DSS Doing Immigration Enforcement, Not a Big Stretch From Visa/Passport Fraud

“Similarly, the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) has assigned approximately 600 special agents, or about 24% of its workforce, to assist in these operations, despite their usual focus on passport fraud and the protection of diplomats.” https://t.co/Hx0ccCEp2g

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) August 8, 2025

 

SFRC Hearings for State Department Nominees In Progress Now

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings for State Department nominations today, one of which is for Gentry Smith, the nominee to be Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security.

If confirmed - which is a given - he will be only the third former DS Agent to ever hold the post.

The RAND Corp Reports on Durations of Attacks on Western Diplomatic Facilities

The RAND Corporation published an interesting little report last week that has quite a bit of relevance to the physical security of U.S. diplomatic missions. Read it here: Seizures of Western Diplomatic Facilities, Historical Timelines, 1979–2019.

It addresses these research questions:

What were the durations of attacks on Western diplomatic facilities since 1979, and how much advance warning was there of each attack? And,

What implications do historical timelines of duration and advance warning of attacks on diplomatic facilities have for efforts to respond to such attacks?

The report found there have been "33 successful seizures of Western diplomatic facilities since 1979 ... The majority of attacks culminated in two hours or less, and over 90 percent culminated in six hours or less ... the median attack duration was four hours, and the average was 4.8 hours." 

Mind you, those incidents were not only at U.S. diplomatic missions. My general sense of the history of these things is that you'd see a longer average duration if only U.S. missions were considered.   

RAND supposes that "the lengthening of this [attack] duration could offer wider windows of opportunity to intervene," such as, intervention by U.S. military forces. Hum. Does that sound likely?  

RAND is the Defense Department's think tank, so far be it from me to question whatever they say about the chances of U.S. military intervention to an attack underway at a U.S. diplomatic mission. But, I can legitimately point out that the last time there was such an intervention was in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion in China. Can you think of another? I can't. 

There was an attempted intervention in Iran in 1979 - operation Eagle Claw - but it failed. There has not been another one since, and for what should be an obvious reason. The U.S. military is not a police force, and a U.S. embassy cannot just call 911 and expect an immediate response from the SWAT team. 

The closest thing to a military SWAT team is the Crisis Response Force (formerly known as the Commander's In-Extremis Force) and those, as we learned from the Benghazi Accountability Review Board report, are prepared to respond to a crisis within six hours. On the night of the Benghazi attack, the closest In-Extremis Force was training in Zagreb, Croatia, and the attack was long over before they could have arrived.      

The realities of time and space make it completely unrealistic to expect a timely intervention from the U.S. military to an attack underway at any of the 270+ U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. The Select Committee on Benghazi heard testimony from both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to that effect. Does anyone doubt it? If so, then I think you read too much Tom Clancy and play too many video games. 

All that said, please do read about The China Relief Expedition Joint Coalition Warfare in China Summer 1900, which is even better than the Charlton Heston movie version.  

Rep. Meeks: Show Me The Money

Yesterday's House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing Review of the FY 2019 State Department Budget Request got a bit heated when Representative Gregory Meeks (D - NY) pointed out to Secretary Pompeo that the administration's budget request for Diplomatic Security is only $1.6 billion for FY19, down from $2.1 billion last year, which compares poorly to $3 billion in the Obama years.

Meeks asked whether that dwindling of security funding indicates a lack of concern, the same question then-Representative Pompeo had once asked of his predecessor Hillary Clinton.

His reply: "Diplomatic security is not about dollars expended."

2018 Budget Request Released; OBO Walks Away Unharmed

The 2018 State Department's 2018 budget justification was released yesterday, and with it a press conference was conducted. There you go, news media! Don't say Silent Rex doesn't ever think about you.

Here's how the request impacts my good friends in the Office of Overseas Buildings Operations.

The 2018 budget request basically cuts the funding for Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance, and the much smaller Compound Security Upgrade program, in half. The ESCM request is for $1,142,200, which is $1,731,156 less than last year. Nevertheless, it provides sufficient funding for seven new capital construction projects in some of the dodgiest places on earth. You can see the project list on page 162.

The Compound Security Program goes down to $50,000,000, which is $50.8 million less than last year. That program "funds comprehensive security upgrade projects, major forced entry/ballistic resistant (FE/BR) door and window replacement projects, chemical/biological retrofit projects, and security upgrades for soft targets," it says on page 163.

Here's the Q and A on security funding from the press conference.

QUESTION: Hey. Thanks for doing this. Two quick questions. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is in charge of the appropriations for State, said, quote, “You have a lot of Benghazis in the making if this thing becomes law.” Can you sort of clarify what the funding will be like for Diplomatic Security around the world, for embassy security, and respond to that charge?

MR PITKIN: Sure. This is Doug Pitkin. I’ll start with the security question ... The administration has appreciated the strong Congressional support for the department security programs over the past several years. They also note with appreciation that they fully funded – in addition to the supplemental, they fully funded the previous standing requests for both our embassy security programs and Diplomatic Security for FY17.

However, in looking at FY18, I think we have to recognize that there are significant funds in the pipeline, partly because of the supplemental that was provided in December. Also, for example, OBO, the Office of Overseas Building Operations, has some 53 projects in the planning process and under construction. And so what we’re proposing in FY18 is – essentially is to use some of our current-year money to buy down or apply towards our construction program in FY18. This shows up as a cut or a reduction in the strict budget line as we’ve presented it, but we will still be able to support $2.2 billion in FY18 embassy construction and security upgrades for those posts in the greatest need of such upgrades. And so this, essentially, reflects the fact that we’re taking a slight reduction in capital investments because we have a lot of funding that we – has been previously appropriated.

So that looks like the 2018 request, plus the "significant funds in the pipeline" from current year funding and supplemental appropriations, will equal last year's funding level for new construction and security upgrades. If that budget makes it through Congress, OBO will get away unscathed, at least for next year. 

