Shameful History: Project 100,000

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. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:10Speaker 02

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:19Josh Clark?

  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.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Another entry in the shameful American history bucket. Do want to thank a listener for this idea, by the way. This came from David Bryant, no relation.

• 1:41Josh Clark?

  Are you sure?

• 1:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't have any, the only David in my family is my cousin and he is a Mills.

• 1:49Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  No David Bryant. 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 100,000. And we also should shout out a writer, Hamilton Gregory, who is a Vietnam vet and journalist and who wrote a book, McNamara Spali, colon, The Use of Low IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, which I guess sort of gives away what we're talking about.

• 2:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because the name of the project, Project 100,000 certainly doesn't.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  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.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's ridiculously derogatory. Even when this was going on in the mid 60s to the very early 70s, it was still quite derogatory. It hadn't been like a medical term since like the 19 teens. So it was just mean all around. And that's pretty appropriate because this whole idea, this project, which was a wartime effort to essentially lower the standards for military recruitment so that people with low enough IQs that they were either borderline or mildly cognitively challenged would be acceptable into military service. And it depends on who you ask what the purpose was. We'll go into both of them.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  But for the most part, it seems like it probably was as as bad as it seems on its face, that it wasn't an actual like, good idea ever among anybody.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a great setup for a change for us, you know? Usually people are like, what is this even you're talking about?

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And how'd you guys confuse me already? We're only in minute two.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. 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 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 time when it was, I mean, was it exclusively men?

• 4:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, World War II for sure, at least for combat roles. I think there were other roles for women. But as far as combat's concerned, yes, definitely.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so they, 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.

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  And everyone else is in combat. So once they had the specialists assigned, they're like, hey, we don't have enough, you know, like frontline dudes.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  No. So they had a choice. They could either say, um, some of you specialists, we may have, um, 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, um, the army or infantry. So they would automatically be combat soldiers.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. And one guy said, but my name is Radar.

• 5:13Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  And he said, well, just get over to the MASH unit then.

• 5:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Man, that show was not funny to me.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Is, is this the first time I'm hearing this?

• 5:23Josh Clark?

  I don't know. Maybe.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  You're not a MASH fan?

• 5:25Josh Clark?

  No.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  I thought you loved MASH.

• 5:28Josh Clark?

  No. I remember like hanging out with my dad while 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.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Wow. That's funny. Cause the other day, uh, R I P Loretta Swit, who just passed away, Hotliff Tullahan.

• 5:45Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  I was remarking on Paula Tompkins 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 12 year old kid watching a movie about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  On Thursdays, five times a day, every other day of the week, four times a day. I ate it up. I thought it was the best thing ever.

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  Well, I liked the movie.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 6:10Josh Clark?

  Why? Do you dislike the movie, but like this show?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  No. I mean, the movie is just a great Robert Altman. So I certainly love it, but, uh, I just think it's, it's interesting. Yeah. I thought you were a MASH guy. I never knew.

• 6:22Josh Clark?

  I mean, once they got rid of Trapper John, I was like, I'm done with even giving this a chance.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  But this is what I like about our friendship is we're still learning about each other after all these years.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And we can still get along despite our views on MASH.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Uh, this is gonna take me a minute, but it'll be fine.

• 6:37Josh Clark?

  So we left off basically before this little tangent that the army had a decision either lower their standards to allow war combat troops in or get some of those specialists off to the front lines. And they were like, we'll just go ahead and lower our standards.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they did that. They lowered the intelligence standards and they were pretty surprised. They were 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 in the 1940s, we knew so much less about

• 7:11Speaker 03

  mental challenges 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 got a lot of that. And we thought it would be a little more like guys like this.

• 7:25Josh Clark?

  Right. So I think they they managed to get 350,000 men at least. They kind of opened the floodgates during World War Two. This is just between 42 and 45. But the caveat to this is that the military provided remedial education classes, like 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?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, or tried to at least.

• 8:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they did their best. And then after World War Two ended and Hitler was dead, dead, dead, the army was like, well, the military in general said, we're going to re raise our standards back to where they were before.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And then they needed to make the movie MASH and then later the TV show. So they started the Korean War.

