Archive - February 24, 2017

  For those who don’t know, Charlie Peters (PCW/staff 1961–65) put together the first self-evaluation unit in the federal government for the Peace Corps. It would develop by the government into the Inspector General’s Office that we have today. It grew out of an idea of another very early staff member Bill Haddad who told Shriver, as Coates Redmon relates in her book on the early days of the agency, Come As You Are, “Let’s get our own guys to go out there and find out what’s goin’ on, and if there’s something wrong, we’ll be the first to know and can correct it before the press gets onto it and starts screamin’.” Charlie Peters was named head of the Evaluation Division, and known in the agency as “The burr under the saddle.” He hired first-rate journalists and writers, including Fletcher Knebel, Mark Harris, Richard Rovere, Calvin Trillin, James Michener, Stan . . .