Before You Enlist Video - http://beforeyouenlist.org
Researching Pop Culture and Militarism - https://nnomy.org/popcultureandmilitarism/
If you have been Harassed by a Military Recruiter - https://www.afsc.org/resource/military-recruiter-abuse-hotline
War: Turning now to Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Christian Science Monitor
WHAT IS IN THIS KIT? - https://nnomy.org/backtoschoolkit/
Click through to find out
Religion and militarism - https://nnomy.org/religionandmilitarism/
‘A Poison in the System’: Military Sexual Assault - New York Times
Change your Mind?
Talk to a Counselor at the GI Rights Hotline
Ask that your child's information is denied to Military Recruiters
And monitor that this request is honored.
Military Recruiters and Programs Target marginalized communities for recruits...
..and the high schools in those same communities

 Militarization of our Schools

The Pentagon is taking over our poorer public schools. This is the reality for disadvantaged youth.

 

What we can do

Corporate/conservative alliances threaten Democracy . Progressives have an important role to play.

 Why does NNOMY matter?

Most are blind or indifferent to the problem.
A few strive to protect our democracy.

National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS)

Introduction

For the first time in decades, a Federal commission has asked for public input on whether draft registration should be ended or extended to women as well as men; whether there should be a draft of people with medical, foreign language, cyber/IT, STEM, or other special skills regardless of age or gender; whether a draft would be "feasible" (it wouldn't, because so many people haven't registered with the Selective Service System, have moved without notifying the SSS, and/or would resist if drafted); and related issues.

The deadline for comments was 30 September 2018, but on 1 October 2018 the Commission posted a new FAQ on its Web site stating that, "The Commission continues to accept comments from the public on its website and by email and mail. We will accept comments in 2019." You can submit comments though this Web form or by e-mail to "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.", mentioning "Docket No. 05-2018-01" in the subject line of your e-mail message.

Despite some problems, this is by far your best and most open opportunity in decades to tell the Federal government to end draft registration.

Read on for more about the Commission, talking points for testimony and/or written submissions to the Commission, and information about the Commission's public and closed-door activities obtained through Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

What is happening with this Commission? Why is it happening now? What can we do about it?

Why a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service?

In late 2015, Commander-In-Chief Obama ordered all military assignments opened to women. That order undercut, and probably eliminated, the legal argument that had been used since 1980 to justify requiring only men, but not women, to register for the draft.

That gave members of Congress three options, none of which most of them wanted to take responsibility for, in the run-up to the 2016 elections:

  1. Do nothing and wait for courts to invalidate the requirement for men to register for the draft;
  2. Repeal the requirement for men to register, and abolish the Selective Service System (and risk being attacked as peaceniks); or
  3. Extend the requirement to register for the draft to women as well as men (and risk being attacked by both feminists and sexists).

(A possible fourth option preferred by some pro-war, pro-draft sexists would be to rescind the decision opening all military combat assignments to women.)

After elaborate bi-partisan machinations, Congress chose Door Number One ("Do Nothing"). Perhaps members of Congress thought that would allow them to point the finger of "blame" at the courts, and away from themselves, if draft registration was ended. More likely they just wanted to punt this political hot potato past the 2016 elections into the Clinton or Trump Administration.

To provide further political cover for delaying its decision, Congress voted in late 2016 to establish a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service "to conduct a review of the military selective service process (commonly referred to as 'the draft')."

The Commission is required to solicit and consider comments from the public. The official comment period ended 30 September 2018, but the Chair of the Commission and other Commission staff have said that the Commission may, in its discretion, still consider comments received through until 31 December 2019.

Who are the members of the Commission?

