October 27, 2003 - Dayton Daily News: Missing without a trace (Part 1)

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Special Reports: October 26, 2003: Dayton Daily News reports on Peace Corps Safety and Security: Archive of Primary Source Stories: October 27, 2003 - Dayton Daily News: Missing without a trace (Part 1)

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-165-54.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.165.54) on Monday, October 27, 2003 - 1:52 am: Edit Post

Missing without a trace (Part 1)





Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier, missing in Bolivia since January 31, 2001


Read and comment on this story from the Dayton Daily News on Bolivia Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier who has been missing since January 31, 2001:

Quote:

The disappearance prompted the agency to review safety worldwide. At the same time, the agency established an Office of Safety and Security, increased the number of security staff by 80 and enhanced safety training.

Still, the Peace Corps left unchanged its practice of sending young and inexperienced volunteers alone to remote and sometimes dangerous areas, and the agency has no mandatory worldwide requirement on the number of visits from a supervisor. The Peace Corps said performance standards in Bolivia require associate country directors to visit volunteers at their sites during the first three months, and once a year after that. The agency said it met that standard for Poirier.


Read and comment on the story at:

Missing without a trace*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Missing without a trace

Peace Corps answers few questions in disappearance

By Russell Carollo
Dayton Daily News

THE ZONGO VALLEY, Bolivia | Crucifixes mark the many places travelers died along the narrow, rugged dirt road linking this remote tropical valley to the world's highest capital city, La Paz.

In a Jeep descending a rocky mountainside, where the road zigzags down from the base of snowy peaks to a tropical jungle valley filled with banana trees, a passenger who spent his life traveling this road makes the sign of the cross — the tires sliding precariously down the muddy road as he prays.

Starving dogs roam the roadside, as does a man with a bolt-action rifle strapped across his shoulder. Even grass needs courage here; it's called Paja Brava, brave grass.

On this same road two days earlier, a passenger in a cab was kidnapped, according to police at a roadside checkpoint.

The road begins 12,000 feet above sea level in the city of La Paz, where theft is commonplace and where thieves are known to pose as police officers.

The murder rate in this country is nearly six times that of the United States.

In August 2000, Walter Poirier of Lowell, Mass., arrived in Bolivia to serve in the Peace Corps, and his assignment required him to regularly travel the road between the Zongo Valley and La Paz. Volunteers usually aren't allowed to drive, so the 22-year-old was forced to use old, poorly maintained public buses and vans, or find rides with people he hardly knew.

On Jan. 31, 2001, Poirier signed in at the Peace Corps office in La Paz, did some shopping and used his Yahoo! e-mail account. Then, evidence suggests, he went to the Zongo Valley, and there is no record of him after that.

On March 6, 2001, Walter J. Poirier, known as "Wally" to his friends, was officially declared missing by the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia.

He's been missing ever since.

"It was either an accident or he was murdered," said his father, Walter R. Poirier. "It could have been for money. It could have been for political reasons.

"Realistically, I don't hold out a lot of hope at this point."

Fresh out of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., Poirier had been outside of the United States only once or twice, during trips to Canada with his parents.

He came to Bolivia hoping to ease the suffering of this country's poor, but like many other young, idealistic people flocking every year to the Peace Corps, Poirier was destined to fail.

After spending years in a college dorm filled with people who knew him, Poirier went to live in an isolated jungle compound with virtually no supervision, no dependable method of communication with his superiors or anyone else, no budget to conduct business and no experience or other background in his assigned job: promoting tourism in the Zongo Valley.

"I know the intent was good, but a 22-year-old does not know how to develop business in countries where there's not really much that can develop," his mother, Sheila Poirier, said. "His project was a complete joke. I mean a 22-year-old person had no supervisor."

Poirier's disappearance attracted the attention of Congress and exposed a number of potentially fatal errors in how the Peace Corps protects volunteers.

The disappearance prompted the agency to review safety worldwide. At the same time, the agency established an Office of Safety and Security, increased the number of security staff by 80 and enhanced safety training.

