The U.S. State Department has recalled to Washington a U.S. diplomat in Bolivia who asked a Fulbright scholar and Peace Corps volunteers to “spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans there.
The scholar, John Alexander van Schaick, said Vincent Cooper, the embassy’s assistant regional security officer in Bolivia, had asked him to provide the names and addresses of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or fieldworkers whom he met while in the country.
Mr. van Schaick, 23, who graduated from Rutgers University in 2006, said the request had been made casually, during a mandatory, one-on-one orientation briefing in La Paz, Bolivia, in November. In a telephone interview, Mr. van Schaick said he had been shocked that he was “basically asked to spy,” and added that the “arrogance of the request knows no bounds.” After the briefing, Mr. van Schaick immediately wrote a detailed recollection of the meeting.
Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, has since declared the U.S. diplomat “undesirable.” Last week the U.S. Embassy in La Paz announced that the State Department had recalled the diplomat to Washington for questioning.
Mr. van Schaick went public this month — the ABC News Web site first reported the story — because he believes that the incident jeopardizes the Fulbright program’s integrity and violates Bolivia’s sovereignty.
“My Bolivian friends and co-workers would have wanted me to come forward on this,” he said. “For me this is about respecting their rights.”
Violation of U.S. Policy
Mr. van Schaick is studying indigenous groups and farmers’ land rights in the Santa Cruz department of eastern Bolivia, an area where Cuba sends doctors to support free medical services promoted by Mr. Morales, an ally of Cuba’s president, Fidel Castro.
Mr. Cooper, the U.S. diplomat, reportedly made similar requests during a July meeting in Bolivia with three Peace Corps volunteers and the Peace Corps’ deputy director, Doreen Salazar. He said knowing more about Cubans and Venezuelans in Bolivia had to do with the “fight on terrorism,” one of the Peace Corps representatives told ABC News.
After Ms. Salazar complained about the requests, the State Department acknowledged the breach in American policy. Despite that assurance, the policy was violated again in November, during the meeting with Mr. van Schaick.
In a statement last week, the U.S. Embassy in La Paz also criticized Mr. van Schaick’s decision to complain first to the news media instead of to Embassy or Fulbright officials. Mr. van Schaick defended his choice, arguing that complaints by Peace Corps officials “obviously went nowhere if the same pitch to spy happened to me four months later.”
Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the State Department, said at a news conference that the security briefings violated U.S. policy, which prohibits “in any way, shape, or form” U.S. government officials’ asking Fulbright scholars or Peace Corps volunteers to gather intelligence.
“This is the first time that anything like this has surfaced,” said Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programs at the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees the Fulbright program.
Mr. van Schaick is one of seven Fulbright scholars in Bolivia. No other Fulbright scholar has publicly lodged a similar complaint.
http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 54, Issue 24, Page A21
