[R-G] Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps

[Anthony Fenton]

Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps
Washington’s blunder in Bolivia strains relations with the Morales  
government
By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (La Paz, Bolivia)
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3562/recruiting_spies_in_the_peace_corps/

[Photo] Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca (right) shakes  
hands with U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia Philip Goldberg before the start  
of a meeting in La Paz on Feb 13. at the U.S. embassy.


In February, allegations surfaced that the U.S. embassy in La Paz,  
located in western Bolivia, has been asking Peace Corps volunteers and  
Fulbright scholars to provide intelligence information to the U.S.  
embassy about foreign nationals in Bolivia.

“It flies in the face of what the Fulbright program is all about,”  
says John Alexander van Schaick, 23, a Fulbright scholar from Rutgers  
University, who says that last year, an embassy official instructed  
him to report on Venezuelans and Cubans living and working in Bolivia.  
“We’re supposed to be here to help with mutual understanding, not  
intelligence operations.”

This allegation, along with a similar incident involving Peace Corps  
volunteers, has again called into question the U.S. role in Bolivia,  
testing the thickness of the ice under its feet here in the heart of  
the Andes.
Anatomy of a scandal

On Nov. 5, 2007, van Schaick entered the U.S. embassy in La Paz for a  
routine orientation in preparation for his year-long fellowship in  
Bolivia. After meeting with various cultural affairs officials, the  
2006 Rutgers grad met with Assistant Regional Security Adviser Vincent  
Cooper.

“He said that he was going to give me a ‘scaled-down’ version of the  
normal briefing given to U.S. embassy employees,” says van Schaick.  
According to the scholar, Cooper explained that although Fulbright  
participants are not U.S. government employees, the embassy likes to  
keep them “under its wing.”

The meeting consisted mainly of helpful tips for the newcomer—heed  
caution while on public transportation, steer clear of street protests  
and respond appropriately in medical emergencies.

“But the part that made my ears perk up was when he casually said,  
‘Alex, if, when you are out in the field, should you encounter any  
Venezuelans or Cubans like field workers or doctors,’ that I should  
report to the U.S. embassy with their names and where they live,” van  
Schaick explains.

His experience wasn’t an isolated incident. On July 29, 2007, Cooper  
visited a group of 30 Peace Corps trainees in Bolivia to give a  
security talk that included similar instructions, this time with  
respect to Cubans.

“We were immediately alarmed by the request,” said Peace Corps Bolivia  
Deputy Director Doreen Salazar in an interview during the initial  
investigation. “We stopped the meeting and made clear to our group  
that they had no obligation to report anything to the embassy.”

Salazar said she then lodged a complaint with the U.S. embassy and was  
assured that it wouldn’t happen again.

“After this mistake, our principal security officer instructed his  
personnel not to repeat this type of inappropriate information,” the  
U.S. embassy wrote in a two-page statement issued Feb. 11, three days  
after ABC News released the story of the Fulbright and Peace Corps  
incidents. “We regret any misunderstanding that this isolated incident— 
which happened seven months ago and which was corrected immediately— 
might have produced,” the embassy wrote.

The U.S. State Department has also repeatedly called the request an  
error and a breach of U.S. policy. U.S. volunteers and academics are  
not expected to be involved in U.S. intelligence operations abroad,  
even if the programs are government funded, as is the case with the  
Peace Corps program and the Fulbright scholarship, according to State  
Department officials.

Yet there has been no explanation as to why this happened again just  
three months later, especially if embassy officials were instructed  
not to make such requests.
Immediate fallout

When the news broke on Feb. 8, the Bolivian government and U.S.  
officials were already engaged in a scuffle. The Bolivian government  
was facing allegations that it had been illegally spying on the  
opposition movement’s civic leaders and its elected officials.

The Fulbright/Peace Corps incidents brought the tension level neck- 
high. Within 48 hours of the story’s release, Bolivian President Evo  
Morales had declared Cooper an “undesirable,” and the United States  
had called Cooper back to Washington for an internal investigation.  
The Bolivian government then launched a criminal investigation into  
the incidents—marking the first time in Bolivian history that the  
government has brought criminal charges against a U.S. embassy official.