Still, the Peace Corps left unchanged its practice of sending young and inexperienced volunteers alone to remote and sometimes dangerous areas, and the agency has no mandatory worldwide requirement on the number of visits from a supervisor. The Peace Corps said performance standards in Bolivia require associate country directors to visit volunteers at their sites during the first three months, and once a year after that. The agency said it met that standard for Poirier.

A written statement from the Peace Corps says: "All indications were that Walter had a strong support network of other PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) in the area."

Poirier's mother and Congressional investigators believe he hadn't been heard from for weeks before he was reported missing, and it took a call from his mother before the Peace Corps realized he was missing.

"I'm having a hard time with this because it's so unreal," Sheila Poirier said. "You automatically think your young — in most cases — recent graduate is protected by the United States government and the Peace Corps in particular. And they're not. You're out on your own."

During a November interview in La Paz with the Dayton Daily News, a vice minister of government in Bolivia disclosed for the first time that police suspect Poirier's disappearance was no accident and that it could have been linked to "a debt."

The government minister said police were trying to get more information from eight Bolivians who were around Poirier in the days before he disappeared. The official said police believe they could have valuable information, and he confirmed the identities of three.

The Daily News examination, which included two trips to Poirier's remote site in the Zongo Valley and several other locations in Bolivia, found that a growing number of assaults on volunteers preceded Poirier's disappearance. The month before Poirier disappeared, two volunteers were abducted at gunpoint in Santa Cruz and a third, Lupine Skelly, was left traumatized after her attacker's gun discharged during a robbery.



"I just didn't feel like Peace Corps had a really good grasp of the safety situation in that country," said Skelly of Colville, Wash., who quit the Peace Corps after she and her cousin were robbed while hiking in a park near La Paz. "Peace Corps never told any of us, ‘Don't hike in this area,’ and then I find out later it is a very common, dangerous area.

"I was put in this site 13 hours from La Paz with no phone and no radio, and I had to walk an hour to the bus stop. I mean, how does that happen?"

Volunteers lack expertise, training


Walkways lined with colorful flowers and manicured green lawns surround Zahm Hall, a dormitory near the center of Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend. Inside the four-story tan brick building are dorm rooms holding 237 students, a small exercise room, a pool room and a number of other gathering places.

Poirier lived in Zahm Hall for three years, became one of its best-known residents and was elected dorm president.

"He was the life of the party. He was a fun and happy-go-lucky guy that everybody wanted to hang around with," said Mike Tribe, a football player at Notre Dame and one of Poirier's closest college friends.

After graduating from Notre Dame in May 2000 with a bachelor's degree in government and history, Poirier stayed in South Bend, working at Habitat for Humanity until the Peace Corps accepted him that summer.

"He learned he was going to be in tourism," said Joe Priest, a college friend. "He kind of chuckled like, ‘I don't know about tourism, but I guess I'm going to learn.’ ”

Volunteers like Poirier are called generalists, and every year, the Peace Corps sends them around the world with just a few months of training — the bulk of it language lessons — to teach experienced farmers new techniques, show veteran classroom teachers new methods, introduce new concepts to foreign business professionals.

Last year, 38 percent of all applicants had graduated from college within the previous year, and only 21 percent of all applicants were older than 30, according to the Peace Corps.

"I'm supposed to be telling people who've been farming for generations how to farm," said Mike Mulvaney of Ridgefield, Conn., who, at 28, had a bachelor's degree in chemistry but no farming experience when he was sent to the Bolivian town of Presto.

Brennen Wenck of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., who had a cinema degree from San Francisco State University, was supposed to introduce new teaching methods at schools in the Bolivian city of Chacopampa.

"I didn't get a big response from the teachers," Wenck recalled. "They said, ‘Well, what experience do you have?’ And I said, ‘None.’ ”

The generalists "did not really know how to do anything," said a 1971 book by Brent Ashabranner, former Peace Corps deputy director. "He could not show farmers how to introduce new crops and take care of them properly. He could not teach young men in a trade school how to operate a lathe. He could not build a bridge or repair a tractor . . . Yet here was the Peace Corps manpower pool."

