, No, I could tell by your tone that
you knew that, But he didn't. He actually did apologize
for things like his involvement in pushing for escalating the
war in Vietnam. Like he he wasn't one of those guys.
He's like, no, I never did anything wrong, You're all wrong.
He soul searched, like you said, more than most other
(36:13):
people in his position, But he never apologized for Project
one hundred thousand. And I don't know what that says
like on his face you would suspect, well, he really
was a true believer. He didn't think it was a
like he wasn't doing anything nefarious. But I mean, these
guys who were like planning and carrying out the Vietnam War,
(36:35):
you had to be nefarius to be doing that, you know.
So how much credit can you give him? How much
benefit of the doubt do you give him?
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean the vet that wrote
that book, Hamilton Gregory, he himself was like, yeah, you
know what, I think he actually had good intentions. I
think he really did think he could coach them up
into a better life and that the military would be
genuinely good for them. And then it was just a
tragic misjudgment and not just an attempt to you know,
(37:06):
supply the front lines with warm bodies. But you know
that's it may be generous. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, other people like the guy who wrote We Were Soldiers,
Joe Galloway, He was embedded with the seventh Cavalry in
battle with in Vietnam. He actually was one of the
rare civilians decorated with the Bronze Star for valor during
a battle. He was just a war. Corresponding in he
was like, no, this is unforgivable. Yeah, he essentially said
(37:31):
in a column the day after McNamara died, like just
from Project one hundred thousand, he's on his way to
hell basically.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yep. I mean that's what he said. Not I'm not
saying he's on the side hell right.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing too, but that's that's basically what
he said. Yeah, and I think a lot of people
agree with him for that too. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I got nothing else? Looking forward to moving on to
more positive stories.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah. Who was the person that suggested it?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
David Bryant's mom.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Thanks David Bryant's mom. We appreciate that that was a
good idea. I'm glad we learned about it. I'm glad
we could tell everybody else about it because it's not
a very well known part of American history. Totally, Chuck said, totally.
He just triggered listener mail, this.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Is about R Shorty. Can you not have a name? Hi? Guys,
my second time emailing. Just listened to can you Not
Have a Name and had to email about a most
unusual name I've come across in my fifty plus years
of working with the public, thirty in the restaurant industry,
sixteen doing vacation rules, and now four and a half
years owning a flower shop. Nice About seven or eight
(38:43):
years ago, a customer came in of Asian descent and
gave me his credit card that showed me his surname
as Why Why. I commented, I said, what an unusual
last name, and he asked if he was if it
was a common Asian name, and he said, actually, my
last name is only Why. But American Express does not
accept the last name composed of just one letter, so
(39:03):
I had to add the second why well, just to
get the credit card. Also, my sister and I are
both baby boomers, and we were not given middle names,
so we could take our maiden name as our middle
name once we got married and not have to drop
that middle name.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Oh I never thought about that.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, worked for my sister, but I'm still single and
looking for a man with a short last name.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
What's her name?
Speaker 1 (39:25):
So this is Jane Trahanofski, who is the owner of
Levon's Florals in Newport Beach, California. And I even went
to the website. It's like a lovely flower shop business
and so you know, pop in and see Jane. If
you you're a boomer with a short last name.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, you could do a lot worse than going to
Newport Beach for a day or two. Totally well, thanks
a lot, Jane. We appreciate that. We love anecdotes and
stories about stuff that have to do with episodes we've
recently recorded, and if you have one of those, you
can talk to us via email. Send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Should Know with a happy, fun, upbeat edition of Stuff
you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Another entry in the shameful American history? Yea bucket? Do
you want to thank a listener for this idea? By
the way, this came from David Bryant? No relation, are
you sure? Yeah? I don't have any. The only David
in my family's my cousin, and he is a Mills, Okay,
(00:42):
but specifically David Bryant's mom I believe gave David this
idea or asked David if those boys ever did a
show on the one Project one hundred thousand. And we
also should shout out a writer, Hamilton Gregory, who was
a Vietnam vett and journalist and who wrote a book
McNamara's follow colon the use of low IQ troops in
(01:03):
the Vietnam War, which I guess sort of gives away
what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, because the name of the project Project one hundred
thousand certainly doesn't.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, I mean another name of it was McNamara's Morons
from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But that name is awful,
so I'd love to not use it again.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, it's ridiculously derogatory. Even when this was going on
in the mid sixties to the very early seventies, it
was still quite derogatory. It hadn't been like a medical
term since like the nineteen teen so it was just
mean all around. And that's pretty appropriate because this whole
idea of this project, which was a wartime effort to
(01:46):
essentially lower the standards for military recruitment so that people
with low enough IQs that they were either borderlined or
mildly cognitively challenged would be acceptable into military se And
it depends on who you ask what the purpose was.