The act establishing the Commission (the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017) was signed into law by President Obama on 23 December 2016. In accordance with this law, 3 of the 11 members of the Commission were appointed by President Obama during his final days in office. The other 8 members were appointed by members of Congress, one each by the House and Senate majority and minority leaders and the ranking majority and minority party members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Appointments to the Commission were supposed to be made within 90 days of its creation, but it appears that many were not and were therefore invalid. It's unclear whether there was confusion, uncertainty, or internal disagreement regarding these appointments, whether it proved difficult to find people able and willing to serve on the Commission, or whether making appointments fell through the cracks in the confusion of the Presidential transition period. Seats on the Commission that were not filled by the 90-day deadline were, by law, supposed to remain vacant for the life of the Commission. It's unclear whether the members of Congress responsible for appointing members of the Commission simply ignored the law, whether appointments were made in secret long before they were announced, or whether appointments were back-dated to pretend to comply with the law. Two years later later, a provision was enacted as part of the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2019 that changed the official "establishment date" of the Commission to 19 September 2017, presumably in an attempt to retroactively legitimate the late appointments to the Commission. I mentioned the obvious invalidity of the late appointments to the General Counsel of the Commission at its meeting in Boston on May 2018. The provision in the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2019 changing the "establishment date" of the Commission was added to the pending bill during a closed-door markup session by the Senate Armed Services Committee on 23-24 May 2018.

Individual members of the Commission may have different agendas, just as those appointing them may have had.

All three of President Obama's appointees to the Commission are women military veterans, one of them transgendered, suggesting that Obama's primary goal for his appointments was to make sure that whatever the Commission recommends, it won't recommend rolling back the opening of all military combat assignments to women.

The appointments to the Commission by Congressional leaders have a mix of backgrounds in the military and in civilian "service" including the Peace Corps.

Some members of the Commission have spoken and written publicly about how they see the role of the Commission (one member cited favorably to the example of "service" set by that inspiring leader, Richard Nixon). But they have done so as individuals, not on behalf of the Commission as a whole. We don't know what has been discussed or what differences of opinion exist between members of the Commission.

How does the Commission operate? What has happened at its meetings and events?

I attended four of the Commission's publicly advertised meetings in 2018, and have talked to opponents of the draft who attended others. All of these events have been small and informal, with perhaps 50 people in attendance at each, including Commission staff and invited witnesses and guests, mainly from voluntary "service" organizations. There has been no way to sign up in advance to testify. The first hour of each 2-hour "public" session has been devoted to presentations by Commission members and a panel of invited witnesses. For the second hour, members of the audience have been called on by show of hands to speak for up to 2 minutes each. So far as I know, everyone who showed up and wanted to testify at one of these events has gotten a chance to speak, except at the public event in Los Angeles where the Chair of the Commission called an end to the event rather than take an additional 10-15 minutes to hear from everyone who had raised their hand to speak.

To date, only a few of the Commission's meetings and events have been publicly advertised or disclosed in advance, and details of locations and times have been disclosed only at the last minute. The Commission has claimed that "These meetings allowed folks to assemble from all over the country," but in fact they were held on too short notice for that to be feasible for those who didn't happen to live near one of the meeting locations. The Commission has adopted a (secret) research plan for its staff, and has solicited and received numerous closed-door briefings.

Although the law creating the Commission provides that Commission meetings are to be open to the public unless a member of the Commission objects, or classified information is to be discussed, the redacted minutes I have received in response to my FOIA requests reveal that Commission members have unanimously agreed to close almost all of their meetings to the public and the press. Even Commission staff members have been excluded from many of the Commission's meetings.

The Commission solicited comments from the public from February through September 2018. According to redacted minutes of one of the Commission's meetings in August 2018, "the Commission had received over 1,300 comments through May 2018". Later, at a September 2018 event in Los Angeles, I delivered a petition to the Commission with 25,497 signatures: "Don't Force Women to Register for the Draft, Dump the Draft Entirely".

According to an FAQ posted on the Commission's Web site on 1 October 2018, "The Commission has held public meetings throughout 2018 and will continue to do so in 2019. Public meetings are held across the country and ... allow members of the public to address comments and questions to commissioners and panelists. Public hearings are more formal events. The Commission will be holding public hearings in 2019. Public hearings will involve testimony from experts on various issues to help inform and vet recommendations that the Commission may consider as it generates its final report."