In Bolivia, generalists face greater difficulties than lack of experience. Peace Corps volunteers are taught Spanish, yet up to 70 percent of the population is indigenous, many speaking Aymara, Quechua and Guarina. Extra language training was offered to volunteers, but the Daily News found none who had mastered any of the indigenous languages.

"No volunteer has ever learned Aymara," said Anthony LaColla, a Bolivia volunteer from 2000 to 2002.

Another problem is that Bolivia is about the size of Texas and California combined, making it nearly impossible to regularly supervise volunteers. The country has high mountain ranges and other rugged terrain and is covered with poorly maintained roads.

"I was sent out in the middle of nowhere by myself," said Sarah Fehringer of Columbus, Neb., a 22-year-old member of Poirier's training group. "First of all, I had no experience with tourism, and also I spoke limited Spanish at that point. It's hard to teach people. I mean, you're sent down there to teach people what to do, but if you can't even speak the language, then I guess I don't get that."

Fehringer ended her service early following several illnesses, one requiring hospitalization.

"I had no idea what I was doing," she said. "A lot of the percentage of the people in my group had no idea what they were doing."

Poirier fills position as ‘An expert in tourism’


The more Teresa Chavez found out about Walter Poirier, the more frustrated she became.

"I was told an expert in tourism was going to come from Peace Corps," said Chavez, municipal tourism director for the city of La Paz.

Chavez was in charge of monitoring Poirier's work, but she said she saw him six or seven times in La Paz during a three-month period, each meeting lasting between 10 to 15 minutes.

"For me, it was a bad experience," Chavez said during an interview in her office in La Paz.

Documents Chavez provided show that others in the government believed Poirier was a tourism expert. An Aug. 22, 2000, memo from an official in the mayor's office says, "the Peace Corps expert in tourism" would be visiting the Zongo Valley on Oct. 22.

Poirier had other obstacles.

His site, his base of operations in the Zongo Valley, had no telephone, radio, fax or computer. Cell phones often don't work here either.

His small room, with walls of peeling plaster, was on the second floor of what looks like an old barn. Caretakers were using the room to dry bone and animal skin for soup, and several pieces with animal hair still clinging to them were scattered around the simple metal-framed bed during a reporter's visit in November 2002.

Getting to his site wasn't easy. Buses, which take hours from La Paz, cannot make the last couple of miles up the steep, narrow road leading to the cluster of small buildings where Poirier’s room was located. Even four-wheel-drive Jeeps cannot make it all the way up: There's only a steep footpath for the last quarter-mile or so.

Like other volunteers, Poirier had no regular budget from the Peace Corps or the Bolivian government to do the job he was expected to do.

In an e-mail two days before he signed in for the last time at the Peace Corps office in La Paz, Poirier wrote: "I feel that presenting to these communities before having any hope of receiving money would be ridiculous.. . .The people of the valley are extremely suspicious of the work of the government."

Other volunteers said Poirier had raised questions about missing Bolivian government funds earmarked for his project.

Roberto Llusco, a Zongo Valley expert working for the La Paz mayor's office, accompanied Poirier a few times on his trips there, helping him arrange meetings in the small communities along the road. During a trip to the Zongo Valley with a Daily News reporter last November, Llusco stopped along a small dirt road and pointed out the only tangible accomplishment of the government project to which Poirier was assigned: the site of a small tourist center.

Nearly two years after Poirier disappeared, the site remained nothing more than a 27-foot square trench, with a few tree branches pounded into the ground and small piles of sand and gravel nearby — at most six hours work by a single person.

Asked to explain the major achievements of the tourism project, Llusco said: "We don't have a major achievement. That's how things work at the municipality."

"Crash pads" kept volunteers from sites


Across from Errol's video store, blocks from the Cinema Dos movie theater and walking distance from several popular restaurants, a sidewalk lined with colorful flowers leads to a small but well-kept apartment building.