We'll go into both of them. Yeah, but for the
most part, it seems like it probably was as bad
(02:09):
as it seems on its face, that it wasn't an actual,
like good idea ever among anybody.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah. I mean, that's a great setup for a change
for us. You know, usually people are like, what is
this even you're talking about?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, and how'd you guys confuse me already? We're only
in a minute two Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So I guess we'll just dive right in. I mentioned
Robert McNamara, who was during the Vietnam War was the
Secretary of Defense, and this was an idea that wasn't
something that he just thought of then we'll get into it.
But he had thought of this idea previously. But it
was also something the US military had faced previously when
(02:51):
it came wartime and they found out that like, hey,
we had a real problem with not having enough soldiers.
We really overestimated how many like you know, fit literate
men were qualified to serve because this is what's what
a time when it was I mean, was it exclusively men?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah? World War two for sure, at least for combat roles.
I think there were other roles for women. But as
far as combats concerned, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, And so they h and that was also the
first war, which is one reason they had this shortage
that the first war that they had these really kind
of big leaps forward in technology with you know, weaponry
and communications to where they had specialists that you know,
the brightest of the bright that did that stuff right,
and everyone else is in combat. So once they had
the specialists assign they were like, hey, we don't have
(03:37):
enough like front line dudes.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
No, So they had a choice. They could either say,
some of you specialists, we may have assigned you to
radar duty too hastily. We need you to be on
the front lines because we don't have enough combat soldiers.
Or they could lower their standards to allow more people
into the army or infantry so they would automatically be
(04:00):
combat soldiers.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, and one guy said, but my name is radar, right,
and he said, well, just get over to the Mash unit. Then.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, man, that show was not funny to me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is this the first time I'm hearing this.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Maybe you're not a Mash fan. No, I thought you
love Mash.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
No. I remember like hanging out with my dad. Well
he watched it and he would like laugh and clap
and everything, and I'd be like, this is not funny.
And then I grew up and I'm still like, this
is not funny.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Wow, that's funny, because the other day Rip Loretta Swit
who just passed away Hotcholahan. I was remarking on Paula
Tompkin's Instagram page because he did a little tribute to
her that it's like, it's so funny for me to
think back of being like a twelve year old kid
watching a movie about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War
on Thursdays five times a day, every other day of
(04:52):
the week, four times a day. I ate it up.
I thought it was the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Well, I liked the movie.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Why do you dislike the movie but like this show? No.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I mean the movie is just the great Robert Altman,
so I certainly love it, but I just think it's interesting. Yeah,
I thought you were a Mash guy.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I mean, once they got rid of Trapper John, I
was like, I'm done with even giving this a chance.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
But this is what I like about our friendship is
we're still learning about each other after all these years.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, and we can still get along despite our views
on Mash.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
This is gonna take me a minute, but it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So we left off basically before this little tangent that
the army had a decision either lower their standards to
allow more combat troops in or get some of those
specialists stuff to the front lines. And they're like, we'll
just go ahead and lower our standards.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, And they did that. They lowered the intelligence standards
and they were pretty surprised. They're like, wow, a lot
of you guys maybe are illiterate and can't read, maybe
you can't understand basic orders. Even we knew obviously this
is the nineteen forties, so much less about mental challenges
(06:03):
and different intelligences and learning disabilities and like you were
either this or you were that back then, And so
all of a sudden they said, oh, well, we had
a lot of that, and we thought it would be
a little more like guys like.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
This, right, So I think they managed to get three
hundred and fifty thousand men at least they kind of
opened the floodgates during World War Two. This is just
between forty two and forty five. But the caveat to
this is that the military provided remedial education classes. Like
(06:37):
you would sign up for three years, they would teach you.