• 8:28Josh Clark?

  Well, wait, the Rosenbergs started the Korean War, don't forget.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  That's right. 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, you know, get the manpower we need the right way. And so.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Part of that, you know, led into what led to Project 100,000.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  That wasn't all, though.

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  No, that wasn't all. There was this, I don't know how much faith to put in this. So let's just, let's just present it as if it's real and we'll let the listeners decide.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:13Josh Clark?

  But there is 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 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, or because they're not intelligent enough to pass the basic intelligence standards. I think he found like 30% of American men weren't fit for military service because of those standards.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  So he said, okay, rather than like 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 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, who can then go on to become middle class and so on and so forth. And the cycle of poverty will be broken. That's what Daniel Patrick Moynihan was saying.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  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, 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 best idea.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  We will kind of hit some early critics because there were some, but people were kind of steaming ahead. You know, full steam ahead with this, steaming ahead, full steam ahead.

• 11:18Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. That's really steamy.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  That's full steam.

• 11:22Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah. Kennedy said in 1963, our today's military rejects include tomorrow's are hardcore unemployed.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  You know, it's funny. I have written down on my thing.

• 11:34Josh Clark?

  Do you really?

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  That was the worst Kennedy anyone's ever done, but that was my best.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  I know we're all frightened and horny. Uh, and the LBJ for his part, can I do LBJ?

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, please do.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  He was a country guy, right?

• 11:48Josh Clark?

  Uh, Texan.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. We'll teach them 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 in a gate.

• 11:59Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That was more a gentleman dressed in a seersucker suit at the Kentucky Derby, I think.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  All right.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Either way.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  BJ did that.

• 12:08Josh Clark?

  Hey, it was better than my Kennedy. How about that?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Uh, it was fine.

• 12:13Josh Clark?

  Uh, so you mentioned that we were going to kind of run into some of the critics early to this idea. And the, the first vocal critics were the military leaders themselves. They were like, mm, this is no, we don't want to do this. We, we're not, the army's not to rehabilitate and educate people who got left behind in school. Do something else with them. Uh, there were other people who were like, yeah, there's this thing called Job Corps. Have you heard of Job Corps? That's what that's for. Don't send them to the military. So it wasn't like a, a home run. Once it left the Oval Office and started to spread outward on Capitol Hill.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, but that's where it did go because in 1966 is when Robert McNamara formally announced Project 100,000. Uh, but this was like I mentioned, uh, not only the US military tried to do this before, but McNamara himself had tried this before. Uh, two years earlier in 64, he proposed something called the Special Training Enlistment Program or the STEP Program. Uh, and this was not full Project 100,000. It was a little more like. Hey, we got like 40,000 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.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  And this step program was intended to kind of correct those guys up quickly into getting, 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 16 million bucks. So Congress said, no, we're not going to pay for that.

• 13:51Josh Clark?

  No. And one other thing, you kind of mentioned it is that they were going to get remedial instruction like the soldiers in World War II got, right? That was part of the program?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  That was what the 16 million was for.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Okay, so Congress said no, like you said, and McNamara is like, okay, whatever. I'm just going to move on. I have other things to do right now, like agitate for escalation in Vietnam. And in 1966, apparently he was chatting with some Marines and they made mention that they had actually set up their own little special 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 Eureka Lightbulb moment, basically saying like, I'm going to steal that 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 the regular training budget for this kind of thing.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, Private Pile is based on this Project 100,000 we're about to talk about, like 100%.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I feel like Forrest Gump has got to be inspired by this, even though that was never a part of the movie that at least made it into the movie. I don't know about the original script, if he had any kind of special training or anything.

• 15:14Josh Clark?

  I don't know, or the book by Winston Groom, it's possible that he ran across that in the research, but not just Forrest, but Bubba as well.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Good point.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  So I say we take a break and come back and talk about how Project 100,000 actually kind of made it.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 15:45Josh Clark?