Though Walter Poirier was expected to live in the harsh conditions of the Zongo Valley, he spent much of his time here, sharing an apartment with other volunteers in one of La Paz's best neighborhoods.

"A lot of people in the group, they were all that way," said Heather Megan West of Colorado Springs, Colo., who came to Bolivia several months before Poirier. "None of them went out to their sites. They would drink coffee. They went to movies. They went to bars."

Throughout Bolivia and in other countries, volunteers shared "crash pads" or transit houses, communal gathering places usually in cities far from the primitive existence that awaited them at their remote sites. At crash pads, they enjoyed some semblance of the active social life many had left behind only months earlier on college campuses.

Meredith Smith, Peace Corps country director in Bolivia until August 2001, said the agency shut down the crash pads in Bolivia after Poirier disappeared.

In March 2002, the inspector general recommended that Peace Corps managers give "immediate attention" to a two-page "management alert" report on crash pads. The alert said that crash pads endangered volunteers by keeping them away from their sites and that investigators received reports that some volunteers treated the houses as "havens in which to use marijuana and other drugs, abuse alcohol and engage in other unflattering behavior."

The Peace Corps said it closed "numerous" transit houses worldwide last year as it asked directors in various countries to review their benefits. Poirier's former landlord in La Paz said volunteers moved out soon after he disappeared.

"People would be there (at crash pads) for a month at a time. It was not uncommon for people to spend a month there," said Sarah Fehringer, who paid $35 a month to share a crash pad in Santa Cruz. "I did it, too."

Volunteers had little fear of being caught. Peace Corps supervisors visited volunteers at their sites as little as once a year.

Florie Downey of the San Francisco Bay area, a volunteer in Bolivia from 1998 to 2000, said she left her site and went to Chile with another volunteer. She said they stayed about six weeks, two weeks longer than allowed, and both were terminated.

Asked what they did in Chile, Downey said: "Ate a lot of seafood, drank a lot of wine. Yeah, it was wonderful."


More about Missing Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier



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By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-165-54.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.165.54) on Thursday, October 30, 2003 - 11:29 am: Edit Post

Missing without a trace (Part 2)





Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier, missing in Bolivia since January 31, 2001


Read and comment on this story from the Dayton Daily News on Bolivia Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier who has been missing since January 31, 2001:

Quote:

The disappearance prompted the agency to review safety worldwide. At the same time, the agency established an Office of Safety and Security, increased the number of security staff by 80 and enhanced safety training.

Still, the Peace Corps left unchanged its practice of sending young and inexperienced volunteers alone to remote and sometimes dangerous areas, and the agency has no mandatory worldwide requirement on the number of visits from a supervisor. The Peace Corps said performance standards in Bolivia require associate country directors to visit volunteers at their sites during the first three months, and once a year after that. The agency said it met that standard for Poirier.


Read and comment on the story at:

Disappearance with few clues*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Disappearance with few clues


Walter Poirier spent New Year's Day 2001 with Angela Anderson, a Notre Dame classmate working in Bolivia, watching the Oregon State University football team crush their alma mater 41-9 in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl.

A week or so later, he shared a sushi dinner with his fellow volunteers in La Paz and bought an REI trail dome tent from one of them, Anthony Gilbert, for about $100.

He watched the Super Bowl on Jan. 28 with other volunteers, and three days later, on Jan. 31, he signed in at the Peace Corps office in La Paz and shopped in the city.

All the while, Poirier sent regular e-mails to his grandfather, his parents and his former classmates from Notre Dame, entertained a steady stream of visitors at his La Paz crash pad, was spotted several times by his La Paz landlord and was seen almost daily by roommates there.

Then the e-mails stopped.

Exactly what happened to him after Jan. 31, 2001, is unclear, but evidence suggests that he left La Paz after that date, traveled to his site in the Zongo Valley and never returned to the capital. Evidence also suggests that once he arrived at the isolated compound in the Zongo Valley he didn't intend to venture very far, since the personal belongings he would have needed even for a short trip were all there.