They'd spend some of this time teaching you what you
didn't learn in high school because maybe you dropped out,
or maybe your high school sucked, maybe you had to
work in the fields half of the day so you
didn't get a full education. The army educated them to
bring them up to the level that their former standards met, right.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, or try to at least.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, they did their best. And then after War two
ended and Hitler was dead, dead, dead, the army was like, well,
the military in general said, we're gonna re raise our
standards back to where they were before.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, exactly, and then they needed to make the movie
mash and then later the TV show. So they started
the Korean War.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well wait, the Rosenberg started the Korean War, don't forget
that's right.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
No, the Korean War came along and they had the
same problem, of course, so they lowered the standards again,
of course, and there was another scramble to kind of
get ready, and so they were like, you know, guys,
before we go into our next war, which we should
do pretty soon, we need to like have a real
plan in place for this and and you know, get
the manpower we need the right way. And so part
(07:47):
of that was, you know, led into what led to
Project one hundred thousand. Yeah that wasn't all, though.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
No, that wasn't all. There was this this I don't
know how much faith to put in this. Let's just
present it as if it's real and we'll let the
listeners decide. Okay, But there's a senator named Daniel Patrick moynihan.
He was a longtime sitting Senator for New York. Prior
to that, in the era that we're talking about, he
(08:16):
was assistant Secretary of Labor under both Kennedy and LBJ.
He was actually one of the architects of the War
on Poverty. And I don't know if it was his
idea or he just really bought into this idea, but
it was that there's a bunch of people who aren't
fit for military service, either because they're overweight or underweight,
(08:36):
or because they're not intelligent enough to pass the basic
intelligence standards. I think he found like thirty percent of
American men weren't fit for military service because of those standards.
So he said, Okay, rather than go back to the
beginning and try to fix the educational system, let's just
get these people into the army and let the army
(08:58):
kind of like polish them up so that once they're
done with their hitch, they can become productive members of society.
And even better, we're taking people out of like abject poverty,
giving them a chance to have like a life for
themselves and provide a stable a stable home for their children,
(09:19):
who can then go on to become middle class and
so on and so forth in the cycle of poverty
will be broken. That's what Daniel Patrick Boynihan was saying.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he had a lot of people on his side.
It wasn't some hugely controversial thing to propose. It was
at a time when it was like, you know, you
got a kid who's a problem, send them into the army,
and you know they'll they'll shape you up into a
real man and a productive member of society. It was
kind of the way of thinking at the time, so
much so that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Mains Johnson,
(09:47):
they were big time believers in this. They were both
like fully fully on board. So we just want to
make that clear. It wasn't just one or two people
making these decisions, and there were presidents going, I don't
know about that. That doesn't sound like the idea, right. We
will kind of hit some early critics because there were some,
but people were kind of steaming ahead, you know, full
(10:08):
steam ahead with this steaming ahead, full steam.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Ahead, that's really steamy, that's full steam. Yeah, Kennedy said
in nineteen sixty three. Are today's military rejects include Tomorrow's
or hardcore unemployed.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know, it's funny I have written down on my thing.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Do you really?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, that was the worst Kennedy anyone's ever done. But
that was my best.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I know. We're all frightened and horny. And the LBJ
for his part, can I do? LBJ?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
He was a country guy.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Right Texan?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll teach him to get up at daylight
and work till dark and shave and bathe, and when
when we turn them out, we'll have them prepared at
least to drive a truck or a bakery wagon or
stand at a gate.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
That was more a gentleman dressed in a seersucker suit
at a Kentucky derby. I think all.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Right either, WELLBJ did that?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Hey it was better than Mike Kennedy. How about that?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It was fine?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So you mentioned that we were going to kind of
run into some of the critics early to this idea,
and the first vocal critics were the military leaders themselves.
