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Such briefings may not be given now, but in 1990, when a bunch of potential CIA hires came to Washington for interviews, we first got a collective rundown of what might and might not happen, and among the latter were some things about the Peace Corps. If you ever worked for the CIA, the Peace Corps would not take you. On the other hand, if you ever worked for the Peace Corps, the CIA might take you, but would not assign you to the same country the Peace Corps had. These seemed to me highly unlikely eventualities. Having not worked for either outfit, I might never have given further thought to this. Except I was just flipping through a book titled The Dictionary of Espionage, and under “Cover Organizations,” the author said these might be anything...except the Peace Corps.
Except for one house in town flying a Peace Corps flag (it’s one of the houses that flies a Ukraine one), I otherwise get no reminder that the thing even exists. Well, it does. And my questions are Why and How. Also, and this is the easiest to research: Where.
Hmm. No openings in East Timor now. But Cape Verde is off the table. It was back around 1989 that I first learned, from a Peace Corps recruitment pamphlet in a library, of this country, the only Portuguese-speaking one available at the time. As for right now, I note Europe has several slots in what used to be in or next to Yugoslavia. Also, the Ukraine. Is that strategic? Ecuador probably isn’t, but it’s still hanging in there — on the Peace Corps’s roster, I mean.
Which brings me to the reason I never thought Peace Corps work and spy work would ever overlap. Even if a Peace Corps volunteer’s host country is “strategic” in any sense, whatever he sees or hears is completely outside the corridors of power, which is where spies are trying to penetrate.
A search for “Peace Corps espionage” yields a number of hits, but they pretty much all have to do with an affair in Bolivia a decade and a half ago. That’s a strange little story. How prim was the reaction of the Fulbright “scholar.” And didn’t that “adviser” have diplomatic immunity? He isn’t going to jail, though being declared persona non grata will hardly advance his career in either the CIA or the State Department. But even if it’s thought worth the gamble, what would any “security” apparatus really learn if a doctor in the country were Venezuelan or Cuban? I, either as CIA or Peace Corps, would be observant and chatty, while always staying in my lane. But I sense from reading the Peace Corps’s website that noobs are naive in the extreme about foreign countries. This further argues against anyone, friend or foe, recruiting them for missions, as observers or even as cut-outs. Even if they are posted to interesting places or meeting interesting people, they may hardly comprehend what's really going on around them.
What they saw or whom they met may be interesting retrospectively, but I’m thinking of close-to-real-time “intelligence.” And coming up with nothing. That’s the problem with secret agents: their acts are secret. What does get out is ambiguous, to put it mildly. I could be cynical about that Bolivia business, and guess that spy agencies keep their crews busy with such stuff because it at least looks like they’re on the job. But I will resist such obstructive thinking. Making an effort over myself, as the novelists say, I will imagine that the CIA does some things right, and in the total absence of fresh information pro or con, leave it at that and shift back to the Peace Corps. AS it happens, I have met several volunteers (they had worked in Ecuador, Zaire, Nepal, Malaysia, and Jamaica), been interviewed over the phone by another (Dominican Republic), and known close relatives of two more (both Paraguay). The one who’d served in Jamaica told me something I never guessed, although I should have: the Peace Corps shows up, or withdraws, depending on diplomatic agreements. In negotiations between the U.S. and another country, the Peace Corps is a bargaining chip. I think that’s how my informant described it. He made it sound as if it were one among many, something which might have value at the time, but whose value could change. I decided, at least for the purposes of this post, to look up any such accord.
And, pertaining to Kosovo, I found one. There’s the prez – of Kosovo – looking happy in 2013. As well she might, since, to judge from the treaty itself, her country hardly has to do anything. Maybe not even pay the volunteers. It remains unclear to me what the international quid pro quo was. I had the idea of looking at other treaties signed around the same time to see what other goodies were in play. But I find nothing obvious. And just as I can hardly imagine circumstances under which a Peace Corps employee at any level is positioned to do any spying, I still cannot envision an impasse in the diplomatic realm being suddenly overcome by one side offering, or the other side requesting, that the Peace Corps be tossed in as a sweetener.
Back to the title of this post: I confess that I did not just snort at the Peace Corps website, but drilled far enough to look at the application process. Wow, there’s no age limit! (No upper age limit.) However, you need 3 references. Well, that is better than 400 signatures. But really, for any job that requires anyone vouch for me or even admit that he knows me, I should simply stay home. Yes, it would be funny in the extreme not just to ask for an overseas job but get offered one, then moan, “But who’s gonna take care of my cat while I’m away?” As much as the Peace Corps comes across as some weird vanity project, I do not expect very much indulgence of (as these things are called in the HR realm) my reported special needs. I suspect even the Peace Corps has, deep down, a hardness to it.
Discussion (12)
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The son of a close friend went into the Peace Corps and I think married another Peace Corps volunteer.
The Peace Corps sounded like a good experience for him. Not exactly sure what either the host village or the USA got out of it.
The one thing I did read about the Peace Corps is that many of the volunteers come back with weird health problems, and the Peace Corps accepts no responsibility -- So Sad/Too Bad for you, Volunteer.
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A long, long time ago, when my hair was much darker and fuller I was stationed at a weather station in the Fiji Islands, we had Peace Corps volunteers assigned throughout the area. Most were teachers, and they were highly valued in the remote villages where educational opportunities were limited. There were sometimes cultural challenges that resulted in at least one female teacher leaving abruptly.
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What an odd thing to think about. So there must be links in the Peace Corp that are useful in the spy business? Why not? People assume it's all above board and for good......
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The abovementioned telephone interview was for the Peace Corps, my interviewer a former volunteer. I can’t remember the exact question I answered poorly, but it was something like Why are you interested in this sort of job and I said something like I’d traveled widely for various purposes but never for this purpose. It would be an interesting new experience. Not exactly intentionally, but it sure came through loud and clear, I made it sound like the Peace Corps’s job was to serve me, not the other way around. She made it clear that this was not the right mindset.
And yet she had admitted, with no prompting at all from me, that her stint in the Dominican Republic had accomplished nothing lasting. She’d organized a sewing cooperative for village women; it collapsed as soon as she left. Had any Communists been looking on, they might have thought: Maybe workers don’t want control of the means of production! (Or, as at least one corporate employee in a not dissimilar environment had phrased it: Supposing Leroy don’t want to carry the ball?) Foreigners don’t always do as you ask ‘em to, or tell ‘em to.
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Paul Theroux got expelled from Malawi for stuff he did while in the Peace Corps there. His ostensible journalism was however not for the CIA, but for the West German equivalent. Unrelated to that, he’d published something negative about the Vietnam War and the American ambassador was displeased. The story is told fully in his 1985 anthology titled Sunrise with Seamonsters.
I was going to punctuate the above with “Oh for the days when a friendship with someone like LBJ could get you something like a government job in Africa.” But now that I’ve read up on Sam Gilstrap, I’m glad I didn’t. For one thing, I suspect that days like those always exist. The names and places and opportunities change, but presidents appoint all sorts of people to all sorts of offices. But for another, I see that Mr. Gilstrap, whatever his political connections, was a model high-echelon government employee. Look at all those fluffy jobs he had. Culminating, if that is the word, with his one ambassadorial appointment.
Maybe he actually earned it. I don’t know about the attache postings but I will guess that the ones as consul probably did require diligence.
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