At 10:49 a.m. on March 4, Sheila Poirier telephoned her son's crash pad in La Paz, where a volunteer said Poirier hadn't been seen for weeks. Ten minutes later, Sheila Poirier called a 24-hour Peace Corps hot line in Bolivia and told an employee, Charna Lefton, that she was concerned.

On March 6, more than a month after his last documented contact with the Peace Corps, Poirier was officially declared missing.

"The biggest problem I have is this: We're the ones that had to let them know he was missing," his father said. "They really didn't have a clue. So it just shows the total lack of oversight, especially in Bolivia."

At Poirier’s room in the Zongo Valley, investigators found a duffel bag of clean clothes and his wallet, which contained two receipts dated Jan. 31. One was from Vidrieria Balivian, a La Paz glass store, and the other was for silicon — apparently materials for a windowpane installed in the Zongo Valley after he made the purchases.

"There was a window missing in that building where he was staying or a broken piece of glass in the window, so he replaced it," said John Cooney, one of two special investigators sent to Bolivia by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The wallet, according to records provided to the family, also contained 90 Bolivianos (about $12), an American Express card, a bankcard, an AT&T phone card, Peace Corps identification, Bolivian credentials, his Massachusetts driver's license, a Social Security card and a photocopy of his passport.

The tent he bought from a fellow volunteer also was found.

"Even when we talked to all the Peace Corps kids down there they said nobody goes any place without their ID," said Cooney, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service. "Our speculation was that he disappeared from out there."

Francisco Pacheco, a caretaker for the small building housing Poirier's apartment in the Zongo Valley, said the volunteer spent a maximum of four nights at his site, never more than one night at a time. Pacheco said he wasn't sure when he saw Poirier last.

Though there is no record of Poirier's whereabouts after Jan. 31, at least two people say they spoke to him in La Paz after that, and a third person reported seeing him walking in the city.

Lupine Skelly said Poirier helped her get a taxi in La Paz on Feb. 6, the day she flew to the United States for counseling following the robbery involving her and her cousin. Her report raises questions about why he sent no e-mail from La Paz after Jan. 31.

Chavez, the tourism director for La Paz, said she believes she saw Poirier between Feb. 19 and 22, when he visited her office and talked about going to the carnival in Oruro.

Two GAO investigators said Chavez is mistaken and that she likely saw Poirier much earlier. The investigators said two volunteers who were supposed to accompany Poirier to Oruro for the carnival told them Poirier never showed up to meet them.

Kelley Saterfield of Hopkinsville, Ky., said that she was confined to Poirier's crash pad in La Paz much of February nursing a severely sprained ankle, but that she never saw him that month.

Sometime after Poirier was declared missing, Cati Williams, a Maryknoll missionary working in La Paz, reported seeing Poirier walking near the Japanese Embassy in that city. Williams, who saw Poirier's picture on a poster, said she was not aware at the time that Poirier's crash pad was less than a block from where she believed she spotted him.

"The guy seemed to have the build and the look of the guy who was missing," Williams said during an interview at her apartment, a few blocks from where she made the sighting.

Investigators brought Williams and some of the volunteers to the embassy to review footage taken from security cameras that day, but nobody was able to identify the person on the tape.

"The impression I got from the FBI guy was that it was a sad case," Williams said. "There are no clues."

Violence preceded disappearance


Tom Venner of Chicago was walking late at night when a man dressed as a policeman forced him into a taxi in Bolivia's second largest city, Santa Cruz, about 350 miles from La Paz.

"He took his handcuffs and began to beat me on the head maybe seven times," Venner said, adding that the man tried to plant drugs on him during the ordeal. "About the third or fourth time I could (feel) the blood pouring down my face."

Venner was released after being forced at gunpoint to withdraw money from an automatic teller machine.

Ten months later, weeks before Poirier disappeared, Mike Mulvaney and another volunteer were abducted in Santa Cruz under nearly identical circumstances: Two men dressed as policemen — one with a gun — threw them into a taxi.