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• 19:04Speaker 03

  All right. So where we left off is McNamara found a workaround from the official step program to basically an unofficial step program. And in 1966, they found that they really needed this because they had a a pretty dire manpower situation because, well, one reason is because of the incredible amount of deferments. I saw some stats that from draft eligible men in 1966, 60% 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. There were certainly wealthy kids

• 19:47Speaker 03

  who had their parents pay their way out of the war with things like medical deferments. There were conscientious objector deferments, like 170,000 of those.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  People having kids, like they sort of started moving the goalposts a little bit with the marriage and kids thing. Um, cause at first it was like, if you're married, you're 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 having kids. So long way of saying they needed, they needed infantrymen on the front line. Uh, another way to avoid it was obviously joining something like the National Guard or the Coast Guard.

• 20:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Because then you could be like, I'm, the, 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.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:38Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, there were a lot of people, particularly middle class and higher, who were just basically not having to go fight in Vietnam. Right?

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:48Josh Clark?

  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 1966, the US sent combat troops to the ground. Um, in Vietnam, in South Vietnam. To that point, um, 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 you the US into the war and we started like doing firebombing raids. And then finally they were like, we need infantrymen. And that's when they really needed, um, a bunch of people to go fight in Vietnam. And that's when project 100,000 was like, yeah, let's, let's do this because we need to.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I'm in, I didn't even look it up, but I imagine, were they trying to get a hundred thousand soldiers? Was that that number?

• 21:37Josh Clark?

  Per year.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Oh, per year. Okay. Cause they ended up getting far more than that.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  They did.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Uh, they were officially active with this project from October 1st, 66 through the end of the year 71. So about five years. Uh, and there were early critics of this, you know, official program, uh, as well. Uh, and a lot of them, um, you know, kind of makes sense, but a lot of them early on were civil rights leaders. Uh, there was a congressman named Adam Clayton Powell, who said, this is genocide for poor black Americans. Uh, it's nothing more than killing off human beings that are not members of the elite, but nevertheless they pushed on.

• 22:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, I mean, the very fact that these, these men came from high levels of poverty and, uh, 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 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 a really vulnerable population of people that they tapped into with Project 100,000.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they called these guys New Standards recruits, capital N, 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.

• 23:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think there were a total of 354,000 men who were admitted in that time. 91% hadn't met the previous minimum IQ requirements. And the median score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which measured intelligence, among other things, was 13.6, which meant that the New Standards men had an IQ average around 75, whereas for all recruits, the average was IQ of about 100. And that's the average IQ. I saw that 70 is the cutoff, the beginning of mild cognitive disabilities. So if 75 is the average, that means there are people with real cognitive disabilities who were in this 354,000 men

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  who were part of Project 100,000.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, 48% of those guys were from the South compared to 28% of the total recruits, and 38% were non-white, when minorities at the time made up just about 10% overall.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  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 100,000 shoot.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah recruiters, I mean, they can say whatever they want because they're not, you know, you can't go back and said, oh, well, my recruiter said I wasn't supposed to go to the frontline. That just doesn't fly. So they could say whatever they want. They could say you're not going to go to the frontline. Maybe you won't even go to Vietnam. You may be, you know, you're going to get really great job training and set 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.

• 24:52Josh Clark?

  That's so wrong, man, especially when you're dealing with people with cognitive disabilities, you know?

• 24:57Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 24:58Josh Clark?

  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, these men who were the new standards men. And they, I mean, that's just fraud, you know?

• 25:18Speaker 03

  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 of even what was going on when this was happening.

• 25:41Josh Clark?

  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 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.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. They did have those 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.

• 26:31Josh Clark?

  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, um, to assign or to get these cognitively challenged men into the army. Basically saying like, I think you're smarter than, than your test reflects, right? So, um, 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, 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.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  And the statistics about what happened to these men in Vietnam are, are just shocking. Especially when you compare them to the statistics for just the, the military or the army as a whole.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, 5,478 of them were killed in Vietnam, which was a fatality rate three times higher than your average soldier. Uh, 1,300 of those were killed by mines and booby traps. Uh, because a lot of times they were like, just put one of those guys up front. And if they step on the landmine, then it's no big loss for us.