What is the Commission likely to recommend?

Sexist pro-war opponents of drafting women or allowing women in combat have argued that the Commission was created and appointed in order to provide political cover for the expansion of draft registration to women. But that's not at all clear, especially given the way the debate in Congress in 2016 on whether to expand draft registration to women crossed party lines. It may be easier for the Commission to agree to recommend a compulsory "national service" program with both military and civilian components than to recommend expanding a purely military draft registration program to women, or ending draft registration entirely.

The positions advocated for by the Bipartisan Policy Center -- a think tank incluidng mnay former members of Congress and Federal officials that reflects some of the the bipartisan Congressional "consensus" that led to the creation of the NCMNPS -- may give a clue to the Commissioners' thinking. In March 2017, the BPC released a lengthy report on military personnel issues -- probably begun in 2016 before the NCMNPS was created -- recommending that draft registration be extended to women instead of men. By October 2018, a former member of Congress and BPC fellow was calling (possibly as a stalking horse for the NCMNPS or some of its members) for a compulsory national service requirement, not just registration with the Selective service System, for all young people.

In an interview in October 2018, the Chair of the Commission said:

The final report ... will say, yes or no, we need the Selective Service System and, yes or no, we recommend women register.... We've also looked at potential alternative databases, where individuals can be identified without having to maintain the Selective Service registration system.... The bigger question that we want to answer first is whether or not we even need the Selective Service System... Or does the Selective Service System itself need to be morphed into something that's more universal, like a Serve America system, where you can register for any... service, whether it's military, national, public...

The way we're planning the interim report is kind of three broad sections: The state of play, what we've heard and what are some the potential solutions. The interim report will not necessarily indicate where the commission is leaning, but will list out solutions because then we want to take that through the hearing process and receive formal input on what some of the solutions may be. We don't want to pre-select or predispose a solution or recommendation until we have the opportunity to get public input.

Most likely the interim report will be structured to (a) test the public reaction to policy options including those being most actively considered for the Commission's recommnedations, and (b) shape public debate by giving a limited menu of options between which to choose, and factors on which to base that choice -- not including the likelihood of resistance or the difficulty of enforcement of compulsory "service", issues on whihc the Commission has yet to conduct research or invite testimony.

The emphasis in the publicity for the Commission's public events and its selection of invited speakers at those events has been almost entirely on voluntary rather than compulsory service. While there has been some mention of possible "modifications" to the Selective Service System, there has been little mention of the specific "modifications" that the Commission has been directed to study: registration of women for a possible draft, and conscription of men and women of all ages with special skills needed by the military, including, but not limited to, health care, foreign language, cyber/IT, and STEM skills.

There's no mention on the Commission's Web site of a possible special-skills draft or the occupations that Congress specifically suggested might be targeted for it. The comment cards distributed at the Commission's public events ask what could be done to "increase participation in military... service by individuals with critical skills," but don't mention that the Commission is required to consider and report on the desirability and feasibility of conscription as a means of "increasing participation" by such individuals, or the specific categories of skills Congress directed the Commission to consider including in such a special-skills draft. None of the panelists invited to speak at the Commission's public events in 2018 have been invited to discuss conscription of women or people with special skills. Even when the Commision posted an article on Medium about military roles for people with STEM skills, it didn;t mention the possibiity of conscripting them.

Some of the people who have been invited to speak as panelists at the Commission's public events haven't been told that the Commission is tasked by Congress with studying the draft and compulsory service. Several have told us privately that they felt used by the Commission. The agendas and one-sided speaker lists appear to have been planned to create the fake appearance of a "consensus" in favor of requiring military or civilian "national service" from all young people.

Despite claims that, "The Commission seeks to learn more about why people serve and why people may choose not to serve," aland that "The Commission is committed to... Listening to the public and learn[ing] from those who serve and do not serve," all of the invited witnesses at all of the Commission's public events throughout the country in 2018 were invited as promoters of voluntarily and/or compulsory service. Nobody has been invited to speak to the Commission about the reasons people might not serve, or might not want to serve, in the military.

