would strengthen the hand
of the commanders in their negotiations with community leaders.
Metropolitan Washington was the obvious area for the first test case,
and the Maryland General Assembly further focused attention on that
region when on 28 February 1967 it called on the Secretary of Defense
to end housing discrimination for all military personnel in the
state.[23-88] On the night of 21 June, Gerhard Gesell received an
unexpected phone call: there would be something in tomorrow's paper,
Robert McNamara told him, that should be especially interesting to the
judge.[23-89] And there was, indeed, on the front page. As of 1 July,
all military personnel would be forbidden to lease or rent housing in
any segregated apartment building or trailer court within a
three-and-a-half-mile radius of Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.
Citing the special housing problems of servicemen returning from
Vietnam, McNamara pointed out that in the Andrews area of Maryland
less than 3 percent of some 22,000 local apartment units were open to
black servicemen. The Andrews situation, he declared, was causing
problems "detrimental to the morale and welfare of the majority of our
Negro military families and thus to the operational effectiveness of
the base."[23-90]

[Footnote 23-88: Joint Resolution 47 of the Maryland
General Assembly as cited in Memo, SecDef for
Secretaries of Military Departments, 22 Jun 67,
sub: Unsatisfactory Housing of Negro Military
Families Living Off-Post in the Andrews Air Force
Base Area, copy in CMH. See also New York _Times_,
May 26, 1967, and Yarmolinsky, _The Military
Establishment_, p. 352.]

[Footnote 23-89: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov
74.]

[Footnote 23-90: Memo, SecDef for Secretaries of
Military Departments, 22 Jun 67, sub:
Unsatisfactory Housing of Negro Military Families
Living Off-Post in the Andrews Air Force Base Area,
SD files. The quotation is from McNamara's News
Conference, 22 June 1967, as quoted in the New York
_Times_, June 23, 1967.]

The secretary's rhetoric, skillfully justifying sanctions in (p. 605)
terms of military efficiency and elementary fairness for retu