Archive - September 4, 2012

Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02; Madagascar 2002-03) spent the  summer writing about the $400 million “Mini-Madoff,” and the wife left behind. The 6,000 word piece is the feature of the September Sarasota Magazine. Eyes Wide Shut Peg Nadel-and others who benefited from her husband Art Nadel’s Ponzi scheme-say they never knew what he was doing. But did they just refuse to see the truth? Award-winning journalist Tony D’Souza finds the answer may lie in a mysterious black box at the heart of the crime. On a quiet afternoon in June, Peg Nadel, 76, paces the kitchen of her east Sarasota home, suffering through a debt collection call. “My friend,” she sighs into the phone, “my status has been in the trash. I can’t make any monthly payments. I struggle just to live. Hopefully in a month things will change.” In a month, a judge will decide whether Nadel-who has filed . . .

We are all aware of the recent tragedies that have resulted in missteps and misadventures for the Peace Corps agency and PCVs. Those missteps got me thinking of what were the first incidents that attracted press attention and had naysayers declaring, “See, I told you so!” I found three such incidents within the first year, 1961. The first involved a Peace Corps Trainee, Charles Kamen, who allegedly applauded the House Un-American Activities film “Operation Abolition” in the wrong place while attending a Rotary Club meeting in Miami, Florida. Extraordinary pressures were brought to bear on the agency to summarily drop Kamen from Training. Shriver, however, decided to keep him in Training and permit him to be evaluated on the basis of all the facts in the same manner as other Trainees. What Shriver was trying to show was that the Peace Corps would not react to pressures or pressure groups in the determination of who should . . .