An informal report on its first year and of work in Novembver 2018, the Commisison claimed that, "the Commission... met with experts and stakeholders who study and work across all parts of our mandate." But that's not true: there's still been no engegement by the Commision with any experts on, or stakeholders from, the resistance to conscription, or the issues that will be faced in trying to enfoirce an expanced draft registration or compulsory service mandate.

Some of those reasons were discussed in testimony to the Commission at its meeting in Los Angeles from the Santa Barbara Meeting of Friends (Quakers): "The barriers to military service may include serving in undeclared, unconstitutional military actions, loss of freedom, loss of educational opportunities, health, family, personal necessities, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Moral Injury, Military Sexual Assault, and violation of personal life philosophies."

The Commission has tried to create a stage-managed and incomplete narrative about compulsory military service that focus exclusively on the aspect of "service" and elides those of "compulsion" and "militarism". This was perhaps most clear at the Commission's public event in Memphis, which was held at the National Civil Rights Museum on the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Commission tried to claim for itself the legacy of "service" of Dr. King, despite his support for nonviolent direct action against the draft and his advocacy of conscientious objection to military "service":

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. [sustained applause] I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. [applause] Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. [applause] These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

The focus of the Commission's interest appears to be a compulsory "national service" requirement with both military and civilian components. The Commission has solicited and received some closed-door briefings on the draft, draft registration, and compulsory "service", but none of these appear to have addressed the issues of compliance, enforcement, or whether a draft or compulsory service would be "feasible".

The fragmentary records I have received from the Commission in response to my FOIA request show that the Commission has solicited and received written and verbal (closed-door) briefings from invited witnesses and reviewed published articles concerning the draft, draft registration, a special skills draft, and compulsory national "service".

One of the Commission's meetings included an hour-long "structured deliberation on mandatory national service". There's no record of any comparable time devoted by the Commission to any of the other policy oiptions it is required to study report on, such as expanding draft registration to young women as well as young men, or attempting to implement a draft for women and men of all ages with certain special skills.

The author of an article entitled, "Why We Still Need the Draft", which was distributed to the members of the Commission, was invited to give a closed-door briefing in which she, "argued for preserving the selective service system in case of mass mobilization, and urged the Commission to consider ways in which the nation might conscript individuals with unique skills, such as financial analysts or software engineers." During another closed-door briefing by a retired military officer who was invited to tell the Commission why he supports reinstating the draft, members of the Commission asked about how to "sell" the idea of military conscription to a reluctant American public. But there's been little or no mention of this aspect of the Commission's private agenda in the publicity for its public events.

Non of the academic experts consulted by the Commision has had any expertise in the history of draft resistance, compliance, or enforcement, and nobody raised these issues in the Commission's closed-door roundtable with invited academic "thought leaders".

At the Commission's October 2018 meeting, its first after the conclusion of its public consultation, the Commission held a closed-door "panel on mandatory national service". According to an article published later by one of the invited participants, a Libertarian anti-draft law professor, "The panel consisted of several legal scholars speaking with divergent viewpoints on the issue, which we understood as focusing on mandatory civilian service, not just the military kind..... I was told that the Commission does not currently plan to publicize an audio or transcript of the panel."

Just after that meeting, an op-ed was published in The Hill which which appears to be a trial balloon for at least some of the Commissioners who support a compulsory national service program for all young people. It describes a proposal remarkably similar to the compulsory national service legislation proposed (unsuccessfully) by Rep. Pete McCloskey in the late 1970's and early 1980s. (After his release from prison, draft resister David Harris ran for Congress against McCloskey in 1976.)

The law establishing the Commission required several the heads of several Cabinet-level departments including the Department of Justice (DOJ) to submit reports and recommendations to inform the Commission in its deliberations. Presumably, the Department of Justice was included becuase it is responsible for enforcing (or choosing not to enforce) the current draft registration law, and would be responsible for enforcement of any new conscription or compulsory service law. However, rather than discussing the DOJ's responsibility for enforcing criminal laws, the DOJ report to the NCMNPS (pp. 96-97 of this PDF) stated that, "The Department's primary interaction with the military selective service process is in ascertaining registration among covered individuals who are selected for employment with DOJ."

