The Draft: Conscripting a Chief

With a $38,000 salary, a chauffeured limousine and a huge office on F Street —not to mention a fiefdom of almost 10,000 deskmen—the job sounds like a bureaucrat's dream. Recently, though, it seemed as if no one in the country was willing to take the burdensome post mired in controversy. It was fitting that the Nixon Administration finally had to conscript a man to head the Selective Service System.

First time around, in fact, Curtis Tarr turned the job down flat. "I told them," he informed reporters, "that if it was satisfactory to them I had rather stay" in the Pentagon....