Political Violence Against Americans in 2016

Yesterday, the same day the Department released its budget justification for next year, it also released the annual report on Political Violence Against Americans in 2016.

To advance American interests and U.S. foreign policy, Diplomatic Security (DS) protects people, property, and information at more than 280 State Department posts worldwide. As a leader in international investigations, threat analysis, cyber security, counterterrorism, dignitary protection, and security technology, DS is the most widely represented U.S. security and law enforcement organization in the world.

Political Violence Against Americans is produced by the Bureau’s Directorate of Threat Investigations and Analysis. Created in May 2008, the Directorate of Threat Investigations and Analysis strives to improve DS's ability to detect and counter threats, and to upgrade the Bureau’s capacity to rapidly disseminate threat and security information to U.S. embassies, consulates, and the private sector.

Introduction

Since its inception in 1987, the goal of Political Violence Against Americans has been to provide the reader with an awareness of the hazards facing U.S. interests abroad by chronicling incidents of terrorism and political violence impacting U.S. citizens and facilities overseas. This publication is not an all-inclusive compendium of acts targeting U.S. interests, but rather a sampling of events involving private Americans and U.S. Government personnel (including locally hired foreign nationals serving at U.S. diplomatic missions), as well as U.S. diplomatic and private sector installations. Whenever possible, the goals and ideologies of those responsible have been included; however, in some cases, incidents have been included despite a lack of clarity as to the motive or direct target, due to the clear intent to cause harm. In addition, some incidents may have been omitted due to their sensitive nature, as have the names of American citizens for privacy purposes.

Read the whole report here. And, the report's Conclusion:

Historically, overseas environments have presented potential hazards to citizens and diplomats of the United States. As our nation’s diplomatic presence and its commercial tourist trade broadened considerably throughout the twentieth century, potential dangers and vulnerabilities increased as well. Over the past quarter-century in particular, the rise of international terrorism and criminal activity has contributed to a worldwide increase in incidents of violence against individuals, organizations, and facilities of the United States. In some cases, U.S. citizens have been victimized randomly; in other cases, assaults appear to have been intentional.

Political Violence Against Americans serves as a reminder that vigilance, preparation, and sensible discretion are valuable safeguards. Reasonable precautions can significantly minimize opportunities for those who would do harm to the people of the United States and its interests.

Throwback Thursday (1991, When DS Just Scraped By)

Gorby closes his speech notes, and resigns

It was a Wednesday, actually, but close enough. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the last leader of the Soviet Union, and the Red Flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.

With the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government stood down a lot of its national security programs. That didn't last long, and the post-Cold War euphoria is hard to even remember now, but while it lasted serious people questioned how much we needed to protect any of our national assets. The great national security threat we had been countering ever since the Truman Administration - assuming it ever really existed - surely existed no longer, as the thinking went. It was even supposed that terrorism would mostly end now that the Soviet Union would not be around to support groups like the Red Brigades and PLO.

Like I said, it didn't last long, but while it did, the USG cut funding.

See the excellent in-house history of Diplomatic Security for how its programs were affected after 1991.

The urgency to improve security after the Beirut attacks had faded, and for fiscal year (FY) 1988, the Reagan Administration requested $303 million for DS, well below the $458 million anticipated by the Bureau. Assistant Secretary Lamb admitted, “Each post is going to see cutbacks in every [security] program.” The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) set a ceiling of $303 million for DS’s budget in FYs 1989 and 1990 as well. In FY 1990, the total funds available to DS were only $180 million, and DS leaders questioned whether they could fulfill the security responsibilities authorized by Congress … The budget cuts, in part, reflected the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991.

Unlike today, there was no OCO funding back then to eke out the DS budget, but there was its predecessor, the Gulf War supplemental.

Meanwhile, tensions increased between the United States and Iraq during 1990 and 1991 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the neighboring nation of Kuwait, and DS experienced the odd situation of facing increased demands for its services, notwithstanding cuts in its budget … The Department estimated that it incurred an additional $22 million in expenses for increased diplomatic security and another $11 million in evacuation costs as a result of the [1991] Gulf War. Ironically, Congress agreed to large security supplemental appropriations for Operation Desert Storm while debating a reduction of budget appropriation for DS … The [appropriation] supplementals for the 1991 Gulf War did not arrest the trend of budget cuts and staff reductions faced by DS. DS shifted its goals and philosophy from total risk avoidance, as promoted in the mid-1980s, to reducing risk “to an acceptable level” where possible, i.e. risk management. This shift in approach, DS hoped, would allow it to direct its increasingly limited resources toward its most urgent security needs. DS, together with the Overseas Security Policy Group, undertook a wholesale review of existing overseas security standards.

Security standards are politically sacrosanct things, at least until enough time has passed since the last embassy attack and Congress’ interest dwindles, along with its willingness to appropriate funds.

By the spring of 1991, the budget cuts began affecting DS operations. Lamb’s successor, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Sheldon Krys noted that staffing shortages had forced him to employ front office personnel on protective details. Overseas support positions were not filled, and technical security countermeasures work fell behind. In March 1992, Under Secretary of State for Management John W. Rogers informed the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State that the Department faced a conflict between security measures demanded by its revised security standards and the Department’s ability to pay for implementing those standards.

And so the unavoidable happened, and security programs were reduced to match the resources allocated for them. That situation continued until 1998 and the next round of embassy attacks.

The Nigerian Land Deal That Didn't Happen

Site of Eko Atlantic on reclaimed land in Lagos

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

Fox News had a story the other day that purported to catch my good friends in OBO doing underhanded real estate deals at the behest of The Clinton Foundation. Briefly, it was alleged that OBO is acquiring property for a future new construction project in Lagos, Nigeria, as payback to a big-bucks contributor to the Clintons.

State Department sought land deal with Nigerian firm tied to Clinton Foundation:

EXCLUSIVE: Shortly after Hillary Clinton left the Obama administration, the State Department quietly took steps to purchase real estate in Nigeria from a firm whose parent company is owned by a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, records obtained by Fox News show.

