More Than an Accent

South Carolina's Democratic Senator J. Strom Thurmond looked across the witness table at Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and asked: "What is the soh'ce of yo' policy?" Sylvester, who is from Montclair, N.J., was puzzled: "I beg your pardon?" Repeated Thurmond: "What is the soh'ce?" "The what?" "The soh'ce--s-o-u-r-c-e." "Oh, source," "Yes, soh'ce. Ah speak with a Southern accent."

Dark Hint. Before the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Subcommittee hearings on military "muzzling" (TIME, Feb. 2) had gone much farther last week, it was apparent that Strom Thurmond and Arthur Sylvester would never really understand each other--and that the trouble was more than a matter of accent. As the Senate's foremost critic of the Defense and State Departments' policy of reviewing public statements by military leaders, Thurmond was trying to prove that censorship has been capricious--and worse. There has been, he darkly hinted, a "secret, defeatist" policy within the State Department to prevent the military from speaking out against Communism.

For his part, Sylvester was defending, and trying to explain, Administration review policies. The purpose of making statements by military men conform to national policy, he said, is "to ensure that this country speaks not from the weakness of contradictory voices but from the strength of one." To the charge of capriciousness, he replied: "We can issue and have issued guidelines to define areas of established defense and national policy. But it is impossible to cover every case that might arise. There is no formula by which a speech can be reviewed. No computer can be programmed to clear one phrase and delete another. The review process must depend on the judgment and common sense of the men who deal with these problems every day."

Without Change. When the subcommittee tried to find out which of 14 Pentagon censors had made which changes in which speeches, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara balked. "I do not see how finding that a particular military officer in a particular case exercised a mistaken judgment would advance the purposes of the inquiry," he said in a memorandum. He reminded the Senators that he had given them the names of all the reviewers and supplied background information on each, but insisted: "These individuals are acting under policies for which my senior associates and I must assume responsibility." While the Senators met privately with him to try to break the impasse, McNamara indicated that he would claim the legal right of executive privilege, if necessary, to shield his censors.

As for the military leaders who appeared last week before the subcommittee, they seemed troubled not at all by censorship. Said Chief of Naval Operations George Anderson: "I personally do not believe that in my own attempts to speak out on the subject of Communism have I been unduly restricted." Said the Marine Corps' outspoken Commandant, General David M. Shoup: "Not one of my speeches has been changed, even slightly, by the Department of Defense. My officers inform me that very few of their speeches have been changed in substance." For that matter, Shoup could not understand why military men should want to go around making belligerent anti-Communist speeches. Said he: "I don't think that you have to hate to be a good fighter. We fight any enemy the President designates. I've made more than 100 speeches, and I've never mentioned the word Communism."

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