When the World Calls

by Stanley Meisler

  Only three people showed up at the Parque Colon in downtown Santo Domingo to demonstrate: Kauffman, a second Volunteer who had already left the Peace Corps for another reason, and a French Canadian working in a different foreign assistance project. Drendel was there as well, but only to photograph the demonstrators as a friendly witness. A Dominican journalist arrived, and Kauffman handed him a short statement explaining their opposition to the war. The statement did not mention the Peace Corps.

  The trio of protesters and their photographer walked from the Parque Colon in downtown Santo Domingo about a mile and half to the U.S. embassy. Kauffman carried a pair of signs in Spanish, one quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Peace is not just the absence of war but the presence of justice,” the other quoting Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind.” They did not shout slogans. They stopped at a corner facing the embassy and held their protest signs aloft. They stood there for five minutes and walked away. In all, their protest march and demonstration had lasted about an hour.

  The Peace Corps, despite its threats, decided not to discipline Kauffman. It is not clear why, but Kauffman’s father, a retired lawyer, had discussed his son’s legal rights with the Peace Corps’s general counsel office in Washington. Perhaps the Peace Corps did not want to risk a lawsuit like the one it lost during the Vietnam War. In any case, the Peace Corps’s tough policy had accomplished its main goal. The threats had shut down an antiwar demonstration by sixty Volunteers that would have embarrassed the Peace Corps.

  The Peace Corps was upset in 2008 by a barrage of criticism from one of its own, the former director of the program in Cameroon who had served in Liberia as a Volunteer. The critic, Robert L. Strauss, managed to vent his complaints in two prestigious publications, the New York Times and Foreign Policy magazine. This was far more publicity than the Peace Corps attracted for any of its achievements in the new century.

  Strauss’s Times article, an op-ed piece, repeated the hoary notion that the Peace Corps needed older and more skilled Volunteers. Too often, Strauss said, “young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.” Strauss disparaged the work of present Volunteers. In his view, “an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries.”

  The Foreign Policy article, published a few months later, offered a grab bag of complaints. Strauss insisted that most foreigners do not realize the Volunteers are American; that both Volunteers and staff are often mediocre, with Volunteers sometimes seeking “a chance to escape a humdrum life” and staff sometimes made up of “minor political underlings who get parked at the Peace Corps”; that the Peace Corps keeps sending Volunteers back to the same countries year after year, whether or not they are still needed; that the Peace Corps is not really a development organization; that Volunteers are sometimes resented where they live because “the Peace Corps has its share of deadbeats, philanderers, parasites, gamblers, and alcoholics.”

  Strauss concluded, “The Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers.” To change all this, Strauss called on the Peace Corps to “avoid goodwill-generating window dressing and concentrate its resources in a limited number of countries that are truly interested in the development of their people.”

  Strauss’s proposals would tear the heart out of the Peace Corps and reconstitute it as an elite agency of older, highly skilled Volunteers working under harsh conditions in a few countries. In many ways, his views were old-hat and impractical, and his assessment of the young Volunteers unfairly dismissive of their great energy and enthusiasm, but the prestige of the two publications that harbored him demanded that the Peace Corps engage his arguments.

  Tschetter, the director, chose not to do so. In his letter to Foreign Policy, he called Strauss’s article “an insult to every volunteer who has ever served in the Peace Corps . . . . I can tell you each of his arguments is false, and with all certainty, our agency is thriving.” But, as evidence, Tschetter could come up only with a testimonial from someone unlikely to influence the readers of the two publications. President George W. Bush, Tschetter boasted, had recently said the Peace Corps “really is the best foreign policy America could possibly have.”

  Many current and former Volunteers filled the breach left by Tschetter’s perfunctory defense. They rushed letters to both the Times and Foreign Policy, arguing against Strauss’s points and defending the Peace Corps. While some acknowledged staff deficiencies in planning, organizing, and managing programs, many more had no use for the kind of Peace Corps advocated by Strauss.

  Emily Armitage, a Volunteer in Bulgaria, saw little value in a Peace Corps of older and more skilled Volunteers. “Older Volunteers often have difficulty learning the language, which can limit their contacts within the community,” she wrote. She also pointed out that older Volunteers find it hard “to spend two years of their lives in difficult, sometimes primitive conditions.” “While older Volunteers have more life experiences,” she went on, “many younger Volunteers possess knowledge of technology, web design, e-mail, and the Internet—integral skills for the developing world.”

  Others like Blair Reeves, who was a Volunteer in Cameroon while Strauss was director, challenged the notion that the Peace Corps was ineffective in development. Reeves wrote that “no matter what Robert thinks, genuine, sustainable, long-term development is accomplished by individual Volunteers on a local basis—just ask the village of Okong, where I helped arrange to fund and build two sources of potable water where there were none before.”

  Many letter writers believed Strauss misunderstood the Peace Corps by failing to rank its cultural goals on the same level as its goal of development. As Senator Dodd put it in a letter to the New York Times, “Every American of goodwill we send abroad is another chance to make America known to a world that often fears and suspects us. And every American who returns from that service is a gift: a citizen who strengthens us with firsthand knowledge of the world.”