"As I sat up, he hit me across the face," Mulvaney said. "My glasses went flying, and as I looked back, he maced me right in the eyes."

Mulvaney then leaped through an open window.

"He grabbed my ankles, and I'm screaming out the window, going, ‘Ayudar me! Ayudar me! (Help me! Help me!),’ ” he said.

Mulvaney escaped. The other volunteer was later released unharmed.



From 1999 to 2001, the year Poirier disappeared, the number of assault incidents reported against volunteers in Bolivia nearly tripled, from four to 11, and last year there were 10, more than double that of 1999. In one of two death threats against volunteers last year, the words "Die American Woman" were written on the ground outside a volunteer's site, and in the second case men pounded on a volunteer's door and threatened to kill him.

"There probably was an increase," in crime, said Smith, the former county director. "It does concern me."

At least eight volunteers were assaulted in taxis in Bolivia since 1999, including four who were abducted. A fifth volunteer escaped an apparent abduction 11 months ago after a man asked her for her passport and tried to push her into a taxi.

On Feb. 16, 2001, around the time Poirier is suspected to have disappeared, a bomb threat was called into an apartment where at least four volunteers were staying, the newspaper's examination found.

Volunteers said the Peace Corps masked the true danger to volunteers, and the Daily News examination found that the abduction of Mulvaney and the second volunteer was never recorded in official statistics, even though both the country director and the security chief at the time acknowledged speaking to him.

Peace Corps officials said there's no record of Mulvaney reporting the incident.

The March 2001 version of the Peace Corps Bolivia Volunteer Handbook, dated the same month Poirier was declared missing, calls Bolivia: "A relatively safe country," although it acknowledges that risks still exist.

In October 2000, four months before Poirier disappeared, two more volunteers in Bolivia were raped. One of them, a 24-year-old volunteer from the Midwest, said she decided to warn trainees, but a Peace Corps trainer told her she wasn't interested.

"She (the Peace Corps trainer) said, ‘You're portraying a negative image. You're scaring the female volunteers,’ ” the volunteer said.

About May 2001, Susan Weber of Atlantic City, N.J., who had been groped at a market, said she proposed a similar warning for a speech to new volunteers, but a Peace Corps employee told her to confine her comments to the positive aspects of her work.

Disappearance involved money, police say


A three-year-old calendar featuring a large photograph of a topless young woman — her arms crossed in front to cover her breasts — hangs over a table in the tiny police station near Pueblo de Zongo. A painting of the famous South American leader Simon Bolivar hangs on another wall.

The station is smaller than a one-car garage, and there are no computers, no phones, no radios, no maps covered with colored pins and no police officers inside.

In a two-bed dormitory in back, Segundino Osco Ticona of the Bolivia Rural Police, the only officer manning the tiny station, is packing his things. His shift is finished, and he needs a ride to La Paz, more than two hours away, because he has no car. He leaves the police station, the only one within miles, empty.

This is the closest police station to the room in the Zongo Valley where Poirier's belongings were found, and there was little evidence during a November 2002 visit of a continuing effort to locate him. A poster of Poirier still hung in the window of the police station, but it was barely visible from the nearby dirt road.

Ticona, assigned to the station about April 2002, didn't know who was assigned to the station at the time of the disappearance, and a search of a disorganized pile of police reports indicated that several officers had worked there during the previous two years.

In the seven months he had been assigned to the tiny outpost, Ticona said, he had one visit from someone he believed was an American investigator. The American, Ticona said, just wanted to know what he knew.

"Nobody knows who (Poirier) was," Ticona said. "I asked, and they never saw him either."

No one else seems sure what happened to Poirier.

"There's not a definite conclusion of where he is, and we don't know if he is alive or dead," said Jose Luis Harb, a vice minister of government who was overseeing the investigation for the executive branch of government.

Harb said police suspect that Poirier may have been killed for money.