The DOJ reported to the Commission that, "During FY 2015, 146,997 names of suspected violators were provided to the DOJ." But the DOJ said nothing about what, if any, action it took to investigate or prosecute any of those people, none of whom were actually indicted and, so far as we can tell, none of whom were even investigated. The DOJ also said nothing about any projections of likely noncompliance or any plans, preparations, or budget estimate for enforcing a draft or compulsory service scheme. The DOJ doesn't want to talk about whether a draft or compulsory service scheme would be enforceable -- an issue it has ignored.

In spite of the low profile given to the issues of draft registration, the draft, and compulsory "service" in the Commission's publicity about its public events, witnesses at the Commission events I have attended have included people who have refused to register for the draft (including at least 4 of the 20 people who were prosecuted for publicly refusing to register in the 1980s, before mass noncompliance forced the government to abandon prosecution of nonregistrants), people who had refused induction into the military during the US war in Vietnam, people who have done civilian alternative service under government supervision as conscientious objectors to military "service", military veterans and military family members against war and conscription, and other supporters of draft resistance.

The Commission was established 23 December 2016 through provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2017. The Commission was originally required to report back to the President and Congress with its recommendations within 30 months of its establishment, i.e. by 23 June 2019. Two years later, in August 2018, Congress included a provision in the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2019 that changed the official "establishment date" of the Commission from December 2016 to September 2017. This had the effect of changing the deadline for the Commission's report from June 2019 to March 2020 -- at which time its recommendations can either be ignored, used, or abused to score points in campaigns for the 2020 elections.

The Commissioners are temporary part-time Federal employees of the NCMNPS. They have been meeting monthly since September 2017, typically for a 2-3 day session either at the Pentagon, the Commission's offices nearby in Arlington, VA, or at other locations throughout the country in conjunction with site visits.

Closed meetings of the Commission at its offices in Arlington are scheduled for 18-19 October 2018, 15-16 November 2018, and 13-14 December 2018.

At their September 2017 meeting, according to the redacted version of the minutes released in response to my FOIA request, "Commissioners decided in favor of the Commission issuing an interim report in approximately twelve months." Twelve months have passed, but no interim report has been released. Redacted minutes of a closed-door meeting of the Commission in June 2018 referred to "the interim report the Commission intends to prepare for publication in early 2019." On 1 October 2018, the Commission posted a new FAQ on its Web site, saying that, "The Commission intends to release an interim report in early 2019 and the final report by March 2020." In an interview published a few days later, the Chair of the Commission said that, "The panel plans to issue an interim report laying out ... issues and
potential recommendations in January [1919], with a final report to follow in March 2020."

If the Commission is to issue an interim report in January 2019, that interim report will probably need to be be finalized for approval at the Commission meeting scheduled for 13-14 December 2018.

What should we say to this Commission?

The Commission wants to know what we think about the draft, draft registration, and compulsory national "service".

I think the most important thing for the Commission to hear is that people subject to draft registration, and people who would be subject to a draft (including women, older health care workers and people with other specialized skills who might be subject to an expanded draft) would refuse to go, and that other people would support them in their resistance.

Whether or not the Commission agrees with the reasons people don't and won't comply with registration or a draft, the Commission needs to be brought to realize that a draft is not "feasible" because so many people would not comply, and because noncompliance would render it unenforceable. The Commission can and should recommend that Congress enact legislation to end draft registration and abolish the Selective Service System.

That's the lesson of the last 38 years of failure of draft registration. We need to teach that lesson to the National Commission on Service.

The Commission needs to hear from men who didn't register for the draft when they were supposed to do so, men who registered but have moved without telling the Selective Service System their new address, men who are registered but would refuse to go if they were drafted, parents who would tear up any induction order that came for their son or daughter (shifting the risk of prosecution from their children to themselves), and women who would refuse to sign up if draft registration is extended to women.