They were like, this is no, we don't want to
do this. Were not the armies, not to rehabilitate and
educate people who got left behind in school, do something
(11:25):
else with them. There were other people who were like Yeah,
there's this thing called job corps. If you heard a
job corps, that's what that's for. Don't send them to
the military. So it wasn't like a home run once
it left the Oval Office and started to spread outward
on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, for sure. But that's where it did go because
in nineteen sixty six is when Robert McNamara formally announced
Project one hundred thousand. But this was, like I mentioned,
not only the US military tried to this before, but
McNamara himself had tried this before two years earlier. In
sixty four, he proposed something called the Special Training Enlistment Program,
(12:03):
or the STEP program, And this was not full project
from one hundred thousand. It was a little more like, hey,
we got a like forty thousand guys that didn't meet
the standards, but they're super close. Maybe they're just below
the IQ test level, or maybe they need to put
on a few pounds or shave a few pounds, And
(12:25):
the STEP program was intended to kind of correct those
guys up quickly in getting on board, but it would
cost a little bit of money. They would enlist for
three years receive this special training, and that special training
was going to cost about sixteen million bucks. So Congress said, no,
we're not going to pay for that. No.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And one other thing you kind of mentioned it is
that they were going to get remedial instruction like the
soldiers in World War two got right. That was part
of the program.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
That was what the sixteen million was for.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Okay. So Congress said no, like you said, and mac
namara is like, okay, whatever, I'm just gonna move on
any of other things to do right now, like agitate
for escalation in Vietnam. And in nineteen sixty six, apparently
he was chatting with some Marines and they made mention
that they had actually set up their own little special
(13:13):
training program so that the recruits who weren't cutting it
hacking it could be kind of like brought up to
minimum standards themselves. And he had a a Eureka light
bulb moment basically saying like, I'm going to steal the
idea and make it military wide, and that way Congress
doesn't have to have their greedy little fingers in it,
because I can just use their regular training budget for
(13:35):
this kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, and they can. You know, those Marines had their
private piles that they got up to speed and turned
them into killing machines, just like in the movie.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean Private Pile is based on this Project
one hundred thousand, and we're about to talk about like
one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, And I feel like Forrest Gump has got to
be inspired by this, even though that was now were
a part of the movie that at least made it
into the movie. I don't know about original script, if
he had any kind of special training or anything.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I don't know, or the book by Winston Groom. It's
possible that he ran across that in the research, but
not just Force but Bubba as well.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So I say we took a break and come back
and talk about how Project one hundred thousand actually kind
of made it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Let's do it all right. So where we left off,
(14:51):
as McNamara found a work around from the official Step
program to basically an unofficial Step program, And in nineteen
sixty six, they found that they really needed this because
they had a pretty dire manpower situation. Because one reason
is because of the incredible amount of deferments. I saw
some stats that from draft eligible men in nineteen sixty six,
(15:15):
sixty percent of them took some sort of action to
gain a deferment. A lot of them rushed off to
get married because initially there was a marriage deferment. A
lot of them went to college that maybe weren't too
keen on it because there was a college deferment. There
were medical deferments. They were certainly wealthy kids who had
their parents pay their way out of the war with
(15:36):
things like medical deferments. There were conscientious objector deferments, like
one hundred and seventy thousand of those people having kids
like they could. They sort of started moving the goalpost
a little bit with the marriage and kids thing, because
at first it was like if you're married or not going,
But then they're like, actually we need to marry you guys,
maybe if you just don't have kids. So guys started
(15:56):
having kids so long way of saying they needed they
needed infantrymen on the front line. Another way to avoid
it was obviously joining something like the National Guard or
the Coast Guard.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, because then you could be like, the Coast Guard
is almost certainly not going to Vietnam. I'll join the
Coast Guard so I can serve and help out, but
I'm not going to be shipped off to Vietnam. Some
people also just fled the country, went to Canada. Sweden
was another place where what are called draft dodgers ran
off to. So yeah, there were a lot of people,
(16:27):
particularly middle class and hire who were just basically not
having to go fight in Vietnam. Right. And the other
reason why they needed people, or the basic reason why
they needed a bunch of people all of a sudden,
or fighting men, I should say, on the front lines,
is because in nineteen sixty six, the US sent combat
(16:47):
troops to the ground in Vietnam, in South Vietnam. To
that point, the US had been nothing but advisors and trainers.
And then there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident where
a Navy ship was fired upon. That kind of brought
the US into the war and we started like doing
firebombing raids. And then finally they were like, we need
infantry men. And that's when they really needed a bunch
(17:11):
of people to go fight in Vietnam. And that's when
Project one hundred thousand was like, yeah, let's let's do
this because we need to.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, And i' mean I didn't even look it up,
but I imagine were they trying to get one hundred
thousand soldiers. Was that that number per year? Oh, per year? Okay,
because they ended up getting far more than that they did.
They were officially active with this project from October first,
sixty six through the end of the year seventy one,
so about five years. And there were early critics of
(17:39):
this you know, official program as well, and a lot
of them, you know, kind of makes sense, but a
lot of them early on were civil rights leaders. There
was a congressman named Adam Clayton Powell who said, this
is genocide for poor black Americans. It's nothing more than
killing off human beings that are not members of the elite.