"What we were able to establish is that probably he had a money debt," Harb said during an interview in his office in downtown La Paz in November 2002. "It could probably be that he didn't owe the money but that they pressured him (for money).

"All this is conjecture, like the entire investigation."

An inventory of Poirier's personal property provided by his family shows ATM receipts dated Jan. 15 and Jan. 28 and a money exchange receipt dated Dec. 18. Sheila Poirier said her son made three withdrawals of 400 Bolivians each — a total of about $55 — from his bank account between Jan. 30 and 31. Volunteers said Poirier planned to spend time at his site in the Zongo Valley, so the withdrawals would have been necessary to buy supplies.

Also listed in his belongings were three checks several months old for $20 each from his grandfather.

The Daily News interviewed three of eight people Harb said could provide additional details about Poirier during the weeks before he disappeared.

Roberto Llusco said during an interview in Bolivia that he was questioned at least twice by American investigators. The second time, he said, he was given a polygraph test and asked: "Where is Walter. Do you know? Where do you have him hidden?"

During interviews in La Paz and at his home in the Zongo Valley, Angel Salazar, a local politician, said he met Poirier through Llusco, and he later gave the young volunteer a ride to the valley in his four-wheel-drive Toyota, showing him the room, some sights and stopping alongside a river to have lunch with him.

He agreed to rent Poirier a room on the second floor of a building on a hill adjacent to his home. The rent was about 60 Bolivianos (about $8) a month. Salazar, an acquaintance of Llusco, spent much of his life in the Zongo Valley, and though he lives in La Paz, he and his family come to their Zongo Valley home for weekends and holidays.

From talking to his caretaker and family, Salazar said, Poirier stayed in the room "two days at the most."

Salazar said police interviewed him many times.

Harb admitted that the investigation had gone slowly and vowed to reinvigorate it. He also promised to provide the family with a copy of the new police report and to make police investigators available to a Daily News reporter.

In August of this year, during a meeting with a Daily News translator, Harb said he had done "nothing" on the Poirier case since the previous interview nine months earlier. Asked if there were any changes or major findings, he said, "That I know of? No."

Harb said he sent a copy of the report to the Poirier family Nov. 26, 2002, but the family said they never received it.

Though the Peace Corps released some records on the case through the federal Freedom of Information Act, the agency withheld 288 pages of records in their entirety, citing an exemption in the law designed to prevent interference with active police investigations.

In a written response to the Daily News, the Peace Corps says it has maintained regular contact with the FBI throughout Poirier's disappearance, and the agency noted that the embassy in Bolivia has publicized a 24-hour information line to receive information. The response also says the agency has sustained an intense media campaign, costing nearly $20,000, and has increased the reward for information from $10,000 to $25,000.

Poirier's landlord in La Paz said she was never interviewed by investigators, even though her window faces the walkway used by Poirier and other tenants. Heather Megan West of Colorado Springs, Colo., one of Poirier's roommates in La Paz, also wasn't interviewed.

"Actually, I was surprised because I never was (interviewed)," West said.

Kelley Saterfield, the volunteer who stayed in Poirier's crash pad with her leg in a cast during the critical early days when he was suspected to be missing, said she was interviewed by someone from the Peace Corps for about 15 minutes, but she never spoke to the FBI or Bolivian police.

Volunteer Stephen Spaulding, who identified himself as a close friend of Poirier's, said that sometime in April 2001 he agreed to meet FBI agents at their hotel in La Paz to take a polygraph test. The agents, Spaulding said, asked him if he knew where Poirier was or knew what happened to him. Spaulding said he answered no to both questions.

Sheila Poirier said a Peace Corps investigator she spoke to seemed to believe her son simply chose to disappear.

Spaulding said he got the same impression from another Peace Corps investigator.

"He seemed to think Walter went away on his own," Spaulding said.

Family faces pain of uncertainty


Every minute of every day for more than 2 1/2 years now, Walter and Sheila Poirier have lived with a grim reality: They may never know what happened to their son.

"Our concentration is still on finding Walter," Sheila said. "He's probably not alive, but he may be alive."

