ore civil leaders and realtors on behalf of open
housing.[23-85]

[Footnote 23-84: Memos, ASD (M) for Dep Under Secys of
Military Departments, 22 Apr and 17 Jul 67, sub:
Equal Opportunity for Military Personnel in Rental
of Off-Base Housing. For the effect of this order
on an individual commander, see article by Charles
Hunter in Charleston, South Carolina, _Post_,
August 30, 1967. See also Interv, author with
Bennett, 13 Dec 73.]

[Footnote 23-85: Intervs, author with McNamara, 11 May
72, and Jordan, 7 Jan 72.]

The department's national housing census confirmed the gloomy (p. 604)
statistics projected from earlier studies indicating that housing
discrimination was widespread and intractable and damaging to
servicemen's morale.[23-86] McNamara decided that local commanders
"were not going to involve themselves," and for the first time since
sanctions were mentioned in his equal opportunity directive some four
years before, he decided to use them in a discrimination case. The
Secretary of Defense himself, not the local commander nor the service
secretaries, made the decision: housing not opened to _all_ servicemen
would be closed to _all_ servicemen.[23-87] Aware of the controversy
accompanying such action, the secretary's legal counsel prepared a
justification. Predictably, the department's lawyer argued that
sanctions against discrimination in off-base housing were an extension
of the commander's traditional right to forbid commerce with
establishments whose policies adversely affected the health or morals
of his men. Acutely conscious of the lack of federal legislation
barring housing discrimination, Vance and his legal associates were
careful to distinguish between an owner's legal right to choose his
tenants and the commander's power to impose a military order on his
men.

[Footnote 23-86: McNamara, _The Essence of Security_,
p. 126.]

[Footnote 23-87: Interv, author with McNamara, 11 May
72.]

Although committed to a nationwide imposition of sanctions on housing
if necessary, the Secretary of Defense hoped that the example of a few
cases would be sufficient to break the intransigence of offending
landlords; certainly a successful test case