On March 20, 2013, William P. Franklin, an “international realty specialist” at the State Department, emailed Mary E. Davis, an American diplomat stationed in Africa, instructing her to “put on Post letterhead” an “expression of interest” by the department in purchasing property at Eko Atlantic, a massive real estate development off the coast of Lagos. Franklin further instructed that the signed letter was to be “delivered to Ronald Chagoury.”

The draft letter, also obtained by Fox News, was undated and addressed to Chagoury care of his firm South Energyx Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the larger Chagoury Group that is spearheading the Eko Atlantic real estate venture. The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with “acquisition of the real property … [at] the asking price of $1,250 per square meter.”

Overtures to real estate developers from State Department officials scouting locations for embassies, consulates and other diplomatic facilities would ordinarily not arouse interest. But in this case, the budding transaction – never completed, the department now says – raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the brother and business partner, in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

-- Snip --

The State Department’s outreach to the Chagoury family, looking to buy property from the brothers, came less than a month after former President Clinton himself toured the Eko Atlantic project – for the second time. The first occasion was the ground breaking, in 2009, in which the former president participated. By all accounts, Eko Atlantic represents a staggeringly ambitious undertaking: the dredging of millions of tons of sand from the sea floor off Victoria Island and the creation of an estimated 3.5 square miles of new land, on which the Chagourys aim to establish what they call a “21st century city … for residential, commercial, financial and tourist development.”

-- Snip --

“A month after Bill Clinton visits a Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury-run land project in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department wants to buy the same land,” said David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose litigation against the State Department pried loose the Franklin email and accompanying letter. “Who could be so lucky? A major donor to the Clinton Foundation, that’s who.”

A few things jump out as wrong with this expose. First, no property has been acquired, or even selected. Fox's smoking gun email said that OBO seeks to confirm the asking price, from which all we can conclude is that the Eko Atlantic site is under consideration for purchase.

Second, the property in question is only one of several possibilities that were identified by an outsourced professional real estate search and subsequently narrowed down to a short list by OBO’s site selection process.

Third, the search for property to build on in Lagos has been underway for over five years, as we learned when this matter was addressed during a State Department press briefing, and funds for property acquisition were requested in the FY2013 budget for Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance. See page 14 of this budget justification:

The FY 2013 funding will also support the acquisition of sites where NEC [New Embassy Complex] projects are planned in future years. Sites are being sought in Baku, Azerbaijan; Bangui, Central African Republic; Lagos, Nigeria; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Shanghai, China.

So, in fact, the Department did not decide to buy a Chagoury-run property, much less decide to build a new Consulate-General in Lagos, one month after Bill Clinton visited the site.

Now, I will concede that Press Relations Director Elizabeth Trudeau could have been given better media guidance when she discussed this matter at a press conference, but what she said was completely correct.

MS TRUDEAU: So a few points, okay, that I’d like to make of this. As of today, as of right now, we have not contracted or acquired property for a new consulate in Lagos. The site search for a new consulate in Lagos began in 2011, as prioritized by the Capital Security Construction Program. Many of the potential sites under consideration by the department, to include the Eko Atlantic development, were identified by an independent international real estate firm, as is typical in site searches around the world. The Eko Atlantic site was identified, as I said, by an independent international real estate firm in 2012.

The problem was the word "prioritized," which apparently lead the press to assume that OBO has been trying to buy the Eko Atlantic site ever since 2011, when what Ms. Trudeau actually said was that U.S. Consulate-General Lagos became a priority for a new construction project at that time.

Ms. Trudeau would have been better served if OBO had provided her with an explanation of what the Capital Security Construction Program is, exactly. Specifically, that it is a list of 80 posts all of which are prioritized for replacement with new buildings according to their degree of security vulnerability, and therefore Lagos has to wait its turn behind other, higher, priorities before it gets funding.

There is no mystery about the list of top 80 posts. Here is an impeccable short description of the Capital Security Construction Program by Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy - the man himself - in testimony to Congress:

Each year, [Diplomatic Security] ranks all posts worldwide according to their security vulnerability and OBO uses this list to develop its top 80 Posts for the Department’s Capital Security Construction Program. These posts span all regions of the world. Replacement of these most vulnerable facilities is an ongoing effort.

And here is a recent OIG Report saying the same thing:

DS publishes a Vulnerability List, which ranks facilities according to their vulnerability across a wide variety of security threats on an annual basis, as mandated by SECCA. This list is then used to establish the Top 80 list of posts in which [New Embassy Compounds] are needed to reduce security vulnerabilities. The Top 80 list shows which posts are scheduled to receive a NEC. (Footnote, page 32)

SECCA is the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, which mandated that the Department annually rank-order the top 80 candidates for new embassy construction funding. You can read the relevant text here. It's public law. Like I said, there is nothing mysterious or sensitive about it, and explaining it to the press might have helped Ms. Trudeau get her message across.

Ms. Trudeau's other big talking point likewise seemed to go over the heads of the press. OBO has an extensive and highly structured site selection and due diligence process that does, indeed, take a few years to complete.

"Our site search process, speaking specifically about this but also generally on how we operate, is managed by career real estate professionals in the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations with input from independent real estate firms and other department stakeholders, to include Diplomatic Security and overseas post. Career professionals evaluate and score potential properties under consideration before any property is put under contract. This robust process was followed in Lagos, as it is around the world.

Again, her media guidance could have noted that OBO's very extensive site selection process is spelled out in 15 FAM 470, which is a public source of information the Department makes available online. Hey, Matt Lee, read it for yourself instead of scoffing about how replacing our decrepit building in Lagos "can’t be that much of a priority if it’s taken five years." Is that Foreign Affairs Manual not written in English?

Fox concluded its story with John Bolton, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor, finding this real estate transaction "very unusual."

