None May Be Free From Draft, Selective Service Director Claims

"I can predict that with our projected quotas for 1970, we'll hit 365."

So said Col. Paul F. Feeney, deputy director of Massachusetts Selective Service, who claimed that he could "make one heck of a case" that state drafts boards would call the last numbers of the recent lottery during the coming year.

Feeney contends that student deferments and participation in National Guard and other short-term duty programs will remove so many men from the draft pool that every number will be called before the available slots for draftees are filled. Speaking at Springfield College, he called the lottery "a cruel deception" and "a sugar coating on the deal we've got."

"We're not taking all young men, which is the only fair thing to do. We're going to sift them first, and all of a sudden the bottom will drop out," Feeney said.

An assistant general counsel to draft director Lewis B. Hershey will arrive in Boston on Monday to investigate Feeney's charges, a spokesman for Selective Service National Headquarters reported yesterday. "Those are some pretty strong statements," the spokesman said.

Selective Service contends that many people have been misled by Defense Department estimates for 1970, which anticipate that 850,000 men will be eligible to serve but only 250,000 will be affected by the draft. This, however is a Defense Department estimate, not a Selective Service guideline.

Selective Service emphasizes that the size of the draft call is contingent upon such factors as the number of deferments and exemptions and the size of American armed commitment, none of which are now calculable.

A recent Selective Service bulletin states that "It is still impossible for Selective Service to attempt to calibrate all of the contingencies which might arise, and over which the Selective Service System has no control, that might alter the original Department of Defense estimate with respect to the various levels of vulnerability for the numbers that were drawn in the lottery."

"It was because of these unknowns that some of our state directors felt that they should caution their registrants that they could not rely with complete certainty on any estimate made at the time of the drawing," the bulletin added.