volved. For
example, the services' traditional opposition to outside interference
with the development of their personnel policies led naturally to
their opposition to any defense programs setting exact command
responsibilities or dictating strict monitoring of their racial
progress. Defense officials, respecting service attitudes, failed to
demand an exact accounting. Again, the services' natural reluctance to
court congressional criticism, a reluctance shared by McNamara and his
defense colleagues, led them all to avoid unpopular programs such as
creating ombudsmen at bases to channel black servicemen's complaints.
As one manpower official pointed out, all commanders professed their
intolerance of discrimination in their commands, yet the prospect of
any effective communication between these commanders and their
subordinates suffering such discrimination remained unlikely.[22-77]
Again defense officials, restrained by the White House from
antagonizing Congress, failed to insist upon change.

[Footnote 22-77: Memo, William C. Baldes, ODASD (CR),
for DASD (CR), 8 Jul 63, ASD (M) 291.2.]

Finally, while it was true that the services had not responded any
better to McNamara's directive than to any of several earlier and less
noteworthy calls for racial equality within the military community, it
was not true that the reason for the lack of progress lay exclusively
with the service. Against the background of the integration
achievements of the previous decade, a feeling existed among defense
officials that such on-base discrimination as remained was largely a
matter of detail. Even Fitt shared the prevailing view. "In three
years of close attention to such matters, I have observed [no] ...
great gains in on-base equality," because, he explained to his
superior, "_the basic gains were made in the 1948-1953 period_."[22-78]
It must be remembered that discrimination operating within the armed
forces was less tractable and more difficult to solve than the
patterns of segregation that had confronted the services of old or the
off-base problems confronting them in the early 1960's. The services
had reached what must have seemed to many a point of diminishing
returns in the battle against on-base discrimination, a point at which
each successive increment of effort yielded a smaller result than its
predecessor.

[Footnote 22-78: Memo, DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 2 Jul