• 27:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Uh, 20,000 of them were injured, including 500 amputees, which is again, at a, at a higher rate than other GIs.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think I saw like 50 something thousand people were killed, men, Americans were killed in Vietnam. So like the new standards men made up like 10% of that, which I mean, that's just crazy. There are also like a lot of horror stories about these poor guys. Um, and just the, what happened to them over there. Uh, there was one who, um, Hamilton Gregory wrote about, he, he would change the names of these, uh, men. And he, uh, changed one of their names to Jerry and Jerry was on night guard duty at his, uh, post in, um, Vietnam. And, uh, he was told that if he saw anybody coming up to the fort, that he was to say halt and tell them to, to say who they were.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  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, uh, an officer from his camp, uh, and he killed them. He, he accidentally killed this officer because he just started shooting because he didn't know how to follow orders.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  You know why guys like you and I aren't fit for the military?

• 29:04Josh Clark?

  Why?

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Cause you had a hard time coming up with the word order.

• 29:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  What's it called with that Sarge yelling us about that thing he wants us to do?

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the the instruction, but like angry instruction.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Angry instruction. I think that's the definition of orders and angry instruction.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  I think so too.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Uh, they also, um, and this is, you know, it gets even sadder. New Standards men were referred for psychiatric evaluation 10 times as frequently as other troops.

• 29:28Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  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, went AWOL or attacked their fellow soldiers, uh, 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 in a minute.

• 29:49Josh Clark?

  That was a big, a big issue. But I mean, I saw the AWOL 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 AWOL, I mean, there was a pretty good reason for a lot of these guys to go AWOL. And again, I think Private Pyle's experience in basic training was like pretty true to life for what happened to some of these guys. And, you know, Private Pyle chose, um, kill and then die himself rather than AWOL, but a lot of them chose AWOL instead.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  What a movie.

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, man, that movie is just amazing.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  We're talking about Full Metal Jacket, by the way, just in case people are like, what movie?

• 30:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So good, good call, man.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  The Great Stanley Kubrick. Um, should we take our second break?

• 30:43Josh Clark?

  Uh, I think we should, yes.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back and finish up with Project 100,000.

• 31:02Josh Clark?

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• 31:24Josh Clark?

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• 31:40Speaker 03

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• 32:04Josh Clark?

  Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of Vivgard, Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Fgard Tigamod Alpha F-Cab, you'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 32:41Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:58Josh Clark?

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• 33:15Speaker 03

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• 33:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 33:42Speaker 03

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• 34:21Josh Clark?

  So I said there are a lot of horror stories, and there are a plenty for the McNamara Boys or Project 100,000 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.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, this isn't a silver lining situation.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  No, definitely not. But the guy, his name is 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.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  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 gonna 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, and you know, apparently it happened to others, is they were, 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 it back on the front line, this officer drove himself and just had this guy sit next to him in the passenger seat.

• 35:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, I mean, like, that's really taking a soldier under your wing. Like, 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.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Well, I think this might have been directly inspired by that. That was my feeling.

• 36:12Josh Clark?

  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 you to the end. Like, you just captured his, his heart. And that happened with his first commanding officer. He felt deeply loyal to them, and they ended up in a firefight together, right?

• 36:46Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Isn't that cool?

• 37:16Speaker 03

  It's pretty great.

• 37:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Mike Sanchez is 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.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And again, don't bother Googling because his name is not Mike Sanchez.

• 37:33Josh Clark?

  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.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  There was another one, this from Dave Ruse. 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 sickbay on a big Navy ship. And he, he may not have understood like what sterile meant and things like that, but he really knew how to get stuff done and keep the place clean and sterile. And he apparently was at 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 is, you know,

• 38:27Speaker 03

  they, they knew so little about different intelligences and things back then. And they probably could have found a lot of roles that might've been suitable for some of these guys. Instead, they were just like, we want worn bodies on the front line because they're basically expendable.