  Chapter Eighteen. Diplomatic Troubles

  When word reached Tanzania in the summer of 2005 that Michael Retzer would arrive soon as the new ambassador, the American professionals on the scene could not hide their apprehension. For almost two years, the U.S. embassy had lacked an ambassador; it was run instead by a senior foreign service officer. The Americans did not know much about Retzer. But his resume made him look like the ultra-stereotype of a political appointee.

  President George W. Bush did not appoint Retzer because of his familiarity with Tanzania or Africa, or even with foreign affairs. Retzer was a former national treasurer of the Republican party, and he had served as chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party several times. He owned McDonald’s fast-food restaurants in more than twenty towns in Mississippi and was a generous contributor to the Republican Party. He had, for example, personally contributed $60,500 to the party and its candidates and raised more than $200,000 for President Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004.

  Among the apprehensive Americans was Christine A. Djondo, the Peace Corps country director, who had just arrived in Tanzania herself. The forty-four-year-old Djondo was one of the most experienced staffers in the Peace Corps. A Volunteer in Cameroon and later a supervisor of scholar exchange programs for the Institute of International Education, she had served as Peace Corps country director in Lesotho and Gabon before her assignment in Tanzania. The Peace Corps Act normally limits employment of staff to five years, but the Peace Corps can extend that in exceptional cases. Djondo, married to a Togolese and the mother of two children, was one of those whose tour had been extended.

  Although apprehensive, Djondo was less so than the diplomats in the embassy. The Peace Corps, after all, is an independent agency of the federal
government. Ambassadors, even the political appointees, usually let the Peace Corps operate without any interference at all.

  For the first year, the ambassador, according to Djondo, busied himself with ceremonial duties and with the magnificence of Tanzania’s wildlife. But, during his second year, the State Department asked all its posts to reorganize their operations to make them more efficient and less costly. The request energized the ambassador. He was, after all, a very successful entrepreneur. He regarded efficiency and cost cutting as the hallmarks of a skilled manager.

  Ambassador Retzer swiftly moved the headquarters of three U.S. agencies—AID, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—into the embassy compound. Not only would this cut down on rental costs, but the agencies could share embassy services, allowing them and the embassy to dismiss some of their support staff.

  The ambassador, for example, decided to create a motor pool for the embassy and U.S. agencies so the total number of drivers could be reduced. Djondo felt pressure for the Peace Corps to join, but she resisted. She needed her own special drivers, who knew where all the 130 Volunteers lived and worked, who could leave the capital of Dar es Salaam on a moment’s notice, and who could repair a car if it broke down upcountry.

  The ambassador did not try to force the Peace Corps into the new embassy motor pool, but its creation left several drivers without jobs, and the ambassador decided to transfer them to the Peace Corps. The ambassador did not think much of Djondo’s management of her own drivers, for she had to fire two recently for stealing several hundred dollars worth of fuel. The Peace Corps, which normally employed six drivers, was now down to three (one driver had resigned for a better job elsewhere). The Peace Corps inspector-general, after an investigation, had found no grounds to dismiss these three, but the ambassador regarded them as tainted by the fuel theft and wanted them fired as well to make way for his excess drivers.

  Djondo refused to accept the ambassador’s drivers. The embassy drivers were used to driving in Dar es Salaam, not upcountry, Djondo says, and lacked training as mechanics. Djondo looked on the ambassador’s whole exercise as a backhand way of pushing the Peace Corps into the embassy motor pool. Djondo informed the Peace Corps in Washington of her refusal, and officials there supported her stand.

  A dangerous impasse developed. So long as Djondo refused to hire the laid-off embassy drivers, the embassy refused to grant the required security clearance to any driver-mechanic she tried to hire. For a half-year, the Peace Corps had only three drivers for all its tasks, including the delivery of supplies and the escort of staff to Volunteers throughout the vast country.

  Finally, David Liner, the chief of staff of the Peace Corps in Washington, negotiated a compromise with the ambassador. The Peace Corps, while not firing any of its own drivers, hired two of the laid-off embassy drivers. The embassy then granted a security clearance to an outside driver-mechanic hired by Djondo. That brought the Peace Corps contingent of drivers back to six.

  But the compromise did not assuage the ambassador’s anger at Djondo. He soon came up with another demand. The Peace Corps staff included a doctor and a nurse to care for Volunteers. Ambassador Retzer did not like this arrangement. He insisted, according to the Peace Corps, that Volunteers see the U.S. embassy doctor rather than the Peace Corps nurse whenever the Peace Corps doctor was unavailable.

  Ambassador Retzer denies this. He says that he simply suggested that the embassy and Peace Corps doctors fill in for each other when one goes on leave. The Peace Corps, however, maintains he proposed far more than that. Some of the correspondence between the ambassador and the Peace Corps does make it clear that the ambassador did not like the idea of the Volunteers seeking treatment from the Peace Corps nurse.

  Djondo says that the ambassador wanted her to fire the nurse. He denies this, but the nurse obviously would have had little to do if the Volunteers could see only a doctor. Djondo felt that she could not count on the embassy doctor in case of an upcountry emergency. This doctor, who cared mainly for all official Americans and their families in Dar es Salaam, might not be available to rush out of the capital. Djondo regarded this as a threat to her Volunteers.