But nevertheless they pushed on.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yeah. I mean, the very fact that these these men
came from high levels of poverty and had learning disabilities
in a lot of cases meant that they were not
going to get any kind of college deferment. They were
almost certainly not in college, and even if they were,
they weren't doing a good enough job to get a deferment.
And then secondly, national guards, almost to a state were
(18:21):
still segregated, so if you were black, you couldn't go
join the National Guard and not be shipped off to Vietnam.
So these were really vulnerable population of people that they
tapped into with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, and they called these guys the New Standards recruits
Capital and Capital S and most of those New Standards
guys were sent to Vietnam. Out of those guys, about
half of them served in combat roles. And this is
what that looked like.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. I think there were a total of three hundred
and fifty four thousand men who were admitted in that time.
Ninety one percent hadn't met the previous minimum i CUE requirements,
and the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which
measured intelligence among other things, was thirteen point six, which
meant that the New Standards men had an IQ average
(19:12):
around seventy five, whereas for all recruits the average was
IQ of about one hundred. And that's the average IQ.
I saw that seventy is the cutoff the beginning of
mild cognitive disabilities. So if seventy five is the average,
that means there were people with real cognitive disabilities who
were in this three hundred and fifty four thousand men
(19:34):
who were part of Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah. Forty eight percent of those guys were from the
South compared to twenty eight percent of the total recruits,
and thirty eight percent were non white, when minorities at
the time made up just about ten percent overall.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Right, so you can imagine that these men who didn't
meet the minimum requirements that had previously been met, some
of them couldn't even meet these new lowered requirements, and
so recruiters stepped in and did some really shady stuff
to get people into this project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Shoot, yeah, recruiters. I mean they can say whatever they
want because they're not you know, you can't go back
and say, oh, well, my recruiter said I wasn't supposed
to go to the front line. That just doesn't fly.
So they could say whatever they want. They could say,
you're not going to go to the front line. Maybe
you won't even go to Vietnam. You may be you know,
you're going to get really great job training and set
(20:31):
you up great for later in life after you get
out of the army. Their job is to recruit you,
not to be held to anything that they say.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So wrong, man, especially when you're dealing with people with
cognitive disabilities, you know, for sure, especially people who are illiterate,
and some of them were illiterate, so the recruiters would
bring in ringers, people they paid to take the tests
for the qualification tests for these men who were the
new standards men, and they I mean that's just fraud,
(21:03):
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, for sure, they were you know, once they got
to basic training, they were bullied. They were obviously the
object of ire from their you know, drill sergeants and
stuff like that, but they were also bullied you know,
physically and you know, emotionally within their you know, platoons,
and they didn't have any understanding a lot of times
(21:25):
of even what was going on when this is happening.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, that writer Hamilton Gregory recounted the story of one
recruit who couldn't tell you what state he was from,
didn't know his left from his right, wasn't aware that
the US was at war. I mean, like really profoundly
cognitively challenged men in some cases who had no business
being in the military. Not just because they were potentially
(21:51):
in danger or most certainly in danger in a lot
of cases, but they also posed a danger to other
people in their platoon as well because they didn't know
what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, for sure, they did have the special training companies
set up like you know McNamara had envisioned, you know
from the tip from those Marines, but a lot of times,
you know, that didn't work. And even when they failed
to get through basic training, they would just recycle them
back through until they pass or just say you passed.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah. Those recruiters also they used something called administrative acceptance,
that's what it was, where they were given the power
to say, I think you're flunking this test on purpose,
so you're actually going to be admitted anyway. They could
use that to assign or to get these cognitively challenged
men into the army, basically saying like I think you're
(22:39):
smarter than your test reflects, right, So there was just
no way that they weren't going to make it into
the army and then through basic training, and I mean
once they got through basic training, I think you said
half or more of them were shipped off to Vietnam,
and I think the majority of them ended up on
the front lines. And the statistics about what happened to
(23:02):
these men in Vietnam are just shocking, especially when you
compare them to the statistics for just the military of
the Army as a whole.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, four hundred and seventy eight of them were killed
in Vietnam, which was a fatality rate three times higher
than your average soldier. Thirteen hundred those were killed by
mines in booby traps, because a lot of times they
were like, just put one of those guys up front
and if they step on the land mine, then it's
no big loss for us. Twenty thousand of them were injured,
(23:34):
including five hundred amputees, which is again at a higher
rate than other gis.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, I think I saw like fifty something thousand people
were killed. Americans were killed in Vietnam, so like the
new standards men made up like ten percent of that, which, yeah,
I mean, that's just crazy. There are also like a
lot of horror stories about these poor guys and just
what happened to them over there. There was one who
(24:03):
Hamilton Gregory wrote about he would change the names of
these men, and he changed one of their names to Jerry.
