Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps

[Joanne98]

Washington’s blunder in Bolivia strains relations with the Morales government

By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (La Paz, Bolivia)

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
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3562/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Americans abroad have enough trouble being considered CIA plants

to have the CIA actually trying to use them. :grr:

[tom_paine]

2. There is no aspect of Imperial Amerika not touched and made evil by the Bushies.

No corner, no nook, no cranny, nowhere.

They have made us into their graven image of evil.

[LiveLiberally]

3. This is APPALLING....

and what it says about the ability -- or, more correctly LACK THEREOF -- of our intelligence agencies to gather accurate and useful information for themselves is frightening.