Long ago, their grief turned to anger, and their anger is directed squarely at the Peace Corps. They believe the agency should have been watching more closely.

And they're not alone.



"We believe that the Peace Corps severely failed their people, their volunteers, and knowing what I know, there is no way I would let my children volunteer for the Peace Corps unless there was some immediate changes and serious changes in the Peace Corps," said the General Accounting Office's Patrick Sullivan, who spent 23 years as a U.S. Secret Service special agent. "There's no way I'd put my children or recommend to anybody I know to put their loved ones in that situation.

"That's not just the way I'd ever operate."

Sullivan and John Cooney went to Bolivia on behalf of the GAO's Office of Special Investigations to review the Peace Corps' handling of the case.

Their investigation found that Poirier's supervisor, Ryan Taylor, last spoke to him Dec. 22, when Taylor showed him a room in the village of Camisique.

More than two months later, the supervisor still wasn't aware Poirier had instead moved into a small room in the village of Zongo, the GAO investigation found.

Meredith Smith, who was Taylor’s supervisor, acknowledged that the approximately 40 volunteers Taylor was supposed to watch was 10 to 15 more than he should have had. She said she had tried unsuccessfully to get another supervisor in Bolivia.

"He really had too many volunteers," Smith said, adding that Peace Corps gave her an additional supervisor after Poirier disappeared.

The Peace Corps claimed that Teresa Chavez, the La Paz tourism director and Poirier's assigned counterpart, was supposed to be meeting regularly with Poirier, the GAO investigators said, but Chavez had made no formal agreement.

Like other counterparts across the world, Chavez wasn't paid. Counterparts, the Peace Corps said in a written response, are the "primary contact for the volunteer" on a day-to-day basis, but they're not expected to watch volunteers. "Volunteers are adults," the response says.

Asked what her incentive would be to monitor Poirier, Smith said, "Just the idea that they're working with an agency of the U.S. government."

Although the GAO criticizes Poirier for not following notification procedures, it also said, "The Peace Corps failed to properly supervise missing volunteer and lost track of him."

Taylor, who left Peace Corps shortly after Poirier disappeared but continues to live in Bolivia, said the GAO "used me as a scapegoat."

The Poiriers think the agency is uncomfortable because their son's disappearance shatters the image the Peace Corps is trying to project.

"We blame the Peace Corps for what happened to our son," Sheila Poirier said.

[From the Dayton Daily News: 10.27.2003]



More about Missing Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier



Read more about missing Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier in these stories previously published on Peace Corps Online at:






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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Investigative Journalism; COS - Bolivia

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By Al Anon (host26.246.51.209.conversent.net - 209.51.246.26) on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 10:09 pm: Edit Post

Musings: 1.Investigation by U.S./Bolivian Government agencies, media and locals seems cursory and superficial. Doesn't U.S./P.C owe Poiriers a renewed, more thorough effort?
2. What happened to Senate Foreign Relations' investigation? Date set yet?
3. Why won't P.C. release the info sought by Poiriers under FOIA? Lack of pressure?
4. Reward for info (validated) re:WJP III is now $50.000 (thanks to grandfather). Couldn't P.C. help the desperate old fellow cover the LaPaz, El Alto & Yungas area with radio,t.v.periodical & poster blitz ( this time in 3 (spanish,quechua,aymara) languages)?
5. Don't U.S senators,reps & RPCVs have relatives/acquaintances active in P.C.? Why the ineptitude?
6. If the Democratic candidate is really interested in the P.C., he could begin by showing some real interest in his own constituent... WJP III? Maaybe he could go there?
7. for Carollo to pursue:Who was financing Walter's project? How much? How delivered? What happened -to money and project? Who were responsible?
8. First Bolivian National Eco-tourism Convention was held in Yungas in 2002. Were U.S.agencies/NGOs there? Why?
9. What happened to WJP III's ecotourist project & its funds? Could other agencies (ecotourist) have resented WJP III's efforts?


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