The Commission is also supposed to report on, "the feasibility... of modifying the military selective service process in order to obtain for military, national, and public service individuals with skills (such as medical, dental, and nursing skills, language skills, cyber skills, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills) for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex." So the Commission needs to hear from people in all of these occupational categories who would refuse to be drafted. The Commission held one closed-door meeting with STEM students at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology in Memphis. But this was an invitation-only meeting, disclosed only after the fact. The Commission's only meeting with health care workers was a "faith-Based conversation", also disclosed only after the fact, at the Congregational Health Network in Memphis.

To the extent that the Commission is considering some form of compulsory service, it needs to be reminded of the contradictions between compulsion or coercion and any positive notion of "service". As I said directly to the Commission in my testimony at its hearing in Denver in April 2018, "Compulsory service is, by definition, slavery." Others have made similar statements to the Commission. Teaching people to equate service with submission amounts to teaching them obedience. But we have enough people who are willing to obey orders unquestioningly. We need more people who question authority and who are willing to disobey illegal and immoral orders.

NCMNPS records released in response to my FOIA requests:

Federal advisory committees are required to deliberate in a fish bowl, but the NCMNPS was created as an "independent agency" with its members as minimally-paid part-time Federal employees, rather than an advisory committee. This allows the Commission to carry our many of its activities behind closed doors, and it appears to be intent on doing so to the maximum extent allowed by law. The Commission's records are subject to the Freedom Of Information Act, although with the usual exemptions in that law. I have made FOIA requests for the Commission's records of its meetings and events, and I plan to make follow-up requests periodically for newly-created records.

Those few meetings the Commission has chosen to designate as "public" have been open and informal, as noted above, although the extremely short notice given to the public about the locations and times of these events has made it extremely difficult for interested members of the public from outside these few sites to arrange to attend. The Commission has provided as little information as the law allows (or less than that) about all of the rest of its activities, including who it has met with behind closed doors, what briefings it has requested and received, and the research it has commissioned.

The Business Rules approved by the Commission in April 2018 provide that, "Minutes shall be made available to the public on the Commission's website to the extent such minutes or portions thereof would be releasable under the Freedom of Information Act." Although some redacted summary minutes have been released in response to my FOIA request, as posted and linked below, none of them were posted on the Commission's Web site until 1 October 2018 -- the day after the deadline for responses to the Commission's request for public comments, so that members of the public couldn't comment on what the Commission had been doing in its closed-door meetings, and the day after the last of a series of complaints I made to Commission staff about their failure to carry out the Commission's directive to make the redacted minutes available on the Commission's Web site..

The Commission has asserted that notes of Commission meetings kept by members or staff of the Commission are not "records" subject to FOIA. Contrary to guidance from the National Archives to the heads of all Federal agencies that, "Content on social media is likely a Federal record," the Commission initially asserted that none of the text, audio, or video files it has uploaded to official Commission accounts on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms were "records" subject to FOIA. The Commission has released some image files that were used to create its social media posts, but has separated them from captions or other associated text.

At one of its first meetings, in November 2017, the Commission received an extensive briefing from the Director and other senior staff of the Selective Service System. The slides from this briefing (first disclosed four months after my FOIA request, and ten months after the meeting, on 14 September 2018), include a summary (see Slide 6) of Selective Service System contingency plans for registering women for a possible military draft:

SSS contingency plans to register women for the draft

Tellingly, the budget estimate for registering women does not include any enforcement costs. There is no record of any consideration by the Commission, or any report or briefing to the Commission, with respect to enforcement or enforceability of either the current registration requirement or any expanded registration, military draft, or compulsory "service" scheme.

No Commission records have yet been disclosed regarding contingency plans for a "special skills" draft, beyond the contingency plans in place for many years for the Health Care Personnel Delivery System.

