Project 100,000

Project 100,000 (also McNamara's 100,000) was a 1960s program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to recruit soldiers that would previously have been below military mental or medical standards. While the project was considered part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, it has been an object of controversy.

Background
At various times in its history the United States military has recruited people that measured below specific mental and medical standards. Those who scored in certain lower percentiles of mental aptitude tests were admitted into service during World War II, though this experience led to a legal floor of IQ 80 to enlist. Another instance occurred in the 1980s due to a misnormed Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

Project
Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 during American involvement in the Vietnam War and ended in December 1971. Considered part of Johnson's Great Society by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as "New Standards Men" (or pejoratively the Moron Corps) and had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10-30 percentile range. The number of soldiers reportedly recruited through the program varies, from more than 320,000 to 354,000, which included both volunteers and conscripts (54% to 46%). Although entrance requirements were loosened, all the Project 100,000 men were sent through the normal training processes with other recruits, and performance standards were thus the same for everyone.

Project 100,000 soldiers included those unable to speak English, of low aptitude, with physical impairments, and those who were too short or too tall, among other categories. They also included a special category - a control group of acceptable soldiers. Each of the different categories was identified in their official personnel records with a large red letter stamped on the first page of their enlistment contract. Human resources offices had to prepare reports on them, to be submitted monthly to Department of the Army. The monthly reports did not include the identity of the soldiers.

Aftermath
Regarding the consequences of the program, a 1989 study sponsored by the DoD concluded that: "Comparisons between Project 100,000 participants and their nonveteran peers showed that, in terms of employment status, educational achievement, and income, nonveterans appeared better off. Veterans were more likely to be unemployed and to have a significantly lower level of education. Income differences ranged from $5,000-$7,000, in favor of nonveterans.  Veterans were more likely to have been divorced."

A 1995 review of book by McNamara in the Washington Monthly severely criticized the project, writing, "the program offered a one-way ticket to Vietnam, where these men fought and died in disproportionate numbers...the men of the "Moron Corps" provided the necessary cannon fodder to help evade the political horror of dropping student deferments or calling up the reserves, which were sanctuaries for the lily-white."

Project 100,000 was highlighted in a 2006 op-ed in The New York Times in which former Wesleyan assistant professor and current Tufts assistant professor Kelly M. Greenhill, writing in the context of a contemporary recruitment shortfall, concluded that "...Project 100,000 was a failed experiment. It proved to be a distraction for the military and of little benefit to the men it was created to help." As for the reasons why veterans from the project fared worse after returning to civilian life compared to non-veteran peers, Greenhill hypothesized that it might be related to the psychological consequences of combat or unpreparedness for the post-military transition.

As Seymour Hersh has reported in “My Lai: A Report on The Massacre and Its Aftermath,” Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was a reflection of the type of soldier recruited during the Project 100,000 initiative. Calley “who’d flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College…and couldn’t even read a map properly...was given command of a platoon.”