Greenpeace S.D. Leader Quits in Huff : Activism: Two local workers also resign amid dispute over their unauthorized action on malathion.

Greenpeace’s San Diego director and two door-to-door canvassers have resigned in the wake of a personnel dispute about whether the international environmental organization is sufficiently involved in local issues, Greenpeace officials confirmed Friday.

Rick Nadeau, who had been director since March, 1989, said he resigned July 16 after his supervisors told him to terminate his role in a coalition that has actively protested the state’s aerial malathion spraying program in El Cajon.

Greenpeace officials said Friday that, by championing the malathion issue, Nadeau overstepped his authority and put Greenpeace’s credibility in jeopardy by speaking out on an issue he was not fully trained to address.

Nadeau’s supporters say, however, that his departure raises questions about the role of the local office. It has also made many look more critically at Greenpeace’s policy limiting the involvement of its local outreach directors.

Greenpeace says its 29 outreach directors around the nation should recruit new supporters and educate them about the group’s agenda but not play a role in defining that agenda on the local level. That policy has left Nadeau and others asking: Is the San Diego office nothing more than a fund-raising arm?

“My position was that, by increasing the visibility of Greenpeace in the community, it would help the fund-raising,” Nadeau said, describing why he decided to resign his $14,900-a-year position.

Despite the doubling of San Diego fund-raising totals during his tenure, Nadeau said, “I’ve been told to go stand in the corner, be a good little boy and keep my mouth shut--(but) keep the money flowing.”

When Greenpeace has held press conferences in San Diego on issues like the damaged Exxon Valdez tanker, for example, a spokesman from San Francisco is usually flown in to make the announcement, sometimes discouraging the media from talking to Nadeau. And that, Greenpeace officials said Friday, is the way they like it.

“We have specific policies for who speaks for the organization and how issues work is done,” said Peter Dykstra, the group’s national media director in Washington. “He wasn’t fired. He resigned. The extent of our perceived offense is that we didn’t beg him to come back.”

“He wanted to do more than he was authorized to do,” said Chet Tchozewski, Greenpeace’s San Francisco-based director for the Pacific Southwest region and Nadeau’s immediate supervisor.

Nadeau’s departure prompted more than 20 San Diego Greenpeace canvassers, who help fund the group’s $110-million international budget, to stage a four-day strike last month, officials confirmed. According to Scott Kessler, one of the striking canvassers, the protesters called for Greenpeace’s regional and national officials to ask Nadeau back, to continue in his activist role in San Diego.

“This has nothing to do with loyalty to Rick. It has to do with what does Greenpeace stand for?” said Kessler, a one-time field manager for Greenpeace who has quit his fund-raising job because of the dispute.

“We believe that Greenpeace is a great organization. The question is what is their strategy for social change. The question is how do you get from educating people to getting them involved. That’s where Greenpeace lacks.”

To bring an end to the strike, two representatives from Greenpeace’s San Francisco and Washington offices flew to San Diego. By late last month, most of the canvassers were back at work.

Maureen Burkett, who has become the acting director for Greenpeace’s San Diego office, confirmed that, in addition to Kessler, a second canvasser has taken a leave of absence because of the controversy surrounding Nadeau’s departure.

“He is confused,” she said. “There have been so many different stories that it’s been hard. It’s caused a lot of turmoil.”

Greenpeace officials said that their insistence on controlling what is printed under their letterhead results from a desire to produce accurate information--not from a hunger for power.

“It was not that we don’t care about the (malathion) issue,” Dykstra said. “But . . . if we were going to do it, we would hire a professional. (Nadeau) was letting his personal interests interfere. He would not agree to any restraint on this.”

Dykstra added: “As few rules as we have, he broke an important one. There’s a very strict definition to what the director should do. Does that mean the organization is the second coming of Stalinism? No.”