All of the recommendations to the Commission by the Department of Defense with respect to the Selective Service System were redacted from the record of the DOD briefing (see Slide 33) released to me, at the request of the Department of Defense:

redacted slide from DOD briefing

Records of other briefings provided to the Commission are still being withheld in their entirety pending "consultations" with the Department of Defense.

Records of some meetings mentioned in these files have been withheld without explanation. For example, one of the participants in an invitation-only roundtable at Harvard University on 11 May 2018 "referenced the robust discussion about mandatory national service that he had participated in with the Commission earlier in the week", according to notes taken by a member of the Commission staff. But that discussion of mandatory national service is not mentioned in the agenda or minutes for the Commission's activites that week, and no records of that discussion have been disclosed.

The Commission has claimed that pursuant to the Privacy Act, the names of those who submitted public comments to the Commission cannot be dicclosed without their permission, and that it will take the Commisison's staff more than a year, until December 2019, to redact personally indentifying information before releasing those comments. Hovever, the comment submission page on the Commission's Web site says that, "Please note that any information you provide on this comment form could be publicly disclosed." In addition, if the Commission really thought that comments submitted by the public constituted a system of records subject to the Privacy Act, the Commnision would have been required to publish a "System Of Records Notice" (SORN) in the Federal Register, which it hasn't done. Maintaining a system of records containing personal information without first publishing such a SORN would be a Federal crime on the part of the responsible Commission officials. Either Commission staff didn't really think that public comments constituted a system of records (and only made this claim up after the fact as a pretext to delay disclosing the public comments, which likely show overwhelming opposition to conscription), or they were committing what they believed was a criminal violation of the Privacy Act.

Records below are either as released by the Commission in response to my FOIA request, or from other government agencies or sources. Most of the files provided to me, as linked below, appear from internal metadata to be newly-created files imporperly subsituted for the responsive records originally created and maintained by the Commission. Other discrepancies such as missing files and redactions not supported by exemption claims are noted below. Records acknowledged by the Commission to exist, but withheld as exempted from release in response to a FOIA request, or not yet released pending consultation with other agencies, are listed below with the FOIA exemption or consultation claimed by the Commission as the basis for not (yet) having released them.

NCMNPS Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations, request, correspondence, and interim partial responses:

Legal background to the NCMNPS:

NCMNPS meetings and events:

(For convenience, I have organized these by meeting and date, bringing together information about each meeting from all available sources. The links below include records released in response to my FOIA requests; copies of testimony and written statements obtained at NCMNPS public events; independent reports, analysis and commentary on these events; and records that have been identified as responsive to my FOIA request, but not yet released, either because they have been withheld as exempt or because they are still being "processed" for release or partial release in redacted form. The Commission has posted some of its records on its own site, and others on various other sites including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Eventbrite. Other records including most of those listed below have only been disclosed in response to my FOIA request and are only available here. I've tried to link to the best available copy of each item. Note that many announcements made at the time only to selected invitees have been posted by the NCMNPS on its Web site in response to my FOIA request, months after the fact but with false and misleading backdated posting dates, so as to imply that the Commision had been more transparent at the time about its activities and plans than was actually the case. And in some of the copies of press releases that were disclosed to me, the Commission redacted the names and contact information of its "public" spokespeople!)

