Profile: David Greenlee

Distinguished Careers in U.S. Diplomacy

I’m sharing sketches of the U.S. diplomats featured in Profiles in Service (ADST / Arlington Hall Press, 2026) every Tuesday; later in the week I’ll share a related moment linking Peace Corps service to diplomatic efforts, some simple, some strange, some extraordinary.

Bolivia Insider

David Greenlee learned Bolivian culture from both the rural and urban perspectives. He worked as a community development volunteer outside Cochabamba his first year, taught English in the capital the next.

The idea was that they would identify what they needed and what they could do for themselves. They would demand assistance from the central government for the rest. The Peace Corps volunteers would work with the campesinos. The USAID people would help the central government deliver. This would stimulate development and social integration. It was a sweet theory. It didn’t work in Vietnam, and not very well in Bolivia.

—David N. Greenlee: PCV Bolivia 1965-67; U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay 1999-03 and to Bolivia 2003-06

Dispirited at the lack of progress, unconvinced the Peace Corps model really worked, he found something more life-affirming at his second site in La Paz. There he met—and later married—Clara Murillo, descendent of Bolivia’s first freedom fighter, Pedro Domingo Murillo.

After mustering out of the Peace Corps, Greenlee’s draft number was called and he entered the U.S. Army’s Officer Candidate School. He served as an officer with the Blackhorse Regiment in Vietnam, bringing Life photojournalist (and Beatles photographer) Robert Whitaker to safety during an incursion into Cambodia.

Among other assignments, two State Department tours in Bolivia during the ‘70s and ‘80s, as political officer and Deputy Chief of Mission, ultimately set him up for an ambassadorship in La Paz*. This followed his first ambassadorship in Asunción, Paraguay.

But a swirl of disinformation inventing a past for Greenlee as a spy, stirred by the fervidly populist and anti-American President Evo Morales, made it impossible even for someone with Greenlee’s close personal ties to the country to really bring the U.S.-Bolivia relationship around.

*Ambassador Robert Gelbard was the first RPCV to serve as ambassador in his country of Peace Corps service (Bolivia 1964-66; 1988-91)

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Read more from Greenlee’s oral history with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training:

Full Career

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