Exclusive: Peace Corps, Fulbright Scholar Asked to 'Spy' on Cubans, Venezuelans

[Judi Lynn]

Source: ABC News

This article was posted earlier today in G.D. by DU'er sabra:

Exclusive: Peace Corps, Fulbright Scholar Asked to 'Spy' on Cubans, Venezuelans
U.S. Embassy Official's 'Spy' Request Violated Long-Standing U.S. Policy

By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY and BRIAN ROSS
Feb. 8, 2008

In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia "to basically spy" on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved.

"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.

The State Department says any such request was "in error" and a violation of long-standing U.S. policy which prohibits the use of Peace Corps personnel or Fulbright scholars for intelligence purposes.
(snip)

According to van Schaick, the request for information gathering "surfaced casually" halfway through Cooper's 30-minute, one-on-one briefing, which initially dealt with helpful tips about life and security concerns in Bolivia. "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.




Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4262036&page=1

[Tempest]

1. Wish I could say I was surprised

But it fits right in with the most criminal administration in American history.

[Judi Lynn]

2. It's not their policy? What do you think the odds are that US news media will follow up on this

article?

People have discussed the use of Peace Corps workers by the CIA for YEARS. At the same time, US news sources have always looked the other way concerning covert ops on other countries.

I'm looking forward to finding even a word about this ahead, and I'll be looking hard.

If anyone has any doubts about what has been going on in Latin America since the 1950's, just get in there and start researching US interventions, starting with Guatemala, to get a frame of reference for the current situation: it has been one unbroken tradition of astonishing cruelty and every effort spent creating "plausable deniability."

Because some documents have been made public due to the Freedom of Information Act, Americans are able to know a hell of a lot more now than they were allowed to know when this filthy action started.

Here's how we involved ourselves during the 1970's, as illustrated through a thumbnail sketch of fascist dictator, Hugo Banzer:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

I might add, that in the late 1990's, after this article was written, Hugo Banzer was once again put in power, and he remained in office until his struggle with cancer finally sidelined him.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. The USA hasn't really changed their tactics since issuing poisoned blankets

.
.
.

to the once proud NATIVES of North America.

Now it is poisoned bullets and bombs (Depleted Uranium) in the Middle East for the last decade that will kill for centuries . .

Hitler was an amateur when it came to Genocide . .

PNACers and the BFEE are professionals . .

(sigh)

[Judi Lynn]

6. You bet! Hitler was a rank amateur. By the way, I learned recently Native Bolivians were forbidden

by law to walk on the sidewalks in Bolivia until 1952.

IT WAS THEIR ####ING COUNTRY! God, I hate this crap from the racist, fascist, US promoted and protected butcher puppets.

[tanyev]

9. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein paints a devastating picture

of how our interventions in Latin America went hand-in-hand with implementing Friedman's laissez-faire economic policies--with disastrous results. An excellent book.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Really glad you mentioned that book. After thinking about your post, I looked for the book, found

this very short, introductory video which has made me even more interested in reading this for myself.

Here's the brief video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxhplDrjtRc

Seems far too important to overlook! I'm getting it right away. Thanks.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Journalists tell Senate they want no CIA ties

Journalists tell Senate they want no CIA ties
But lawmakers may let president make exceptions
July 18, 1996
Web posted at: 12:15 a.m. EDT

~snip~
A former State Department official, who is now a columnist, believes the CIA should be able to use reporters.

"American journalists are journalists, but also Americans," said columnist Kenneth Adelman. "I don't see why they should not feel civic duty, especially when lives are in danger."

Missionary groups oppose the loophole that lets the CIA use them. "Such use of missionary agents for covert activities by the CIA would be unethical and immoral," argued Don Argue of the National Association of Evangelicals.

There's also a controversy over whether the CIA should retain its power to use the Peace Corps.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/18/spies.journalists/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

February 23, 1996
Web posted at: 12 a.m. EST

CIA director defends using journalists as spies
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- CIA director John Deutch is defending a policy exception empowering the intelligence agency to use journalists as spies.


Deutch told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that it's a simple matter of national security. He cited two hypothetical situations: one wherein a journalist is involved in a hostage situation in which Americans are being held, and another wherein journalists have access to a nation or group that has the ability to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States.

In a written statement Thursday, CNN President Tom Johnson said "an absolute ban on the use of journalists as 'covers' for spying should be in place." Johnson said CNN staffers will not be used as spies for "any government."

Deutch told the committee he's sympathetic to safety concerns, but said exceptions are inevitable.

http://www.cnn.com/US/Newsbriefs/9602/02-22/pm.html

[MasonJar]

4. Is there truly no end to the horror show in the White House? How much more

can one cabal of evil-doers accomplish. Even after 7+ interminable years of crime something new surfaces or is initiated every single day. These are an entire cadre of sycophants and sociopaths destroying the USA and the world in general at their whim. Boy, did the French and the Germans (in fact most of Europe, except the Poles) have the truth on their side...only the poodle Tony actually stood tall for the whole suicide, while knowing it was based on the flimsiest of lies. Poor old Poland probably believed the Bushistas. Not only is W the worst president in US history, he may also be a worse human being than Hitler himself. He long ago surpassed Saddam.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. Therein lies George W Bush's legacy

.
.
.

Worse than Hitler and Saddam.

Imagine the tales the young Iraqis will be telling their children about the Americans.

They will not BE ABLE to forget watching their friends, siblings, parents and other loved ones lose life and limb at the hands of the Americans.