  1. September 2017 NCMNPS meetings (The Pentagon, Arlington, VA):
  2. October 2017 NCMNPS meetings (Commission offices, Arlington, VA):
    • October 2017 Agenda
    • October 2017 Minutes
    • Draft business rules (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
    • Presentation on Operational Support ( (withheld - FOIA Exemption 2)
    • Handout on Media Coverage of First Press Release (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
    • Short list of candidates for DRA and DGPE positions (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
  3. November 2017 NCMNPS meetings (Commission offices, Arlington, VA):
  4. December 2017 NCMNPS meetings (unspecified "offsite location", Arlington, VA):
  5. January 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Washington, DC, and Arlington, VA):
    • Public launch event (Washington, DC, 18 Januray 2018):
    • Closed meetings (Arlington, VA):
      • January 2018 Agenda
      • January 2018 Minutes
      • Presentation on Operations Support (withheld - FOIA Exemption 2)
      • Media and Message Coaching presentation (withheld - FOIA Exemption 4)
      • Launch Talking Points and top-line messaging (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
      • Ethics handout on Social Media (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
      • Draft Research Plan (withheld - FOIA Exemption 5)
  6. February 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Harrisburg and Carlisle, PA):
  7. March 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Arlington, VA):
  8. April 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Denver and Colorado Springs, CO):
  9. May 2018 NCMNPS meetings, part 1 (New England):
  10. May 2018 NCMNPS meetings, part 2 (Jacksonville, FL):
  11. June 2018 NCMNPS meetings, part 1 (Arlington, VA):
  12. June 2018 NCMNPS meetings, part 2 (Iowa):
    • Public Meeting, Vinton, IA (26 June 2018):
    • Closed meetings and site visits in Vinton and Iowa City, IA:
      • Iowa Trip agenda
      • Area Maps
      • Iowa City One pager
      • Vinton Overview
      • AmeriCorps NCCC overview
      • Meeting minutes (not released; no explanation for withholding or claim of exemption)
      • Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts (neither released nor claimed as exempt; see FOIA response letter)
      • Briefer - NCCC round table discussion: The impact of national service on rural communities (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - Lunch with NCCC corps members (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - NCCC round table discussion: Making national service efficient (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - Community organizations meeting (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - Civilian worker meeting (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - National Guard readiness center (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - NCCC panel on the impact of service (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - NCCC panel on efficiencies (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Civilian worker (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Iowa Air National Guard members (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Iowa Air National Guard recruiters (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Community Organizations meeting (pending FOIA processing)
      • Hotel info (withheld - FOIA exemption 2)
      • Staff contact sheet (withheld - FOIA exemption 2)
      • Eight research memoranda for commissioner discussion (withheld - FOIA exemption 5)
      • MFR - Internal Structured Discussion (withheld - FOIA exemption 5)
  13. June 2018 NCMNPS meetings, part 3 (Chicago and North Chicago, IL):
    • Public Meeting, Chicago, IL (28 June 2018):
    • Closed meetings and site visits, Chicago and North Chicago (Selective Service System operations and data center, Naval Station Great Lakes), IL:
      • Chicago Trip Agenda
      • Chicago area map
      • Chicago city overview
      • Meeting minutes (not released; no claim of exemption or other explanation for withholding)
      • Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts (neither released nor claimed as exempt; see FOIA response letter)
      • Briefer - Business and philanthropic leaders (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - Opportunity Youth Roundtable (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - Civic learning meeting (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - SSS region 1 visit (pending FOIA processing)
      • Briefer - SSS Data management center (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - SSS Data Management (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Business and Philanthropist leaders (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - Opportunity Youth roundtable (pending FOIA processing)
      • MFR - SSS region 1 (pending FOIA processing)
      • SSS powerpoint (withheld pending consultation with the Selective Service System)
      • Hotel info (withheld - FOIA exemption 2)
      • Staff contact sheet (withheld - FOIA exemption 2)
      • Three research memoranda for commissioner discussion (withheld - FOIA exemption 5)
  14. July 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Texas)
  15. August 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Memphis, TN)
  16. September 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Southern California):
  17. October 2018 NCMNPS meetings (Arlington, VA):

Scheduled future NCMNPS events:

Other submissions to the NCMNPS in response to request for public comments:

Records of NCMNPS postings and activity on social media:

  1. Posts by the NCMNPS on Twitter (.csv generated 19 September 2018; note that all photos are missing)
  2. Text of posts by the NCMNPS on Facebook (HTML generated 20 September 2018; note that photos, audio, and video are missing and all hyperlinks are broken)
  3. Video posed by the NCMNPS on Facebook Live
  4. Photos posted by the NCMNPS to Instagram

NCMNPS official posts on the Web:

 

Source: https://hasbrouck.org/draft/commission.html

Revised: 14-10-2019

###

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