Peace Corps Tries to Regain ‘60s Swagger

Jan Copeland defied the norm.

While most of his colleagues entering the fledgling Peace Corps in 1962 were driven by buoyant idealism, Copeland wanted a little excitement. He found it during a two-year stint teaching English to rural Farsi speakers under the watchful eyes of the Shah of Iran’s secret police.

“It wasn’t an altruistic decision,” said Copeland, 63, of Los Alamitos. “The concept [of the Peace Corps] was nice, and it sounded like you got to go to some interesting places at an interesting time.”

That mix of idealism and the personal thirst for adventure has been the driving force behind the Peace Corps since its inception 40 years ago, when President Kennedy issued a clarion call for young Americans to come together in an army of peace.

While the Peace Corps is recognized internationally as a unique catalyst for spurring change at the grass-roots level, its successes have been tempered by some very public failures. Since May, the agency has been the object of a federal inquiry into how it safeguards recruits after the disappearance of a 23-year-old Massachusetts volunteer in Bolivia.

The $275-million agency, which fields 7,300 volunteers in 75 countries, also has struggled to expand its overseas presence, missing a goal President Clinton set in 1998 to field 10,000 volunteers by 2000.

Now the Peace Corps is about to undergo a change at the highest levels as the Bush administration prepares to nominate former Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, a Bush political supporter with no overt background in humanitarian issues or international affairs, as its new director.

His nomination has drawn grumbles from some former volunteers who argue that President Bush should have dipped into the pool of 160,000 returned volunteers to find a director, instead of his political supporters. Yet most of the Peace Corps’ 15 past directors came from outside the agency, many with little relevant experience.

More vexing to some former volunteers is Vasquez’s lack of experience directing large organizations, said Hugh Pickens, a former volunteer in Peru now operating the Baltimore-based Web site https://www.peacecorpsonline.org.

“Mr. Vasquez appears to have no CEO experience,” Pickens said. “This is a large organization. Basically, he’s been an elected official and his position right now appears to be kind of a PR man. The director should be someone who has some experience as a manager of a large organization.”

Vasquez has declined comment on his nomination while it is pending. The White House is conducting a background check before forwarding his name to the Senate for confirmation.

But Ellen Fields, spokeswoman for the Peace Corps, argued that Vasquez’s involvement with the Boy Scouts of America, Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity provides sufficient experience for running the Peace Corps.

“I consider all of that humanitarian [experience],” she said. “We believe he’s a wonderful candidate because he has a demonstrated history of political service.”

Corps Faces Scrutiny Over Volunteer Safety

If approved by the Senate, Vasquez will lead an agency with an inconsistent past, but one that is on the upswing, enjoying bilateral support in Congress even as it faces scrutiny over how it keeps its far-flung volunteers safe.

Although Peace Corps volunteers live and work in largely remote villages around the world, they have never been targeted by terrorists--in part, supporters, say, because they are usually embraced by local communities.

However, over the last five years at least 13 volunteers have died while overseas, six of them murder victims.

Earlier this year, Walter Poirier, 23, of Lowell, Mass., was discovered missing after his parents reported to Peace Corps officials in Bolivia in early March that they had not heard from him in a month. An extensive search by Bolivian police and military forces, as well as a team of FBI investigators, has failed to turn up any leads.

A federal General Accounting Office report on July 20 concluded that the search for Poirier was hampered by his and local Peace Corps officials’ failure to follow agency policies in maintaining contact. It also found that a local Peace Corps official lied to investigators and embassy officials “to deflect blame elsewhere because he felt responsible for not keeping a closer watch on Mr. Poirier.”

“The problem is that because of their ineptitude, or seeming lack of controls, once they started looking for him, the trail was cold,” said the missing man’s father, also named Walter Poirier. “We had to alert them that he was missing. They didn’t know.”

Field, the Peace Corps spokeswoman, said the agency is studying the GAO report and has yet to formulate a response. She said there have been no changes in procedure or disciplinary action taken related to the case.

At the request of Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), who sought the initial report, the GAO also has begun a broader inquiry into how the Peace Corps safeguards its volunteers, how those measures stack up against efforts by other international agencies, and an accounting of injuries and deaths incurred by Peace Corps volunteers. A GAO spokesman said it was unclear how long that review would take.

