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Peace Corps Spies?

February 10, 2008 ( Development )

Damnit, State Department; there's a reason why Peace Corps is set up outside of your purvue and has strict policies against volunteers who've served in intelligence roles. Volunteers can't /do/ anything if they're targeted for political violence and untrusted be the people they're supposed to be trying to help. Sure; there will always be conspiracy theories around anything the US does; that's the nature of the world today (and the global community has good reasons to be cautious, I might add.

But asking volunteers (and fullbright scholars) to keep tabs on Cuban and Venezuelan doctors (in Bolivia, no less) is shortsighted, petty, and stupid. You're asking a huge number of super-idealistic, mostly politically left, fresh-out-of-college folks to do low-level spying; and not (a) refuse (b) rebel against it (c) leak it to the press?

"I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here," Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.

Van Schaick's account matches that of Peace Corps members and staff who claim that last July their entire group of new volunteers was instructed by the same U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia to report on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

..."He said, 'We know the Venezuelans and Cubans are here, and we want to keep tabs on them,'" said van Schaick who recalls feeling "appalled" at the comment.

"I was in shock," van Schaick said. "My immediate thought was 'oh my God! Somebody from the U.S. Embassy just asked me to basically spy for the U.S. Embassy.'"

A similar pattern emerges in the account of the three Peace Corps volunteers and their supervisor. On July 29, 2007, just before the new volunteers were sworn in, they say embassy security officer Vincent Cooper visited the 30-person group to give a talk on safety and made his request about the Cubans and Venezuelans.

"He said it had to do with the fight against terrorism," said one, of the briefing from the embassy official. Others remember being told, "It's for your own safety."

This of course is against PC policy and Bolivian law.

Posted by griffjon at February 10, 2008 04:46 PM

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