And Jerry was on night guard duty at his posts
in Vietnam, and he was told that if he saw
anybody coming up to the fort that he was to
say halt and tell them to say who they were,
(24:24):
to identify themselves right, and even this basic order, Jerry
couldn't follow it because when he saw somebody moving in
the jungle, he just started opening fire and it turned
out it was an officer from his camp and he
killed them. He accidentally killed this officer because he just
started shooting because he didn't know how to follow orders.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know why guys like you and I aren't fit
for the military. Why because you had a hard time
coming with the word order. Yeah, what's it called with that? Sara?
Jealous about the thing he wants us to do.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, the instruction. But like anger instruction, anng re instruction.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I think that's the definition of orders, an angry instruction.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I think that too.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
They also and this is you know, it gets even
sadder new Standardsmen were referred for psychiatric evaluation ten times
as frequently as other troops. And you know, they were
obviously going through a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression,
extreme agitation, and some of them frequently attempted suicide or
you know when a wall or attack their filler soldiers,
(25:28):
which all of a sudden you're in the stockade. You're
getting a conviction and a dishonorable discharge, which we're going
to talk more about.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, that was a big issue. But I mean I
saw the a wall thing described as like, I mean, imagine,
if everybody's really mean to you, beats you up, and
you just don't understand why, of course you're going to
want to get away from it. If you just can't
make sense of that, heads or tails, right, So a wall,
I mean there was a pretty good reason for a
lot of these guys to go a wall. And again,
(25:58):
I think Private piles experience in basic training was like
pretty true to life for what happened to some of
these guys. And you know, Private Pile chose kill and
then die himself rather than a wall, but a lot
of them chose a wall instead.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
What a movie?
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, man, that movie is just amazing.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
We're talking about The Full Metal Jacket. By the way,
just in case people are like, what movie?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yes, so good, good call man.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
The Great Stanley Kubrick. Should we take our second break?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think we should.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yes, all right, We'll be right back and finish up
with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So I said, there are a lot of horror stories
and there are a plenty for the McNamara boys or
Project one hundred thousand men. What's much harder to find
are positive stories, like hopeful stories. I could find two,
but it turned out they were actually the same guy.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, this isn't a silver lining situation.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
No, definitely not. But the guy his name was Mike Sanchez,
not his real name, and he had two different experiences
while he was in Vietnam, and both of them were
because he was essentially adopted by his commanding officers at
both of his posts.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, which I mean, that's still not a silver lining,
but at least there were some compassionate officers who took
these guys under their wing and were like, I'm going
to try and see that this kid doesn't go home
in a pine box. So thankful for that obviously. But
one of the things that happened was a soldier like this,
(28:06):
and you know, apparently it happened to others. Is there
they were given assignments sort of under the wing of
that officer, like maybe be their driver. And in this case,
this guy was assigned to drive an officer but couldn't
drive and didn't have the capacity to learn how to drive,
so that instead of just you know, sticking him back
on the front line, this officer drove himself and just
had this guy sit next to him in the passenger seat.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah. So I mean, like, that's really taking a soldier
under your wing, Like, yeah, that is just straight up
protecting him. That was after That was the second part
of Mike Sanchez's stint in Vietnam. The first part of it,
he actually distinguished himself in battle. And this is actually
pretty similar to Forrest Gump if you think about it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, I think this might have been directly inspired by that.
That was my feeling.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Okay, So Mike Sanchez when he first got to Vietnam,
his first commanding officer also took him under his wing
to protect him and was like, you have no business
being here. I'm going to see to it that you
make it out of here alive. And Mike Sanchez was
the kind of guy who just if you were nice
to him, if you were kind to him, if you
treated him with respect, he would he would loyal to
(29:17):
you to the end, like you just captured his heart.