“The impression left is that there’s favoritism involved,” Bolton said. “And it’s just very unusual in State Department real estate and housing transactions overseas to have this kind of focus on someone with such clear financial connections to even the departed secretary of state. Normally, there’s much more competitive activity involved, [of] which we haven’t seen any evidence from the State Department.”

Well Ambassador Bolton, did Fox News ask for such evidence? Maybe it ought to. I think OBO could provide it.

Just as an aside, let me note that our government’s domestic real estate transactions can also give an impression of political favoritism sometimes. Consider the sweet deal that the U.S. Postal Service concluded with a real estate firm headed by the husband of Senator Diane Feinstein.

CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), of which Sen. Feinstein’s husband is the Chairman and largest individual owner, brokers the sale of thousands of unwanted Post office properties and, by the terms of its contract, gets to represent and profit from both sides of those transactions, the seller and the buyer. Last year the Postal Service's OIG found:

Management continues to allow CBRE to collect commissions from lessors for lease negotiations in addition to payments from the Postal Service based on performance targets for lease renewals. Management also allows dual agency transactions, enabling CBRE to represent and negotiate for both the Postal Service and buyers or lessors. These actions are inherently risky and create conflicts of interest whereby CBRE may not negotiate property sales and lease transactions in the Postal Service’s best interest or may capture opposing party fees from the Postal Service.

Oh, sure, Feinstein’s husband is not the sole owner of CBRE, and the Postal Service contract is a drop in bucket for them, and it was a competitive bid, and so on. You can find exculpatory material here. Nevertheless, if that deal had happened in any foreign country, I’d automatically assume it was corrupt. When it happens here, maybe a softer term for it is crony capitalism.

DS Female Attrition: "How Would You Know If You're Not Even Looking?"

Diplopundit discusses the recent - recent as of a couple weeks ago, as I recall - Sounding Board post by an employee who had attended the Safety Overseas Seminar and encountered what she believed to be incomplete instruction and demeaning behavior. See A Joke That Wasn’t, and a State Department Dialogue That Is Long Overdue.

Much of the Sounding Board post and its subsequent comments were directed towards Diplomatic Security, which has yet to respond in any way, so far as I can tell.

Diplopundit concludes with a question about female recruitment and retention in DS:

We asked the State Department about the gender composition of DSS agents in Diplomatic Security: 90.18% male and 9.82% female. We also asked about the attrition rate by gender at the bureau. Below is what we’re officially told:

DS reports that they do not have information related to special agent attrition rate by gender. They do not keep those statistics, but note that the overall Special Agent attrition rate for 2015 was 3.66%.

The State Department’s DGHR should be able to run these numbers. That’s a very low attrition rate but — don’t you want to know who and why these employees are leaving? If a bureau is overwhelmingly male, and if the entire attrition rate is, for instance, composed of all female employees, aren’t you going to wonder why?

But how would you know if you’re not even looking?

The InHerSight reviews [here] are pretty broad but are troubling nonetheless. The first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that there is a problem. Is there?

Who’s going to volunteer to look into this if we can’t even get S/OCR to respond to a public inquiry?

So less than ten percent of DS Special Agents are female? That seems to match my casual observation. (The percentage appears to be even lower among Security Engineering Officers, I think.) Consider the kinda-sorta comparable percentage of women in the U.S. military, which is 14.6 for the active military and 19.5 percent for the reserves.

Either few women are entering agent classes, or else they're leaving in very high numbers. Whichever it is, I agree that DS and DGHR ought to be interested in why.

Is 'The Benghazi Chill' Lifting in Washington?

I'm amazed that this article got published, especially in an election year.

A reasonable discussion of risk-aversion and diplomatic missions? One that doesn't make ridiculous statements about the Benghazi attack? And, most of all, one that suggests Washington politics is to blame for hobbling our efforts to advance our national interests overseas?

Read it here: Benghazi chill ripples through State Department:

A survey of 1,600 active-duty State Department employees released in April by the American Foreign Service Association found that more than half believed that "post-Benghazi, it is now more difficult for employees to effectively engage overseas." Twenty-five percent of diplomatic security agents said the same thing.

Hear a voice of reason:

The job “has always come with risk, which we are fully prepared to accept,” said Barbara Stephenson, the head of the American Foreign Service Association and a 30-year veteran of the Foreign Service.

“What we ask in return is a dedicated effort to mitigate danger where possible,” she added, “including through providing the resources needed to accomplish our mission safely while serving abroad.”

And the icing on the cake is a prediction by my favorite adult in the room, Ambassador Ronald Neumann:

“Rightly or wrongly, it has become a political issue for the Republicans,” said Neumann, the former ambassador to Afghanistan, who has been appointed to top posts by presidents of both parties.

“But I think it has made the issue of casualties so sensitive that that may carry over into the next administration — whichever party it is.”

Surely, the issue of casualties will remain sensitive. But, could this discussion be an indication that the political establishment is finally about to recover its equilibrium, and may be ready to once again accept the reality that diplomacy is an inherently risky enterprise?

Little Oversight at Today's Hearing, But Some Humor, Some Aggravation

Raise your hand if you're fed up with Jason Chaffetz

The hearing was unenlightening, and the performance of our elected officials met my low expectations. OBO Director Muniz, however, did much better this time than she did in last year's hearing on design excellence. The Committee website might link to the video in case you want to watch the hearing tonight. Personally, I'll be surfing Netflix.

Here are the highlights.

GAO's witness, Mr. Courts, opened by making his two big points. First, that a purported lack of strategic facilities planning on the part of Overseas Buildings Operations has led to challenges in addressing the embassy’s future facility needs. (Say, did the U.S. Government as a whole ever have a larger strategic plan for its presence in Kabul? If so, I missed that.)

Ms. Muniz rebutted that by saying OBO did, indeed, do strategic planning, and re-planning as our national requirements in Kabul changed. She backed that up by noting that office space requirements grew from 500-some desks at the beginning of the endless Kabul project to over 1,000-some desks now. Also, there was the rather large matter of Pakistan closing its border and cutting off our main supply route to Kabul. Lots of material changes that were not known and could not have been anticipated when the project began, in other words.

