Nel 1966, con la rapida escalation del coinvolgimento americano nella guerra del Vietnam, il presidente Lyndon B. Johnson dovette affrontare un grosso problema: come potevano le forze armate statunitensi radunare abbastanza uomini da mandare in guerra?
Il segretario alla difesa di Johnson, Robert McNamara, ebbe un’altra idea: ampliare drasticamente il bacino degli americani ammissibili alla leva abbassando gli standard per l’ingresso nelle forze armate. Il programma fu chiamato “Progetto 100.000” e promosso dal presidente Johnson come uno strumento di lotta alla povertà.

Promoted as a response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as “New Standards Men” (or, pejoratively, as the “Moron Corps”). They had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10th-30th percentile range.The number of soldiers reportedly recruited through the program varies, from more than 320,000 to 354,000, which included both voluntary enlistees and draftees (54% and 46%, respectively). Entrance requirements were loosened, but all the Project 100,000 men were sent through normal training programs with other recruits, and performance standards thus were the same for everyone. The US Army received 71% of recruits, followed by 10% by the Marines, 10% by the Navy, and 9% by the Air Force.

I reclutatori militari, sostenuti da un’aggressiva campagna di pubbliche relazioni, ebbero il compito di persuadere gli abitanti dei quartieri poveri ad arruolarsi, promettendo ingannevolmente in molti casi che le nuove reclute non sarebbero state mandate in ruoli di combattimento.

Military recruiters, backed by an aggressive public relations campaign (one army ad in Hot Rod Magazine proclaimed, “Vietnam: Hot, Wet, and Muddy—Here’s the Place to Make a Man!”), had great success persuading men from poor urban neighborhoods to join Project 100,000. Glossy brochures with exotic locations and glamorous jobs portrayed the military—even with a war going at full tilt—as a good career choice. The pressure on recruiters to sign up more “volunteers” for the program was intense. Many resorted to using “ringers” to take tests to gain a passing score for enough recruits to meet quotas.

Typically, military recruiters would get the names of low–scoring men who were now acceptable to the armed forces and visit them to steer them toward three-year hitches. The recruiters would tell them that if they waited for the draft, they would serve only two years but almost certainly end up in an infantry platoon in Vietnam. But if they signed up for three years, they would be assigned to a noncombat job. There was, however, an important catch: The military didn’t have to honor any oral promise made by a recruiter. A recruiter might promise prospects a job like helicopter maintenance, but after basic training—when it was time to go to a specialized school—the military could decide that their test scores weren’t high enough to qualify for helicopter maintenance. Or if they did qualify but flunked the training, they could be transferred to infantry. Thousands of three-year Project 100,000 “volunteers” ended up in infantry this way.

Il programma terminò nel 1971 e fu ritenuto “disastroso” dagli ufficiali americani: il tasso di mortalità degli arruolati fu tre volte superiore rispetto a quello della fanteria regolare. Alla fine del conflitto più della metà ricevette un congedo non onorevole, perlopiù per offese minori, che rendeva difficile trovare lavoro dopo la guerra.

Most of the 354,000 men and women brought into military service through Project 100,000 went to Vietnam, and about half of those who went to Vietnam were assigned to combat units. All told, 5,478 of them died while in the military, most of them in combat. Their fatality rate was three times that of other GIs.

When it was time for Project 100,000 men to leave the military, many of them received a heavy blow. Slightly over half of them—180,000—were separated with discharges “under conditions other than honorable,” a stigma that made it hard to get good jobs because many employers would not hire veterans who failed to produce a certificate of honorable discharge. They were often barred from veterans’ benefits such as health care, housing assistance, and employment counseling. Some of them became chronically homeless and troubled.

Inoltre, il programma riguardò in modo sproporzionato giovani neri poveri.

Regardless of culpability, the results of the project—not its intentions—doomed McNamara’s Boys, who were, on average, just 20 years old and disproportionately Black. “They never got the training that military service seemed to promise,” Baskir and Strauss concluded. “They were the last to be promoted and the first to be sent to Vietnam. They saw more than their share of combat and got more than their share of bad discharges. Many ended up with greater difficulties in civilian society than when they started. For them, it was an ironic and tragic conclusion to a program that promised special treatment and a brighter future, and denied both.”

Ne parla anche BigThink in un articolo intitolato “Project 100,000: The Vietnam War’s cruel experiment on American soldiers”