edy was behind the
whole thing; "a tragic state of affairs," he said, if the Justice
Department was directing "the missions of the Military Establishment."
Congressman Hebert found yet another villain in the piece. Adam
Yarmolinsky, whom he incorrectly identified as the author of the
McNamara directive, had, Hebert accused, "one objective in mind--with
an almost sataniclike zeal--the forced integration of every facet of
the American way of life, using the full power of the Department of
Defense to bring about this change."[21-73] In line with these (p. 551)
suspicions, some legislators reported that the secretary's new civil
rights deputy, Alfred B. Fitt, was circulating among southern
segregationist businessmen with, in Senator Barry M. Goldwater's
words, "a dossier gleaned from Internal Revenue reports." Senator
Stennis suspected that the Secretary of Defense had come under the
influence of "obscure men," and he warned against their revolutionary
strategy: "It had been apparent for some time that the more extreme
exponents of revolutionary civil rights action have wanted to use the
military in a posture of leadership to bring about desegregation
outside the boundaries of military bases."[21-74]

[Footnote 21-73: Quotes are from ibid., pp. 13778,
13780, 14345-46, 14349, 14351, 14352.]

[Footnote 21-74: Ibid., Senate, 31 Jul 63, pp. 13779,
13783.]

The congressional critics had a strategy of their own. They would try
to persuade McNamara to rescind or modify his directive, and, failing
that, they would try to change the new defense policy by law. Senators
Goldwater, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, and Robert C. Byrd of
West Virginia, along with some of their constituents, debated with
McNamara while no less than the chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, Carl Vinson of Georgia, introduced a bill aimed at
outlawing all integration activity by military officers.[21-75] Their
campaign came to naught because the new policy had its own supporters
in Congress,[21-76] and the great public outcry against the directive,
so ardently courted by its congressional opponents, failed to
materialize. Judging by the press, the public showed little interest
in the Gesell Committee's report and comment on the secretary's
directive was regional, with much of it coming from the southern
press. Certainly the effect of the directive could not compare