Courts' second big point concerned the State Department's rejection of GAO's recommendation that it create explicit security standards for application to temporary buildings. He noted that State says it applies the same standards to temporary buildings as to permanent ones, in so far as that is possible, and waives standards case-by-case when it is not possible. However, Courts went on, in his interpretation of State's position on temporary buildings, it is never possible to fully meet those standards except in permanent, or at least purpose-built, buildings.

That one was more in Greg Starr's ballpark, and he answered it by saying that it is, in fact, possible to approximate or even fully meet security standards in temporary buildings. For example, by constructing a hard shell around a soft-skin trailer. Or by fielding hardened trailers that actually do meet 'permanent building' security standards albeit in a temporary platform. There is more than one way to get to the same level of physical protection, including down and dirty options that have been expressly developed for expeditionary situations. As he said in his opening statement, “simply put, our physical security countermeasures work.” And so they have, through several unsuccessful attacks on our presence in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Chairman Jason Chaffetz returned again and again to blaming OBO for not implementing cost containment recommendations that were made in a 'value engineering' study of the Kabul project. Chaffetz, who opening the hearing by modestly claiming "I'm not an expert" about these matters, certainly played one on TV when it came to OBO's management practices.

Like Chaffetz, I’m not an expert either - or am I? - but unlike Chaffetz, I have participated in value engineering studies, and I’m on Ms. Muniz's side here. She noted that no gain in cost containment from the VE recommendations would have outweighed the additional time imposed on the project as a result. What's more, any VE savings would have vanished in the wake of major impacts such as the closure of the Pakistani border to OBO shipments. No harm no foul.

I completely agree with my good friends in OBO on this. In a normal construction project there is a time and a place for VE studies, but not so in an urgent, constantly changing, effort being conducted in a war zone. "So close your rule book on that one, Poindextor,” to quote White Goodman from the great movie Dodgeball.

In other highlights, Representative Mica expressed amazement at the $2 billion cost of the Kabul projects, especially in comparison to the paltry Gross National Product of Afghanistan. "This must be the biggest infrastructure project in Afghanistan” he guessed. Well, maybe, except for the actual infrastructure projects that have cost USAID $17 billion since 2002, and the futher $21 billion in DOD's reconstruction spending (google Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report 15-40 SP for details). Did Rep Mica forget about those? It had been a long morning and was getting close to lunchtime, after all.

Rep Lynch provided a refreshing change of pace during his question period by going in the opposite direction and asking why OBO doesn't add a helicopter landing zone to the Kabul project at this late date. There has not been enough infrastructure or construction costs yet for his taste.

Late in the hearing, Chaffetz had the considerable gall to say that State's Assistant Secretary Starr was not testifying truthfully regarding, if I recall correctly, the matter of protecting temporary buildings. He offered to straighten Starr out in a classified setting. That's bold talk from some twerp who was a marketer for a Utah-based pyrimid scheme business before he got elected. If Congressional oversight hearings were not fundamentally a harmless form of Kabuki theater, Starr might have taken offense.

Rep Ron DeSantis of Florida broke ranks during his question period and frankly stated that he doesn’t care about Afghanistan construction costs. Instead, he wants to score a boondoggle project by forcing State to place its new hard skills training center in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in southern Georgia rather than in Fort Pickett Virginia where it belongs. Starr explained why that won't work. DeSantis didn't care. His colleague from Georgia, Rep “Buddy” Carter, backed up DeSantis on this. Who the hell cares how much you waste in Kabul, he all but said, we want that sweet, sweet, money spent in Georgia.

Towards the end of the hearing, Rep Russell wanted to know how Starr justifies the need for 5,500 USG employees to be located in Kabul in the first place. What? He wants Starr to justify that? He’s the elected official, so that question ought to go to him. What programs did he and his fellow Congressmen and women vote for? We have 5,500 people in Kabul because our elected representatives wanted them there.

Actually, that was the whole hearing in a nutshell right there. The witnesses ought to have asked the Congressmen why our national mission requirements in Afghanistan have been repeatedly changed on them. Why have we been fighting some kind of a war in Afghanistan for four times as long as this nation was in WWII, and what exactly are we doing?

Figure that out and you’ll have your answer as to why embassy facility planning wasn’t simple and consistent over those many years.

House Oversight Commitee Hearing Tomorrow on Embassy Kabul Construction Delays

Architect's-eye view of U.S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan (GAO report)

It will be Must-See TV tomorrow morning when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a hearing on Kabul. Representative Jason Chaffetz will school OBO Director Lydia Muniz and Diplomatic Security Assistant Secretary Gregory Starr on how to do construction work in a war zone with maximum efficiency, because, you know, like, that's something he would know all about.

Here's the hearing announcement: Construction Costs and Delays at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The stated purpose of the hearing is to "examine the State Department’s risk management practices overseas, focusing on construction of the new U.S. embassy compound in Kabul, Afghanistan" and also to "continue the Oversight Committee’s examination of safety and security of U.S personnel serving in embassies and consulates around the world."

Here's the GAO report that will be the factual basis for the substance of the hearing. Cheffetz will supply everything else a good entertaining hearing needs, like melodrama and histrionics.

Was It All That Bad To Have a Few American Center Libraries Torched? Discuss

A Golden Oldie, USIS Library Karachi

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Two weeks ago the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD) repeated some very old arguments that blame the current decline in public diplomacy programs on the post-1985 creation of security standards for overseas diplomatic missions, as well as the replacement of old embassy office buildings with so-called Fortress Embassies, and - most of all - a 1999 law that prohibits having stand-alone American Centers outside those new embassies without a waiver signed by the SecState. I sympathize with the goal of retaining stand-alone American Centers, but the ACPD's arguments are badly in need of updating and fact-checking.