  Djondo said that Purnell Delly, a foreign service officer who was the deputy chief of mission, warned her that she would be thrown out of Tanzania if she continued to cross the ambassador. But Djondo, with the support of the Peace Corps in Washington, refused to give in.

  Peace Corps director Ronald Tschetter wrote Ambassador Retzer that a Memorandum of Understanding between the State Department and the Peace Corps did not allow the kind of “coordinating medical operations” he had in mind.

  The ambassador, according to the Peace Corps, dismissed this as a sample of “Washington turf battles.” He wrote Tschetter that “there is no substitute for seeing a physician if one is available,” and he warned, “I hold Peace Corps directly responsible should your policy result in lasting injury or death to a Volunteer.”

  Retzer was clearly infuriated. In April 2007, he called in Djondo and offered her a choice. She could resign quietly or be expelled publicly. Ambassadors have the power to approve or reject all U.S. officials serving in a country (except for soldiers serving under a military commander).

  Djondo told the ambassador that she would not resign and that only the Peace Corps director had the right to hire and fire her. Ambassador Retzer then withdrew his approval for her to remain as a U.S. official in Tanzania, agreeing, however, to delay the order until June so her children could complete their schooling for that academic year. As Retzer acknowledged a couple of years later, his status as a political appointee allowed him to take so dramatic a step. “Career ambassadors, God bless their hearts, they don’t ordinarily make waves,” he said.

  Retzer’s ouster of Djondo provoked a blistering cable from Tschetter to the ambassador. Tschetter warned that he would have to reduce the number of incoming Volunteers unless the ambassador rescinded his order. “Unfortunately, such a reduction in numbers will have a disturbingly negative impact on Tanzanian government officials, as well as the Tanzanian people,” he wrote. Tschetter added that Djondo’s departure “will also have a powerful and negative influence on the morale of Peace Corps staff members and Volunteers in Tanzania.”

  The Peace Corps director was unstinting in his praise of Djondo. “The strength and vitality of the Peace Corps program in Tanzania,” he wrote, “is directly attributable to the outstanding leadership of Ms. Djondo.” He described “a pronounced increase in Volunteer satisfaction” with their work and staff support under her leadership.

  Tschetter called on the ambassador to allow Djondo to remain on the job, but the Peace Corps director added, in biting tones, “I question your commitment to supporting the Peace Corps program in Tanzania, and without full support, the Peace Corps program is potentially at risk.” But the ambassador would not give in.

  As soon as news of the ouster spread, support for Djondo intensified. In a letter to Volunteers and staff in Tanzania, Tschetter praised “her vigorous defense of the integrity and independence of the Peace Corps program in Tanzania.” Peace Corps press chief Amanda Host issued a news release that made it clear the Peace Corps “strongly disagree[d]” with Retzer and had “full confidence” in Djondo. Volunteers in both Gabon and Tanzania signed petitions of protest and wrote many letters of support.

  In the midst of this brouhaha, the White House announced that Ambassador Retzer had resigned and would be replaced by former Representative Mark Green of Wisconsin. This led to speculation that Retzer had resigned under pressure or had grown weary over the controversy. But Retzer insists that he had long ago advised the State Department that he intended to leave after two years on the job.

  Green, a Republican who had recently lost the election for governor of Wisconsin, knew Africa well. He was the son of a South African doctor and had taught in Kenya for two
years. But confirmation in the Senate was held up by Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Dodd, the only former Volunteer in the Senate, said he would put a hold on Green’s nomination unless the Bush administration either rescinded the ouster of Djondo or sent her a letter of apology.

  Faced with this obstacle, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey T. Bergner wrote a carefully worded letter to Djondo that amounted to an expression of regret rather than an apology. Bergner praised her as “a highly capable Peace Corps employee” but noted that it had become impossible for her and Ambassador Retzer “to continue working productively together” because of their disagreements. “The Department regrets that this matter unfolded in the way it did,” Bergner said. Despite the weakness of the letter, Senator Dodd accepted it as an apology, and Green was confirmed as ambassador.

  The controversy did not hurt Djondo’s career in the Peace Corps. After six months on the staff in Washington, she was assigned overseas once more, taking over the program in Mozambique in 2008 as country director.

  The flare-up in Tanzania was surely the most extreme example, but some tension between embassies and the Peace Corps existed for half a century. The tension was built into the relationship, for the Peace Corps is an independent agency of the U.S. government, yet it is, at least on paper, still subject to some kind of supervision by the ambassador on the scene, who is the representative of the American president.

  Relations between the embassies and the Peace Corps were frigid from the beginning. President Kennedy, after all, had mocked the failures of U.S. diplomats in his campaign speech proposing a Peace Corps. Diplomats could hardly feel welcoming to callow youngsters who had arrived to do a better job at befriending locals than themselves. This feeling was aggravated by all the publicity the new Peace Corps generated. Diplomats worked in obscurity, while youngsters selected for Peace Corps training made the front pages of their hometown newspapers.