Page 174 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 174 of 237

Because of this orientation, Peace Corps officials felt it was unlikely that their volunteers would be solicited to do
any intelligence work. Still, one official admitted, the real problem would be "covert people trying to infiltrate. I
don't see any way we can spot them. It would be a fluke. The more deliberate the attempt, the harder it would be
to find."

Shriver's concern over keeping his agency "clean" was reinforced in September, 1961, when Secretary of the
Army Elvis J. Stahr made a speech suggesting that an Army Peace Corps be established.

"We must plan so that we can use our tools in cold war as well as hot war and employ them anywhere in the
world, " said Stahr. General Barksdale Hamlett, Army Deputy Chief of Staff, gave added details of the plan,
which seemed to envision use of the Army in worthy social projects in underdeveloped countries -- but linked to
paramilitary activities.

To Shriver, it smacked of precisely the sort of military and intelligence overtones he was trying so hard to avoid.
Shriver objected strenuously. A high-level meeting was held at the Pentagon, attended by Stahr, Shriver, General
Hamlett and a platoon of beribboned Army brass.

The generals at the meeting insisted that the Army Peace Corps would have no relation to any intelligence work.
At that, Lee St. Lawrence, a Peace Corps official, spoke up. St. Lawrence had served with the Agency for
International Development in Southeast Asia and was familiar with CIA operations in that part of the world.

He asked the generals to name the officers who would be in charge of the proposed "Army Peace Corps" in
Southeast Asia. When they did, St. Lawrence singled out some as CIA men. He offered to reel off the names of
others, but there was no need. The project was dropped.

But Communist attacks on Shriver and the Peace Corps continued. United States intelligence obtained, from
Eastern Europe, what appeared to be a guide for satellite nations on how to phrase propaganda against the Peace
Corps. The document stressed the general line that the Corps was a CIA operation and that volunteers were
selected by the CIA. Peace Corps officials believed that it served as a primer for subsequent propaganda
emanating from various points in the Communist world.

Certainly the Russian and Communist Chinese attacks followed a familiar pattern. In March, 1962, for example,
Radio Moscow broadcast in Hindi to India: "U.S. agents are sent to Afro-Asian countries under the U.S. Peace
Corps label. The plan to organize the corps was jointly prepared by the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and CIA.
Director of the Corps, Shriver, is an old employee of the CIA."

Radio Peking joined in, and so did Fidel Castro. Radio Havana broadcast attacks on the Peace Corps that
paralleled the Moscow barrage.

Also in Havana, the newspaper Roy warned Venezuela to "watch out" for the Peace Corps. "These Corps are land
U-2s. Their mission consists in poking their noses into all places where meek rulers open the door for them."

On March 27, 1963, a Polish paper published an article attacking the Peace Corps by charging that girl volunteers
were Mata Haris. It ran photographs of girls training, with the caption: "The Americans consider all means
acceptable. Where other methods do not succeed, sex * may be very useful. Girl members of the Corps on the
exercise field."

About the same time, Tass picked up the sex theme and charged that a wicked Peace Corps woman teacher in
Somalia tried to teach pupils the "indecent movements" of the twist.