Which brings me to last Tuesday's post at Whirled View about American Diplomacy: What Went Wrong and What Can Be Done About It? Once again, it seems, those Fortress Embassies are What Went Wrong to public diplomacy programs.

The post 9/11 explosion of fortress embassies [phrasing?] on the outskirts of cities has just exacerbated US diplomats’ inability to function abroad effectively. Diplomacy is foremost about interacting with people - and when diplomats are sidelined to distant suburbs and the people they need to talk with work in the city center and are not welcome in Embassy offices chances are that those discussions and meetings will be far and few between, if they take place at all.

-- snip --

The report [of the Academy of American Diplomacy, American Diplomacy at Risk] ignores America’s fortress embassies but they too are a part of the equation.

What good does it do to have crusader castles and even the most qualified diplomats based in the equivalents of the outer reaches of the universe? True, such embassies provide a single hardened location supposedly easier to defend from terrorists but wouldn’t it be better - perhaps even safer - if certain functions were separated into smaller, less visible but more accessible units scattered throughout a city? Was it even all that bad to have a very few American Center libraries torched over the decades as happened in volatile places like Pakistan years ago but the rest of the larger mission - including the Embassy and Consulates - kept out of harm’s way?

The not-all-your-eggs-in-one basket argument has merit, I think, at least in the comparatively safe places where the host government is capable of providing the U.S. mission with a reasonable level of protection. Where it isn't capable or willing to do so, then all our eggs are better off collected into one big Fortress protected by our own resources.

As for the rhetorical question about torched American Center libraries, well, someone must be kidding. Was it all that bad? Yes, it was pretty damn bad when mobs attacked our libraries in Pakistan in 1979, with loss of lives in every case. And it didn't act as a safety value for the rest of the mission, either, since our Embassy and Consulates were also attacked. The only difference was that the Libraries in Lahore and Rawalpindi were more vulnerable than the rest of the mission facilities, and so they were more easily destroyed. Mobs also tried to burn the Libraries in Karachi and Peshawar, but those were collocated with our Consulate office buildings and the attackers were stopped by massive police interventions.

A survivor of the 1979 attack in Lahore described it to CNN in 2012:

A mob of perhaps 5,000 marched to the American Center, burned it and then marched to the consulate and attacked us. Battled by 300 Pakistani policemen, they burned our cars and tried, unsuccessfully, to burn down the consulate itself -- with us inside. There were enough police to keep the crowd at bay, but not enough to disperse them quickly. After several hours, the crowd left and the police took us out in an armed convoy.

The attack on the Lahore Library was described in detail by one of its local employees, Tanweer Ahmed Khan, in an article he wrote for a USIA commemorative history, Fire and Luck at the American Center, Lahore:

On November 21, 1979, in Lahore, Pakistan, the three American USIS officers — BPAO Douglas H. Smith, BCAO V.Miro Morville, and Program Officer Lester R. Velez — were out for lunch as was FSN Administrative Specialist Mohammad Ajmal Khan. Suddenly, a mob of 5,000 rioters attacked the American Center. At that time, there were no high protective walls, no steel fences on perimeter walls, no guard booths, and no security doors on the third floor where the staff worked.

When the mob first appeared, our security guard in the lobby pulled the steel shutter down to close off the entrance. In response, the crowd tore down the electrical poles and used them to break open the shutters and force their way into the building. Rais-uddin Zuberi, our budget analyst and second in command in the Administrative Section, called Ajmal Khan at his residence and informed him of the situation. Ajmal told him to have the staff move immediately onto the roof of the building, which was the designated safe haven.

What really impressed me at that time was that, within minutes, Ajmal, without caring for his own life, showed up at the American Center building — entering through a back service entrance — to help us out of the life-threatening situation. He masterfully took charge of defending the lives of the 50 staff members and the visiting library patrons, who were afraid to leave the building.

Ajmal led the group to the third floor and then onto the roof. He counted the staff members and asked if anyone was missing. Someone said that Umar Din, a library security guard, was missing. Everyone got panicky. Fortunately, a few of us who had returned from lunch just before the attack had seen Umar Din having lunch at a nearby restaurant. By this time, the crowd was swarming inside the American Center building. They set the lower floors of the building on fire.

The invaders then climbed to the library, destroying books and furniture. Huge black clouds of smoke traveled to our offices on the third floor and then circulated in the air-conditioning ducts. The smoke was so great, they started to jump out of the building. Some of them were injured. After a while, the leaders of the mob announced that all Pakistanis should come down and promised we would not be harmed. However, the Americans would not be spared. Since there were no Americans in the building, we evacuated without any trouble.

Twenty years have passed since this incident, but I still think about what would have happened if an American officer had been with us in the building. None of us would have wanted to leave an American in a life-threatening situation. I always thank God that no American was in the building at that time.

Was that really all that bad? Yes, it was, and it would have been much worse for the U.S. and local employees as well as the Library patrons if the Americans had not been out at lunch when the attack began.

The American employees were present when the American Center in Islamabad was attacked by a mob in 1989:

Five demonstrators were shot and killed Sunday and 80 people were seriously injured when Pakistani riot police opened fire on thousands of protesters attacking the U.S. cultural center here after a demonstration against the British novel "The Satanic Verses" turned into a rock-throwing anti-American melee.

None of the three Americans or 15 Pakistani employees inside the center at the time were hurt, but thousands of dollars in damage was done to the building, which houses an American library and sponsors cultural events designed to reinforce U.S.-Pakistani ties.

"It was a peaceful demonstration that went wrong," said Kent Obee, head of the U.S. Information Service in Pakistan. Obee was inside the building waiting to receive a petition from the protesters when the riot erupted.

A key factor in the survival of our employees in that attack was that the Center had been physically hardened up Fortress Embassy-style by USIA's in-house security element. Nevertheless, five protestors were shot to death literally on the door step of the American Center on that occasion.