And that happened with his first commanding officer. He felt
deeply loyal to them, and they ended up in a firefight.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Together, right, Yeah, and kind of just like out of
the movie Forrest Gump. The officer ended up in big trouble.
Mike couldn't find him. Everyone said he's back there, he
got hit, but no one was going back to get him.
So that's what this guy did. He ran back, ran back,
you know, foregoing his own safety, called out for him,
(29:47):
found him wounded he couldn't move, and carried him to
safety through some serious, you know, bullet fire and was
got the Silver Star for that action.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, isn't that cool?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
It's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, Mike Santez, he's just one of those rare, hopeful
or nice stories. He actually went on to become a barber,
which was his dream because his brother was a barber,
so he got to go work with them after the army.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, and again, don't bother googling because his name is
not Mike Sanchez.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
No, but you can find an account of this by
the second CEO who he was the driver for. His
name was Jim Bracewell. He wrote an account about Mike Sanchez.
It's worth reading, for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
There was another one. This is from Dave Rus. One
of these guys, his name was Elmer. I don't know
if that's his real name or not in this case
but he was apparently just a real had a real
talent for keeping things super clean and orderly, and he
was assigned his assignment was to clean a sick bay
on a big navy ship, and he may not have
(30:48):
understood like what sterill meant and things like that, but
he really knew how to get stuff done and keep
the place clean and sterile. And he apparently had a
pretty rare positive experience, and that everyone loved this guy
and everyone thought he did a great job. And that's
sort of like, that's sort of what I was thinking earlier,
(31:08):
is you know, they knew so little about different intelligences
and things back then, and they probably could have found
a lot of roles that might have been suitable for
some of these guys. Instead, they were just like, we
want warm bodies on the front line because they're basically expendable.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, I mean, like basically booby trap catchers essentially.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So yeah, those stories are very rare. For the most part,
the Project one hundred thousand recruits suffered greatly, and not
just in battle, but also at the hands of their
own platoon members, Like they just had it horrible all
around in a lot of cases, and so it's not
(31:49):
much of a surprise that when they were studied after
they left Vietnam and came back to the United States,
they had a much harder time than even the average
Vietnam VET who had a hard time themselves. These guys
had it even harder. They were apparently significantly more likely
to suffer PTSD compared to other vets, and that they
(32:12):
had harder time holding on a job, they had a
harder time with everyday living, and that they were more
likely to experience homelessness, drug addiction, and suicide than even
the average Vietnam VET.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, which, you know, the big thumb in the alley
in all this is it was kind of posed as now,
these guys are going to be so much better off
after serving their country in the army. YEP, They're going
to get better jobs, They're going to you know, work
themselves up into a maybe lower middle class situation when
they came from poverty in a lot of cases. And
they've studied this when compared to even when compared to
(32:49):
other low IQ Americans of the same age. Yeah, this
has been the veterans had worse financial outcomes. There was
a study in the eighties that found that ten percent
of low IQ veterans were unemployed compared with only three
percent of low IQ non veterans, and earn less money
an average of eighteen thousand dollars a year compared to
twenty four thousand dollars a year for non veterans.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yes, and so again, just to clarify, they were supposed
to have a better life, like you said, after the
war than and they had a worse life. And one reason,
a huge reason why is something you touched on earlier.
A lot of them, I think something like half of
them were discharged under conditions other than honorable. And if
(33:31):
you have anything but an honorable discharge from the military,
you are stigmatized for the rest of your life. Not
only will businesses typically not hire you, there's plenty of
businesses who won't. The military itself, like the VA, will
help you less than it will help other vets, Like
it's harder to get access to healthcare and to job
(33:53):
counseling and to all the things that somebody like a
Project one hundred thousand recruit would need after they got
back to America, that was shut down to half of
them because they were discharged dishonorably.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so shameful. There was at
least one guy that was a recruiter who I guess
felt pretty bad about taking part in this. Is a
veteran named Bill Daniel, and he, you know, put a
lot of thought into this after the war and said,
you know what I'm gonna They called it bad paper
if you got a dishonorable discharge, and so he wanted
(34:26):
to appeal as many of these bad paper discharges as
he could, and he was successful in four hundred cases.