And it WILL be known the ongoing illnesses and pollution of land and water with the poisoned bullets and bombs is from the depleted uranium the Americans spread all over their country.

Worst President ever.

In every way.

[gratuitous]

8. Does anyone else get this feeling?

I have this enduring image, and I can't shake it. George W. Bush, spoiled child of a spoiled family, stands in the middle of a room of smashed and broken things. Some of them appear to have been quite fragile or elegant. Other things are less fine, but are smashed nevertheless. George can hear the footsteps in the hall of the grown-ups who will take him from the room, and he's looking around to see if there's anything he hasn't smashed yet. Time is short, and his itching little hands must be about their destructive work quickly.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Very appropriate. I'm sure he intends to shed Latin American blood before he leaves.

You recall ALL the Republican Presidents since Eisenhower's overthrow of Guatemala's Arbenz have spilled the blood of people in this hemisphere. It's an obsession with them, unfortunately, killing "brown" people, in the Americas, as _{Barbara Bush} calls her Mexican descended grandchildren.

Mere muscle flexing, and posturing for these right-wing fools has slaughtered unbearable numbers of human beings in the Western Hemisphere.

Too bad so few Americans are even aware of this horrendous aspect of American history.

There's a painless way for people to learn about _Bush's father's "excellent adventure" slaughtering Panamanians in this video from You Tube, 10 separate segments of around 9 minutes each. It's an Academy Award winning film which received "Best Documentary," and is narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery.

It will explain a lot of things which were completely concealed from the U.S. public at the time willingly by the press. It will open eyes permanently about U.S. policy regarding Latin America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v-_4szGX_0
Part I.

The image you've described does persist in one's memory. I would pray you're wrong but I don't think that's the case.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Undermining Bolivia

Undermining Bolivia
February 09, 2008 By Ben Dangl

~snip~
....Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers’ money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country’s dynamic social movements—just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America.

Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In July 2002, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington included the following message: “A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would . . . over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.” MAS refers to Morales’s party, which, in English, stands for Movement Toward Socialism.

Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales’s victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided “to provide support to fledgling regional governments,” USAID documents reveal.

Throughout 2006, four of these five resource-rich lowland departments pushed for greater autonomy from the Morales-led central government, often threatening to secede from the nation. U.S. funds have emboldened them, with the Office of Transition Initiatives funneling “116 grants for $4,451,249 to help departmental governments operate more strategically,” the documents state.

“USAID helps with the process of decentralization,” says Jose Carvallo, a press spokesperson for the main rightwing opposition political party, Democratic and Social Power. “They help with improving democracy in Bolivia through seminars and courses to discuss issues of autonomy.”

“The U.S. Embassy is helping this opposition,” agrees Raul Prada, who works for Morales’s party. Prada is sitting down in a crowded La Paz cafe and eating ice cream. His upper lip is black and blue from a beating he received at the hands of Morales’s opponents while Prada was working on the new constitutional assembly. “The ice cream is to lessen the swelling,” he explains. The Morales government organized this constitutional assembly to redistribute wealth from natural resources and guarantee broader access to education, land, water, gas, electricity, and health care for the country’s poor majority. I had seen Prada in the early days of the Morales administration. He was wearing an indigenous wiphala flag pin and happily chewing coca leaves in his government office. This time, he wasn’t as hopeful. He took another scoop of ice cream and continued: “USAID is in Santa Cruz and other departments to help fund and strengthen the infrastructure of the rightwing governors.”

In August 2007, Morales told a diplomatic gathering in La Paz, “I cannot understand how some ambassadors dedicate themselves to politics, and not diplomacy, in our country. . . . That is not called cooperation. That is called conspiracy.” Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that the U.S. Embassy was funding the government’s political opponents in an effort to develop “ideological and political resistance.” One example is USAID’s financing of Juan Carlos Urenda, an adviser to the rightwing Civic Committee, and author of the Autonomy Statute, a plan for Santa Cruz’s secession from Bolivia.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16463

[Judi Lynn]

13. U.S. Diplomat Recalled After 'Spying' Allegations in Bolivia (Finally!)

U.S. Diplomat Recalled After 'Spying' Allegations in Bolivia
Bolivian President Calls on Armed Forces to Protect Against 'Espionage Attempts' by the U.S.
By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY
Feb. 11, 2008—

~snip~
The embassy statement also expressed its "surprise and regret" that van Schaick went to the press with his denouncement, rather than approach the embassy or the Fulbright commission first.

"If he had done that, this situation would have been corrected immediately," it said.

Van Schaick told ABC News today that he stands by his decision to blow the whistle, noting that Peace Corps Deputy Director Dorene Salazar took the route that the embassy recommends, to no avail.

"The Peace Corps staff complained internally, and less than four months later, the problem arose again," says van Schaick, referring to the fact that peace corps official Doreen Salazar sent an e-mail complaining about Cooper's actions and was assured that the situation would be rectified. "Why would it be any different this time?" van Schaick said.

On July 29, 2007 Cooper gave a security briefing to 30 Peace Corps volunteers before their swearing-in ceremony, instructing them to report back to the embassy with information on the Cubans they meet, according to Salazar and several volunteers who were present. According to van Schaick, Cooper asked him to provide the embassy with information regarding Venzuelans and Cubans and gave him the reasoning, "We know they're out there, and we just want to keep tabs on them." The U.S. State Department claims that these instructions are a breach of U.S. policy.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4273850