Ten years later, the same American Center in Islamabad was fired on with incendiary and fragmentation rockets, injuring a local guard and nearly killing a Library employee. Not long after our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Center was closed - given up on as an indefensible location and a magnet for attacks - and public diplomacy operations moved into the U.S. Embassy compound inside Islamabad's diplomatic enclave, where they basically withered away.

Of course, all that and more happened in Pakistan, and Pakistan is an especially difficult situation. I'd be curious to know how many physical attacks - drive-by shootings, mobs, bombs, arson, and so on - have occurred at all of our public diplomacy platforms around the world over time. I'd be even more curious to know whether those platforms have suffered attacks out of proportion to whatever percentage they are of all U.S. mission non-collocated facilities. If, just to make up numbers for the sake of illustration, they are ten percent of our non-collocated facilities but account for twenty percent of all attacks on those facilities, then that would tell us something about their comparative risk. Couldn't the ACPD collect those statistics? That might help them more than a White Paper full of old arguments when it comes to engaging the State Department on ways to preserve stand-alone American Centers.

To return to Whirled View's post, it concluded with this plea:

Wouldn’t it make more sense for economic and commercial functions to be located in financial and business districts? After all, one fifth of all American jobs now depend on international trade.

A cultural section in an American Center near major educational and arts institutions, information sections close to Fleet Streets and political officers as close to the Foreign Ministries, presidential offices and parliament as possible? Even with the Internet, the most important business takes places directly and confidentially between people - not transmitted to the world via wifi.

In short, “American Diplomacy at Risk” provides the opening for a foreign affairs discussion that needs to begin now. It is nearly 14 years since 9/11. Will anyone listen?

Now, 9/11 had nothing to do with the “explosion" of Fortress Embassies. The Capital Security Construction Program was mandated by a law that was passed in 1999, although it wasn’t until 2001 that new construction kicked into high gear. See this publicly available source of information, pages 11 and 12, for a concise summary of that program. And, even though security was the prime motive, that program also addresses a long-term problem of decrepit and unsafe diplomatic office buildings; ones that are too small, too old, too expensive to maintain, fire traps, and seismic risks. Haiti and Kathmandu are just two posts that have benefited from new offices and residences that didn’t fall down when earthquakes struck.

And by the way, can we please stop exaggerating the remoteness of all those new embassies and consulates? After browsing the nineteen press kits for completed new embassies that are available on OBO's website, I see that few of them describe new missions in distant suburbs or outer reaches of the universe. At least six of those new embassy locations sound like they are very accessible.

In Rabat, the new embassy is located three miles from the city center on a major thoroughfare. In Vientiane it is south of downtown, but with a stand-alone American Center in the downtown core. (How about that? Someone must have requested a waiver of the collocation requirement.) In Belgrade it is south of the city center. In Cotonou “the new Embassy will be located on an 8.8 acre site along one of the town’s main thoroughfares - Boulevard de la Marina. The site is in close proximity to other diplomatic facilities and ministerial buildings near the town center, and 2 kilometers away from the airport and seaport.” In Guangzhou it is in the central business district adjacent to the Pearl River.

Additionally, the new embassy that is now under construction in London is inside the city, although on the edge. In Pristina, OBO is breaking ground on a new embassy inside the central city.

In Mexico City, which is the biggest project OBO has going on after London, the new embassy location is just as centrally located as the current Embassy and American Center. The embassy's press release noted that "the Polanco site was chosen due to its location, with proximity to government offices, services, and major residential areas."

Google maps tells me the construction site is only 4.5 km from the current embassy. Would any prospective Public Diplomacy client in Mexico City find it any harder to get to the New Polanco site than to the current Ben Franklin Library in the Zona Rosa? I can't see how.

Thirty years after the first Fortress Embassies were built, it is high time to acknowledge that OBO has refined the process and greatly improved its product.

In fairness to OBO, it seems that it has listened. Now, it's time for our public diplomacy advocates to say something new.

History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security

As we lead up to the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1916, the in-house history of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State has been made available in E-Book formats:

The new Diplomatic Security history, professionally researched and written by the State Department Historian’s Office, is an authoritative reference source and an archival record of the many critical duties, milestone events, prominent personalities, and worldwide locations with which DS has been associated over the past century. The first comprehensive, detailed history ever prepared, it is dedicated to the men and women who have served the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and its predecessors – the Office of Security (SY) and the Office of the Chief Special Agent of the U.S. Department of State – from the inception in 1916 up to the present. A Table of Contents and a master Index make the book easy to search for specific information purposes.

Click the link above for MOBI, EPUB, and AZW3 formats, or click this one for the PDF version.

You do realize, of course, that this document makes it possible to reference quite a few Matters of Official Concern from a publicly available source?

Shall We Place Overseas Buildings Operations Under a Security Boss?

I like the idea - don't get me wrong - but I wouldn't bet money on it being implemented. Like oil and water, OBO and DS don't mix.

Of course, there is always the chance that the next House Oversight Committee hearing on Design Excellence will blow up so badly that a hostile takeover of OBO starts to look good to the big players in that headquarters building across the river from Rosslyn. Be still, my beating heart!

Here's the unofficial restructuring proposal that has me all a-twitter.

Time for Change: Restructuring the State Department for the 21st Century:

WhirledView author Patricia Kushlis has written extensively on the corruption and incompetence that plague State's personnel system. She has also described in depth the longstanding absence of both internal and external oversight. However, there is another problem that must be addressed: the antiquated, bloated and irrational structure of management operations at State. In this article I map out a new management structure that would address these and other problems.

Because the M portfolio is too large and too diverse to be managed as one entity by one person, it should be broken up and reconfigured into more logical sub-elements. The existing Under Secretary for Management title and portfolio would be eliminated and four new Under Secretaries created – each overseeing a portfolio of related functions in which he/she would have expertise. These four Under Secretaries would report to the Deputy Secretary for Management.

--snip --

Create an Under Secretary for Security Affairs

This portfolio would group together Diplomatic Security, Information Resources Management and Overseas Buildings Operations.

