Air Force officials had also considered the problem of command responsibility in the months before submitting their outline plan. As early as December 1962, Under Secretary Joseph V. Charyk admitted the possibility of confusion over what the policy of base commanders should be concerning off-base segregation. He proposed that the staff consider certain "minimum" actions, including "mandatory evaluation of all officers concerning their knowledge of this program and the extent to which they have complied with the policy of anti-discrimination."[22-26] Secretary Zuckert discussed Charyk's proposal with his assistants on 23 January 1963. It was also considered by McNamara, who then passed it to the other services, calling on them to develop similar programs.[22-27] Finally, Air Force officials discussed command responsibility in preparing their critique of Gesell Committee recommendations, and Secretary Zuckert informed Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul that "the responsibility for this [the Air Force's anti-discrimination] program will be clearly designated down to base level."[22-28] Despite this attention, the subject of specific command responsibility was not clearly delineated in the Air Force's outline plan.
Paul ignored the critical differences in the services' outline plans when he approved all three without distinction on 13 September.[29] Alfred Fitt later explained why the Department had not insisted the services adopt the committee's specific recommendations on command responsibility. Commenting on the committee's call for the appointment of a special officer at each base to transmit black servicemen's grievances to base commanders, Fitt acknowledged that most Negroes were reluctant to complain, but said the services were aware of this reluctance and had already devised means to overcome it. Problems in communication, he pointed out, were leadership problems, and commanders must be left free to find their own method of learning about conditions in their commands. As for the committee's suggestion that equal opportunity initiatives in the local community be made a consideration in the promotion of the commander, the Defense Department had temporized. Such initiatives, Fitt explained, might be considered part of the commander's total performance, but it should never be the governing factor in determining advancement.[22-30]
Yet the principle of command responsibility was not completely ignored, for Paul made his approval of the plans contingent on several additional service actions. Each service had to prepare for commanders an instruction manual dealing with the discharge of their equal opportunity responsibilities, develop an equal opportunity information program for the periodic orientation of all personnel, and institute some method of insuring that all new commanders promptly reviewed equal opportunity programs applicable to their commands. The secretary also set deadlines for putting the plans into effect. The preparation of these comprehensive regulations and manuals, however, took much longer than expected, a delay, Fitt admitted, that slowed equal opportunity progress to some extent.[22-31] In fact, it was not until January 1965 that the last of the basic service regulations on equal opportunity was published.[22-32]
There were several reasons for the delay. The first was the protracted congressional debate over the civil rights bill. Some service officials strongly supported the stand that off-base complaints of black servicemen were chiefly the concern of the Justice Department. On a more practical level, however, the Department of Defense was reluctant to issue new directives while legislation bearing directly on discrimination affecting servicemen was being formulated. Accepting these arguments, Paul postponed the services' submission of new regulations and manuals until the act assumed final form.
The delayed publication of the service regulations could also be blamed in part on the confusion that surrounded the announcement of a new Defense policy on attendance at segregated meetings. The issue arose in early 1964 when Fitt discovered some defense employees accepting invitations to participate in segregated affairs while others refused on the basis of the secretary's equal opportunity directives. Inconsistency on such a delicate subject disturbed the civil rights deputy. The services had fortuitously avoided several potentially embarrassing incidents when officials were invited to attend segregated functions, and Fitt warned Paul that "if we don't erect a better safeguard than sheer chance, we're bound somewhere, sometime soon to look foolish and insensitive."[22-33] He wanted McNamara to issue a policy statement on the subject, admittedly a difficult task because it would be hard to write and would require White House clearance that might not be forthcoming. For the short run Fitt wanted to deal with the problem at a regular staff meeting where he could discuss the matter and coordinate his strategy without the delay of publishing new regulations.
As it turned out, anxiety over White House approval proved groundless. "The President has on numerous occasions made clear his view that Federal officials should not participate in segregated meetings," White House Counsel Lee C. White informed all department and agency heads, and he suggested that steps be taken in each department to inform all employees.[22-34] The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus R. Vance, complied on 7 July by issuing a memorandum to the services prohibiting participation in segregated meetings. Adding to the text prepared in the White House, he ordered that this prohibition be incorporated in regulations then being prepared, a move that necessitated additional staffing of the developing equal opportunity regulations.[22-35]
Objections to the prohibition were forthcoming. Continuing on a tack he had pursued for several years, the Air Force Deputy Special Assistant for Manpower, Personnel, and Organization, James P. Goode, objected to the application of the Vance memorandum to base commanders. These men had to maintain good relations with community leaders, he argued, and good relations were best fostered by the commander's joining local community organizations such as the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, which were often segregated. These civic and social organizations offered an effective forum for publicizing the objectives of the Department of Defense, and to forbid the commander's participation because of segregation would seriously reduce his local influence. Goode wanted the order "clarified" to exclude local community organizations from its coverage on the grounds that including them would be "detrimental to the best interests of all military personnel and their dependents and would result in a corresponding reduction in military effectiveness."[22-36] The Defense Department would have nothing to do with the idea. Such an exception to the rule, the civil rights deputy declared, would not constitute a clarification, but rather a nullification of the order. The Air Force request was rejected.[22-37]
The confusion surrounding the publication of service regulations suggested that without firm and comprehensive direction from the Office of the Secretary of Defense the services would never develop effective or uniform programs. Service officials argued that commanders had always been allowed to execute racial policy without specific instructions. They feared popular reaction to forceful regulations, and, in truth, they were already being subjected to congressional criticism over minor provisions of the Gesell Committee's report. Even the innocuous suggestion that officers be appointed to channel black servicemen's complaints was met with charges of "snooping" and "gestapo" tactics.[22-38]
Although both the Gesell Committee and Secretary McNamara had made clear that careful direction was necessary, the manpower office of the Department of Defense temporized. Instead of issuing detailed guidelines to the services that outlined their responsibilities for enforcing the provision of the secretary's equal opportunity directive, instead of demanding a strict accounting from commanders of their execution of these responsibilities, Paul asked the services for outline plans and then indiscriminately approved these plans even when they passed over real accountability in favor of vaguely stated principles. The result was a lengthy period of bureaucratic confusion. Protected by the lack of specific instructions the services went through an Alfonse-Gaston routine, each politely refraining from commitment to substantial measures while waiting to see how far the others would go.[22-39]