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Central Intelligence Agency and had been accepted. In the course of his security clearance, he had volunteered information that, in his teen years, he had participated in several homosexual adventures and had experimented briefly with mild narcotics. He was advised to resign, did so, and sought out employment with the Civil Aeronautics Administration. On the basis of the uncorraborated information he had supplied earlier to the CIA, he was dismissed from the Civil Aeronautics Administration for "immoral behav ior." His case was heard before a single judge, who decided it strictly on procedural grounds, and Dew lost.

The second case was Shields v Sharp, Dudley Sharp being Secretary of the Air Force at the time. Joseph Shields was a civilian employee who headed one of the Air Force statistical units and, as such, occupied a highly professional position. This case was a miscarriage of simple justice. Shields was accused of having participated in several homosexual episodes with a Navy commander a full 12 years before the charges were brought. He denied all charges fully, demanded to face his accuser who was nowhere to be found, and offered a plethora of rebutting testimony, all to no avail. (Investigators did finally dig up the commander in Paris, but he "declined" to return to this country for the trial.) Shields went on to petition the Supreme Court as his final action, but again on procedural grounds, and the petition was denied.

Then came Clackum v United States. Fannie Mae Clackum was a WAF who felt she had not been done right by when the Air Force gave her a discharge "under conditions other than honorable" in 1952 for alleged homosexual activities. The Court of Claims agreed fully with the young lady, and generously awarded her claim. The action of the Air Force was notoriously lacking in even rudimentary elements of fair play in this case, and provoked the court to exclaim: "The Government defends the remarkable arrangement under its regulation and its operation in the instant case, on the ground that it is necessary in the interest of an efficient military establishment for our national defense. We see nothing. in this argument...it is unthinkable that the Air Force should have the raw power, without respect for even the most elementary notions of due process of law, to load the plaintiff down with penalties. It is late in the day to argue that everything that the executives of the armed forces do in connection with the discharge of soldiers is beyond the reach of judicial scrutiny... 1961-On the heels of the Clackum case came Murray v Ünited States, also in the Court of Claims. Murray was an Air Force master sergeant who in 1954 was given a general discharge under honorable conditions for homosexual conduct. He admitted this conduct, but argued that since the episodes had taken place during previous enlistments, they had no bearing on mattachine REVIEW

his current enlistment. To the great surprise of the Air Force, the Court agreed with him, and decided that "the type of discharge to be issued in this case was to be determined solely by plaintiff's military record during his current enlistment."

Then, toward the end of 1961 after the Clackum and Murray victories in the Court of Claims, in the U.S. Court of Appeals came a set-back in Williams v Zuckert. Zuckert was Secretary of the Air Force; Daniel Williams was an employee of the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. Williams was entrapped while in the privacy of his own home into making homosexual advances toward an enlisted member of the Air Force Office of Special Intelligence who had won Williams' confidence. This case was very maladroitly handled in court, and would have been won in a different court, with different counsel.

1962-For evidence of pure perversity on the part of the Department of the Army, the case of Robert L. Scott v United States is hard to beat. It reminds one of the situation in an earlier Court of Claims decision where the Court fumed: "The picture which emerges seems to be that of a reckless and unjust decision, made by a subordinate officer, but having been made, stubbornly adhered to until the prospect of having to defend it in court loomed up. Only then did the more responsible officials of the Army and Government put their minds on the problem. They had had, in the meantime, other things to do, but, by contrast, the plaintiff had been deprived of his job and his pay." The Scott case is still pending, but from indications in the Trial Commissioner's Report filed in March, he's won it hands down. Scott was only one of a number of employees at an Army Ordnance Depot accused of sexual irregularities, centering mostly around the versatility of a certain female employee. Oddly enough, although dismissal charges were initially filed against her, they were later withdrawn for no discernible reason. Scott, along with others was dismissed for "unsuitability because of immoral conduct," and he was the only employee who contested his dismissal. The transcript of the testimony, in the case offers. vivid evidence of the extremes to which military investigators will go to try to prove their case. The record is rife with night-time, glaring-light kind of interrogation, profanity and personal indignity, mental coercion, and all the other tricks that the investigators keep in their kit bags for special Sex cases.

So much for history. That will give you a slight idea of the way the system is working. Please bear in mind that these cases represent only a minute fraction of the dismissals, forced resignations, and military discharges which took place during this period, for the great majority of these removals never see court action. But also bear in mind, that the charge has al-