In years gone by, the State Department's security concerns rested largely with threats to personnel and facilities overseas. However, in today's world, the globalization of terror and the growing ability of enemies of the United States to hack our most secure computers present new threats.

In the face of these broader challenges, it only makes sense to group together the safety of personnel and facilities, embassy construction (which is heavily dependent on security standards) and the protection of classified and unclassified information into one bureaucratic domain. The cross-cutting use of security procedures and standards, threat assessments and other intelligence for these three functions would bring greater effectiveness.

Of course the M portfolio is too large and diverse to be managed by one person. Nevertheless, it is, and it has been for a very long time. I wish the best of luck to anyone who tries to break Patrick Kennedy's iron rice bowl into four pieces. Bring Kryptonite.

Fun fact from the past: State Department information programs were placed under the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security in 1989, and the unhappy marriage lasted until 1992. So the idea of merging information programs with overseas buildings and security isn't altogether new and untried.

According to this publicly available source of information, Sheldon J. Krys, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security from 1989-1992, brought the Office of Information Management (IM) into his portfolio for all the right reasons. However, the merger did not last after his departure.

The Reagan White House also issued NSDD-211, which placed the Department of State in charge of the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service (DTS), which was largely managed by the Office of Communications but worked closely with DS to maintain its security.

Then, in 1989, in an effort to improve information security and better coordination of information, the Department, through the efforts of Assistant Secretary Krys, transferred IM to DS. The IM transfer incorporated OC’s Office of Security (OC/S) and all of OC’s electronic and technical countermeasures into DS. Also, OC’s Field Inspection Teams went to DS, as did the Shield Enclosure program for post communications centers.

The merger of IM and DS proved unpopular and difficult, and the rapid pace of innovation in computer technologies aggravated the situation. Several officials in OC and IM did not like the transfer. One OC/S veteran, Robert Surprise, who was studying at the National Defense University in 1990, devoted his research paper to a reassessment of IM’s transfer to DS. Surprise concluded that the merger did not achieve its intended goals, and that “user and IM communities have expressed dissatisfaction with the new structure” because it was “too bureaucratic, unresponsive, and a hindrance to progress.” The Office of the Inspector General used Surprise’s paper to argue that IM should be removed from DS and put back into the Bureau of Administration. Krys, who had favored the initial transfer, concluded after just two years, that IM should be its own bureau (at least theoretically). After three years, Department officials approved IM’s move back to the Bureau of Administration. While most information management and communications offices left, the security-oriented offices like Computer Security remained with DS.

Okay, so the merger of DS with the Geek Squad didn't work. Geeks with guns? But, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried again with DS and Overseas Buildings Operations. Please. Oh, please.

Kicking' Down the Door

If you've ever wanted to know how to kick down a door, check out this good advice from The Art of Manliness:

Check to see which way the door opens by checking the hinges. If the door opens towards you, kicking it down is going to be next to impossible. Kicking a door down is best employed on a door that swings away from you.

Kick to the side of where the lock is mounted (near the keyhole). This is typically the weakest part of the door.

Using a front kick, drive the heel of your foot into the door. Give the kick forward momentum and keep your balance by driving the heel of your standing foot into the ground. Don’t kick the lock itself; this could break your foot.

The wood should begin to splinter. Today most doors are made of soft wood and are hollow. They should give way fairly easily, especially since the lock’s deadlock bolt extends only an inch or less into the door frame. Older, completely solid doors will prove more resistant. Just keep on kicking until the door gives way and you can save the day.

That is all good advice, provided we're talking about ordinary doors. But what about the doors on Fortress Embassies? Will those cave in after one or two manly kicks?

No, they won't. In fact, they are tested to ensure they will stay up under prolonged attack. Take a look at these videos.

And not only the doors. The windows hold up just as well.

Referring back to The Art of Manliness, as it rightly notes ... If the door opens towards you, kicking it down is going to be next to impossible. All those Fortress Embassy doors open toward the outside, away from the protected side of the door. That's, like, Fortress Design 101.

Note also ... The wood should begin to splinter. Today most doors are made of soft wood and are hollow. Fortress Embassy doors are made of steel, not wood. Hundreds of pounds of steel.

Forced-entry tools, manly ones (photo from Oregon Ballistics Lab)

All of which brings me to this press release from the good people at the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations about new contract awards to companies that will install those doors and windows. 

Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations Announces Final Selections for Forced-Entry/Ballistic-Resistant Contract:

The Department of State has awarded three Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Worldwide Design-Build Forced-Entry/Ballistic-Resistant (FE/BR) contracts in support of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO).

The solicitation was set aside to 8(a) Small Business Concerns to support the Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) Business Development Program and help the Department meet its small business goals.

Awards were made to the following 8(a) certified companies:

Edifice, LLC

Hardline–Nati Construction, LLC Joint Venture

Trison–Desbuild Joint Venture

The scope of these contracts includes installation, repair and replacement of FE/BR products, including doors, windows, opaque panels, glazing panels, and vault doors.

The government anticipates additional Worldwide Design-Build FE/BR contract awards to be issued under a separate solicitation, set aside to Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUB Zone) small business concerns.

The duration of each contract is one base year, with four option years. The overall ceiling amount for each contract is $50 million.

The bottom line is that these Forced-Entry/Ballistic Resistant products really work. All the designing, the testing, and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on installing them have paid off in lives that were not lost during mob and terrorist attacks. In Jeddah, Damascus, Sanaa, Tunis, Khartoum, and elsewhere, attackers have spent hours trying but failing to get past those secure door and windows and inside our embassy office buildings.
 

Failed forced-entry attack in Jeddah (photo from State.gov)

So those OBO contracts include the "repair and replacement" of FE/BR products? Given the steady pace at which mobs keep attacking our embassies, the repair and replacement business ought to be steady work.

These guys might not be the brightest of attackers, but they sure do try hard.

Go ahead, keep on hitting those windows until you wear yourself out. We'll just replace them.