The affair’s legal gravity is indubitable. According to the Bolivian  
penal code, Cooper could be given up to 30 years in prison without the  
possibility of parole for espionage—Bolivia’s most severe sentence.

Moreover, if either van Schaick or the Peace Corps volunteers had  
provided information then used by the embassy in an espionage  
operation, they, too, could have been liable to the same prison time.

It was in this context that representatives of the two governments sat  
down to talk five days after the story broke. It was the sixth time in  
the two years since Morales took office that U.S. Ambassador in  
Bolivia Philip Goldberg had been officially summoned to explain an  
action or statement the Bolivian government found questionable.

“We accept the U.S. government’s explanations and we want to get  
beyond this incident,” said Foreign Relations Minister David  
Choquehuanca after the lengthy session. “We want positive bilateral  
relations.”
The bigger picture

One of the central tenets of this cooperation was tested—and secured— 
just 24 hours later. On Feb. 14, the U.S. House of Representatives  
Committee on Ways and Means approved the extension of its trade  
preferences, which limits or eliminates tariffs on more than $200  
million worth of Bolivian goods sold in U.S. markets annually. Up to  
150,000 Bolivian jobs depend on the viability of these exports  
(everything from wooden window frames to Brazil nuts)—a significant  
figure in South America’s poorest nation.

Though the 10-month extension falls short of the two-year renewal the  
Bolivian government continues to lobby for, it is a significant  
victory given that a year ago, the Bush administration was threatening  
not to renew at all (as a way to punish Morales for his refusal to  
sign a bilateral free trade agreement).

Bolivia is one of the biggest recipients of funding for United States  
Agency for International Development (USAID) in the world—with more  
than $120 million flowing in annually, which goes toward everything  
from organic coffee farms to military anti-narcotic programs to health  
clinics to inner-city youth theaters.

Over the years, this funding has been a source of contention as  
allegations of a bias against Morales and his Movement Toward  
Socialism (MAS) Party have surfaced.

In a 2005 investigation for NACLA Report on the Americas magazine,  
journalist Reed Lindsay uncovered declassified internal State  
Department memos dated from 2002 that alleged USAID was directing its  
money to “help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that  
can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.”

And recently published investigations into USAID, and specifically  
into its Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), which handled  
“democracy promotion” work in Bolivia from 2004 until 2007, have been  
similarly alarming.

“In Bolivia, USAID-OTI has focused its efforts on the separatist  
movements in regions rich in natural resources, such as Santa Cruz and  
Cochabamba,” wrote Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American attorney, in  
“Washington’s Silent War on Venezuela and Bolivia,” a September 2007  
article in Green Left Weekly. “The majority of the $13.3 million has  
been given to organizations and programs working toward ‘reinforcing  
regional governments,’ with the intention of weakening the Morales  
government.”

The Morales government has therefore made a show of its anger at  
USAID, declaring in August 2007, that “the door is open” for the group  
to leave Bolivia. But one month later, the government quietly signed a  
contract to renew USAID’s work here for another year.

Though big steps—such as kicking USAID out—do not seem to be on the  
Morales agenda, the Bolivian president has taken small steps to  
fulfill his promise of lessening U.S. involvement in the country.

Economically, Bolivia today is far less dependent on the United  
States, especially given its close relationship with oil-rich ally  
Venezuela, and a five-year, $1 billion deal with Iran to finance  
everything from gas exploration to dairy farms.

In the last few days of February, Morales was once again lambasting  
the U.S. embassy here for conspiring against Bolivia’s newly written  
constitution, which must be approved or rejected in a national  
referendum this year.

But even in the wake of recent scandals, Morales has confirmed his  
commitment to making it work with the United States.

“We would never look to break neither diplomatic nor commercial  
relations,” he stated at a recent press conference, despite recent  
“political problems.”

The ice, though constantly thinning, seems far from breaking.