Surprise! ? !!!
Speechless. But not surprised, unfortunately.
Erik, do we have any reason to hope that this is going to get better in a new (read: Democratic) administration, or will these types of programs continue to operate in the political twilight? I'm skeptical towards the idea that a president has even a modicum of control over intelligence agencies, since so much of what they do is naturally secret. I'm worried that once this kind of thing is put into motion, it's hard to stop it...
I'm not really an expert on foreign policy and intelligence agencies when it gets to this level. But if the next president decides to thaw our relations with Cuba and Venezuela, these kinds of activities will stop I would think. Maybe I'm naive though.
US/Bolivian relations hurt? Jeez, I hope not.
There was a really interesting piece on Democracy Now the other day about this -- Goodman spoke with the Fulbright scholar, the ABC reporter and another journalist who's been covering Bolivia for a while now.
The Peace Corps does not "operate in a political twilight." As a Volunteer I have never been approached by anyone to do anything remotely approaching spy work, not even Peace Corps. And if you think about it, why wouldn't shady directives come down through Peace Corps itself if Peace Corps were somehow an intelligence organization? Why wouldn't intelligence agencies pay a pittance to the poor people around here to find out what is common knowledge here, rather than soliciting it from me in the form of cost-of-living questionnaires?
Get real.
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