You know, one hundred and eighty thousand of them were
dishonorably discharged, So four hundred isn't much, but you know,
this for Bill Daniel to take, you know, to spend
his time and his life getting four hundred of these
(34:47):
guys cleared is pretty admirable.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah. And then one more thing about the bad paper,
the dishonorable discharges. Apparently, among Project one hundred thousand recruits,
the main reason that that was given for their dishonorable
discharge was that they were unsuitable for the military, and
that was the case from the outset. The military brought
(35:10):
them on on purpose anyway, and then spit them out
the other end, saying you should have never been in
the military in the first place, and now here's the
stigma for you to carry around for the rest of
your life.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah. Man, So did Robert McNamara feel bad about all this,
because he's certainly somebody who, maybe more so than most
secretaries of Defense, looked back a lot on his life
and he wrote about it, and it was a memoir
called In Retrospect colon the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.
He also very famously was in the Great Aarra Morris's
(35:43):
documentary The Fog of War, where he talked at length
about things that he did right and wrong. So surely
he looked back on Project one hundred thousand is a
big mistake.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Right, No, No, I could tell by your tone that
you knew that, But he didn't. He actually did apologize
for things like his involvement in pushing for escalating the
war in Vietnam. Like he he wasn't one of those guys.
He's like, no, I never did anything wrong, You're all wrong.
He soul searched, like you said, more than most other
(36:13):
people in his position, But he never apologized for Project
one hundred thousand. And I don't know what that says
like on his face you would suspect, well, he really
was a true believer. He didn't think it was a
like he wasn't doing anything nefarious. But I mean, these
guys who were like planning and carrying out the Vietnam War,
(36:35):
you had to be nefarius to be doing that, you know.
So how much credit can you give him? How much
benefit of the doubt do you give him?
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean the vet that wrote
that book, Hamilton Gregory, he himself was like, yeah, you
know what, I think he actually had good intentions. I
think he really did think he could coach them up
into a better life and that the military would be
genuinely good for them. And then it was just a
tragic misjudgment and not just an attempt to you know,
(37:06):
supply the front lines with warm bodies. But you know
that's it may be generous. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, other people like the guy who wrote We Were Soldiers,
Joe Galloway, He was embedded with the seventh Cavalry in
battle with in Vietnam. He actually was one of the
rare civilians decorated with the Bronze Star for valor during
a battle. He was just a war. Corresponding in he
was like, no, this is unforgivable. Yeah, he essentially said
(37:31):
in a column the day after McNamara died, like just
from Project one hundred thousand, he's on his way to
hell basically.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yep. I mean that's what he said. Not I'm not
saying he's on the side hell right.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing too, but that's that's basically what
he said. Yeah, and I think a lot of people
agree with him for that too. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I got nothing else? Looking forward to moving on to
more positive stories.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah. Who was the person that suggested it?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
David Bryant's mom.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Thanks David Bryant's mom. We appreciate that that was a
good idea. I'm glad we learned about it. I'm glad
we could tell everybody else about it because it's not
a very well known part of American history. Totally, Chuck said, totally.
He just triggered listener mail, this.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Is about R Shorty. Can you not have a name? Hi? Guys,
my second time emailing. Just listened to can you Not
Have a Name and had to email about a most
unusual name I've come across in my fifty plus years
of working with the public, thirty in the restaurant industry,
sixteen doing vacation rules, and now four and a half
years owning a flower shop. Nice About seven or eight
(38:43):
years ago, a customer came in of Asian descent and
gave me his credit card that showed me his surname
as Why Why. I commented, I said, what an unusual
last name, and he asked if he was if it
was a common Asian name, and he said, actually, my
last name is only Why. But American Express does not
accept the last name composed of just one letter, so
(39:03):
I had to add the second why well, just to
get the credit card. Also, my sister and I are
both baby boomers, and we were not given middle names,
so we could take our maiden name as our middle
name once we got married and not have to drop
that middle name.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Oh I never thought about that.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, worked for my sister, but I'm still single and
looking for a man with a short last name.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
What's her name?
Speaker 1 (39:25):
So this is Jane Trahanofski, who is the owner of
Levon's Florals in Newport Beach, California. And I even went
to the website. It's like a lovely flower shop business
and so you know, pop in and see Jane. If
you you're a boomer with a short last name.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, you could do a lot worse than going to
Newport Beach for a day or two. Totally well, thanks
a lot, Jane. We appreciate that. We love anecdotes and
stories about stuff that have to do with episodes we've
recently recorded, and if you have one of those, you
can talk to us via email. Send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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