Page 172 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 172 of 237

THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT -- PURITY IN THE PEACE CORPS

THE CONFLICT in the field between the ambassador and the intelligence operator is reflected on a larger scale in
the frequent clashes in Washington between the State Department and the CIA. The uneasiness felt in other
government agencies over the role of the CIA runs deeper than that, however.

This uneasiness is little known outside of the government, and it is almost never talked about. But the Peace
Corps provides the best example.

During the 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy had promised, if elected, to establish a Peace Corps. He kept his
word, created the new agency by an executive order in March, 1961, and asked his brother-in-law, Sargent
Shriver, Jr., to head it.

Shriver accepted, but he very quickly concluded that the Peace Corps, with its thousands of young volunteers
dispersed over the globe, could well look like an all but irresistible "cover" to an intelligence agency always on
the alert for new ways to disguise its people. At the same time, Shriver knew that the Peace Corps, because it
would offer genuine help to the emerging nations of the world, would be an equally tempting target for
Communist propaganda, which would seek at all costs to discredit it.

Therefore, Shriver privately proclaimed his determination to take every possible step to divorce the Peace Corps
from even the faintest smell of intelligence work. He was well aware that even one "spy" incident involving a
volunteer might destroy the Corps.

An anecdote that went the rounds of the executive suite of the Peace Corps at the time of its birth is revealing. It
had the then Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson, advising Shriver to "beware the three C's -- Communism, Cuties,
and the CIA."

In the spring of 1961 Shriver made a trip seeking to persuade neutral nations to accept Peace Corpsmen. He
discovered that the leaders of those countries were blunt in asking whether he would let the Corps be used as a
cover for intelligence agents. Shriver replied just as bluntly that he was doing everything he could within the
government to make sure that the CIA stayed out of his agency. He also promised to assist individual countries in
any security checks they might care to make.

As early as March 16, 1961, Radio Moscow was attacking the Peace Corps as a plan for "the collection of
espionage information for Allen Dulles' agency." On May 11 Tass, the Soviet news agency, sent out a dispatch in
English to Europe, headlined "Peace Corps Head Shriver CIA Agent."

As a first step in his campaign to prevent the Peace Corps from becoming tarred as an instrument of Cold War
intelligence-gathering, Shriver went directly to President Kennedy. "Jack Kennedy gave me his promise," Shriver
later told a friend, "that there would be no CIA agents in the Peace Corps."

President Kennedy followed up this verbal assurance to Shriver by issuing orders to Allen Dulles and later to his
successor, John McCone, which continued in effect after President Johnson took office. In addition, Shriver met
with Dulles and later with McCone and obtained their guarantee that the CIA would stay away from the Peace
Corps.

But the problem was more subtle than that. Shriver's dilemma was a peculiar one, bred of the Cold War and
inconceivable in the America of even twenty years before. Could he be certain that the White House attitude
would be reflected all along the line? Could he be sure, for example, that a lower-echelon CIA official might not