• 38:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, like basically booby trap catchers essentially.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:46Josh Clark?

  So yeah, those, those stories are very rare. For the most part, the Project 100,000 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 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

• 39:28Josh Clark?

  compared to other vets and that they 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.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, which, you know, the, the, 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.

• 39:54Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  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, uh, when compared to, even when compared to other low IQ Americans of the same age.

• 40:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is big.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  The veterans had worse financial outcomes. Uh, there was a study in the eighties that found that 10% of low IQ veterans were unemployed compared with only 3% of low IQ non-veterans and earn less money, an average of $18,000 a year compared to $24,000 a year for non-veterans.

• 40:28Josh Clark?

  Yes. And so again, just to, 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 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, um, will help you less than it will help other vets.

• 41:08Josh Clark?

  Like it's harder to get access to healthcare and to job counseling and to all the things that somebody like a project 100,000 recruit would need after they got back to America, that was shut down to half of them because they were discharged dishonorably.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's just so shameful. Uh, there was at least one guy, there was a recruiter who I guess felt pretty bad about taking part in this. Uh, it was 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, uh, they called it bad paper. If you got a dishonorable discharge. And so he wanted to appeal as many of these bad paper discharges as he could. And he was successful in, uh, 400 cases. Uh, you know, 180,000 of them were dishonorably discharged. So 400 isn't much, but you know, this for Bill Daniel to take, you know, to spend his time and his life, um, getting 400 of these guys cleared is pretty admirable.

• 42:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then one more thing about the bad paper, the dishonorable discharge is apparently among Project 100,000 recruits, the, the main reason that they, 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 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.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:40Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  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 he, and there was a memoir called, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." He also very famously was in the great Errol Morris's 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 100,000 as a big mistake, right?

• 43:10Josh Clark?

  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, in pushing for escalating the war in Vietnam. Like he, he wasn't one of those guys who's like, no, I never did anything wrong. You're all wrong. He, he soul searched, like you said, more than most other people in his position, but he never apologized for Project 100,000. And I don't know what that says. On, like on its face, you would suspect, well, he really was a true believer. He didn't think it was a, like, he, he wasn't doing anything nefarious. But I mean, these guys who were like planning and carrying out the Vietnam War,

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  you had to be nefarious to be doing that, you know? So how much credit can you give him? How much, how much benefit of the doubt do you give him?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the, 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 that it was just a tragic misjudgment and not just to attempt to, you know, supply the front lines with foreign bodies, but you know, that's, that may be generous. I don't know.

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, other people like the guy who wrote, We Were Soldiers, Joe Galloway, he was embedded with the 7th Calvary 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 correspondent and he was like, no, this is unforgivable. He essentially said in a column the day after McNamara died, like just from Project 100,000, he's on his way to hell, basically.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  Yep. I mean, that's what he said, not, I'm not saying he's on his way to hell.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. And I'm paraphrasing too, but that's, that's basically what he said.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:07Josh Clark?

  And I think a lot of people agree with him for that, too. You got anything else?

• 45:12Speaker 03

  I got nothing else. Looking forward to moving on to more positive stories.

• 45:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Who was the person that suggested it?

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Uh, David Bryant's mom.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  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.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 45:34Josh Clark?

  Chuck said totally. He just triggered listener mail.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  This is about our 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 50-plus years of working with the public. 30 in the restaurant industry, 16 doing vacation rentals, and now four and a half years owning a flower shop.

• 46:00Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  About seven or eight years ago, a customer came in of Asian descent and gave me his credit card that showed me his surname as Y-Y. 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 Y. But American Express does not accept a last name composed of just one letter. So I had to add the second Y 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.

• 46:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, I never thought about that.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it worked for my sister, but I'm still single and looking for a man with a short last name.

• 46:43Josh Clark?

  What's her name?

• 46:44Speaker 03

  So this is Jane Trahanowski, who is 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're a boomer with a short last name.

• 47:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you could do a lot worse than going to Newport Beach for a day or two.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 47:06Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 47:39Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 48:11Josh Clark?

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 48:25Speaker 06

  Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.