Page 173 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 173 of 237

quietly attempt, despite everything, to plant agents in the Peace Corps, in the honest belief that he was acting in
some higher national interest?

Shriver must have decided he could not be sure of the answers to these delicate questions, for he did not rely on
presidential assurances alone. A careful screening process was set up. It was designed, of course, to catch any
Communist or security risk who might try to get into the Peace Corps. But it was also designed -- hopefully -- to
spot any CIA "volunteer" before he could unpack his cloak and dagger.

It might come as a jolt to most Americans to know that one agency of the United States Government feels it must
protect itself against infiltration in its ranks by another agency of the United States Government. But the Peace
Corps has taken elaborate steps to prevent just that.

Shriver designated William Delano, the Peace Corps' young general counsel, to ride herd on the problem and
make sure no intelligence men slipped through the net. As insurance, Shriver laid down a firm rule. No one with
any intelligence background, even years ago, would be accepted.

As Peace Corps officials soon discovered, there was a hitch. Openly acknowledged "overt" employees of the CIA
are allowed to say so when they seek a new job. But covert employees of the CIA are not permitted to reveal it,
even years later on a government job application form. They might put down the name of a commercial cover
company or perhaps some other branch of the government for which they had ostensibly worked.

And a routine Civil Service check, Peace Corps officials realized, would not reveal whether applicants had been
or were still covert CIA agents. Some applicants, unaware of Shriver's policy, innocently listed such past jobs as
"CIA secretary, summer of 1951." They were immediately eliminated.

Others, more sophisticated, sought to fuzz their past employment by listing "U. S. Government" to cover a period
of a year or two. But the would-be volunteers, in these cases, were questioned by Civil Service investigators, who
naturally demanded to know more details.

One high Peace Corps official estimated that ten to twenty ex-CIA employees who had listed "U.S. Government"
on their applications have been turned down since the Peace Corps began.

Screening out persons with a background in intelligence was only part of the problem. The Peace Corps also
decided that it had to guard against the possibility of the CIA approaching a volunteer after he had been accepted
into the Corps.

During orientation courses for volunteers, it became standard practice for a Peace Corps instructor to get up and
pose the following question:

"Suppose a man asks you to have a cup of coffee with him and he identifies himself as a CIA agent. He says he
doesn't want you to spy, but that he'd like you to get together with him and just chat every couple of weeks, and
perhaps tell him a couple of things you've learned. What would be your reaction?"

Most of the volunteers replied they would have no part of any free-lance spying of this sort.

"Just so that no one will have any doubts about it," the instructor would then add, "if such a solicitation is made,
you are to report it to the Peace Corps country representative within ten minutes, if you can get to him that
quickly, because the CIA man would be defying the President's order to Dulles and McCone. Furthermore, the
CIA man will be kicked out of the country faster than you can see, if you report it."