“Obviously, we hope that once the new director is confirmed he will move ahead with an effort to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” said Bridger McGaw, spokesman for Meehan.

Volunteers Peaked at 15,560 in 1966

Since its inception, the Peace Corps has been an agency in transition. Under its rules, 85% of its volunteers and administrators must leave after five years of service, and none may stay with the agency for more than eight years.

The Corps reached its peak in 1966, with 15,560 volunteers--more than were needed for planned projects--but the levels have dwindled since. President Nixon at one point sought to close the agency as a vestige of Kennedy idealism but was talked out of it by then-aide Patrick J. Buchanan. Still, Nixon de-emphasized the program and shifted it into an umbrella bureaucracy overseeing volunteer programs.

The agency foundered, the number of volunteers dropping to a low of about 5,200 before it was rejuvenated under Loret Miller Ruppe, who was appointed by President Reagan. Like Vasquez, she had a resume that did not seem to prepare her for the job. Yet she is revered among former volunteers for gaining budget increases in an era of budget-slashing, and persuading the Reagan administration to reestablish the Peace Corps as a separate agency.

Field said it was Reagan who first broached the goal of 10,000 volunteers by the year 2003. But it was Clinton who three years ago jump-started the campaign and sought to reach the goal by last year.

Thomas Tighe, former Peace Corps chief of staff, said the lag in expanding the number of volunteers stemmed from a budget too small to meet demand.

“We’ve never had a problem recruiting,” said Tighe, president of the Santa Barbara-based Direct Relief International, a nonprofit organization that coordinates shipments of medical supplies to developing nations. “The number of requests from overseas far exceeded our financial ability to support [volunteers].”

More Women, More Over-50 Participants

Over the last 40 years, the Peace Corps has shifted from a roster of predominately white men to predominately white women, with minorities growing from near zero to about 14% of the volunteer force. At the same time, the volunteers have become older. In the 1960s, 95% of the volunteers were under 30; now 72% are under 30, while those over 50 have grown from 1% to 10%.

Mark L. Schneider, who left as director of the Peace Corps when the White House changed hands this winter, said those shifts largely mirror changes in university enrollments--the primary pool for Peace Corps volunteers--and an increase in mid-career and retired volunteers.

A wide range of former volunteers say that serving in the Peace Corps prepared them for careers, and in some cases helped them determine a life’s course. Among notable former volunteers are Donna Shalala, former secretary of Health and Human Services; Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.); Newberry Award-winning children’s author Mildred Taylor; and Carol Bellamy, a former Peace Corps director and now executive director of UNICEF.

“It speaks very highly of the organization that a lot of former volunteers are at high levels in the U.S. government and in the business world,” said Adrienne Paul, 32, a former Peace Corps volunteer and current international aid officer for World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian relief organization. “Employers know former Peace Corps volunteers can meet a challenge, usually speak another language and are quick on their feet. They’re just desirable people to have working for you.”

An Experience That Lasts a Lifetime

For Copeland, who joined the Peace Corps in its infancy, the experience was formative.

Copeland, the son of a Navy man, started high school in Greece and graduated in Japan. After studying international relations at Stanford under an ROTC scholarship, he served more than a year of active duty as an Army transportation clerk in Oakland before leaving for active reserves, then the Peace Corps.

When Copeland headed off to Maragheh, Iran, as an English teacher, he said, he had no plan for his life. By the time his stint ended, he was hooked on teaching and embarked on a career that included earning a master’s degree in English from Colorado State University and 15 years of teaching English as a second language in Saudi Arabia.

The only thing that brought Copeland back in 1984, he said, was the urge to root himself in his home country. He’s now a part-time teacher of English as a second language at Long Beach City College and for the North Orange County Community College District.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, he said, he had no illusions about forging grand changes in Iran. He was looking for adventure.

Initially, he was met with suspicion by villagers living under the U.S.-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, known for its brutal SAVAK secret police.

“No one was trusted,” Copeland said, adding that people were nice to him but distant, uncertain about the American stranger suddenly in their midst.

Over time, the iciness melted. His departure was marked by tears.

“A sign of trust was when people told you things that could cause them to disappear if the SAVAK found out,” Copeland said as a gentle breeze ruffled succulent plants on his patio. “I was kind of a good ambassador. I think I changed some opinions.”