Meet RSO Frank Dunniger, U.S. Embassy Beirut

While I'm still thinking about the curious lack of Hollywood interest in the Diplomatic Security Service, I must note the earliest movie portrayal of a U.S. Embassy Regional Security Officer (RSO), which was in the 1972 Cold War flick Embassy. I'm sure that movie never made it to DVD, but I'm hoping to catch it again on television some night.

The movie was set in an unnamed "developing country in the Middle East" but was actually filmed in Beirut, using the very impressive American Life Insurance Building, which I think is still standing, as a substitute for the real U.S. Embassy. The real embassy, which was small and plain like most of our overseas diplomatic facilities, would never have lived up to the Hollywood image of an embassy.

Embassy had a little something for everybody. Richard Roundtree - Shaft himself - was a CIA officer, Ray Milland was the distinguished Ambassador, Max von Sydow was a Russian defector taking refuge at the embassy, and Chuck Connors was a KGB assassin posing as a U.S. Air Force officer. Broderick Crawford played the embassy security officer, Frank Dunniger, who had to capture and hide the KGB man while the CIA smuggled the defector out of town.

I just loved Broderick Crawford as the RSO. Gravel-voiced, and looking just like he did in Highway Patrol, I could easily believe him as a 1950s-era American cop turned RSO. After all, Crawford pretty much defined the look of the 1950s-era American cop. I've known quite a few Old School cops, some of them in my family, and they ALL looked like Broderick Crawford. Over the years, I've often participated in training sessions for older retired RSOs, who remain available for short-term assignments overseas as re-hired annuitants, and I'm pretty sure Broderick Crawford could go unnoticed in any of those groups.

By the 1980s, DS agents, like cops in general, started getting better dressed and more corporate-looking, which I suppose was an improvement for their professional image. But I think something was lost when you could no longer tell the RSOs from the diplomats. Incidentally, did you know that the actual RSO at U.S. Embassy Prague played a cameo role as a diplomat in the 1996 movie Mission Impossible? No one, but no one, would have mistaken Broderick Crawford for a diplomat.

Should you ever visit the DS Training Center in Dunn Loring, Virginia, you can find old photos of SY (as DS was named then) agents going back to at least the 1960s, and I want to tell you that more of them than not looked like they could be Broderick Crawford's identical twin brothers. Personally, I prefer the Old School Cop look to the business suit look that replaced it, or to the paramilitary cargo-pants-and-Oakleys look that defines young DS agents today.

Embassy wasn't the finest of cinematic efforts, but if Hollywood ever does get around to depicting RSOs, they will follow in the footsteps of RSO Frank Dunniger.

Diplomatic Security Service Gets No Press, Once Again

Here's a Department of State press release from last week, which I've been mulling over: Diplomatic Security Coordinates Rescue of 3-year-old American Kidnapped in Guatemala.

And here are two key quotes:

While these phone negotiations were underway, the Regional Security Office in Embassy Guatemala was able to provide Guatemala's Anti-Kidnapping Unit critical information regarding the whereabouts of the kidnappers and the victim in Planes de Barcenas, Villa Nueva, Guatemala.

On the morning of August 28, Guatemala's CAS [the anti-kidnapping unit], utilizing the information provided by the Regional Security Office, successfully rescued the girl. All five kidnapping suspects were killed during the rescue operation.

This press release interests me because it leaves so much unsaid. Such as, how was the RSO able to provide the whereabouts of the kidnappers? And how did it happen that the local police killed all five of them, with no one wounded or captured, and no injuries on the police side? Obviously, there is a story behind this story, and it's probably something really good. But, most likely, we won't ever learn any more.

Incidents like this would surely be of popular interest, however, for reasons I don't understand, Diplomatic Security has never sought publicity, unlike other Federal law enforcement agencies and security services.

Indeed, some agencies are shameless press hogs. Let me digress for an old joke: A joint task force of DEA, ATF, and FBI agents raids a house. The DEA agents release their trained dog, who sniffs all over and finds a suitcase full of cocaine. Then the ATF agents release their trained dog, who finds a buried cache of AK-47s. Finally, the FBI agents release their trained dog, who runs outside and holds a press conference to announce that the FBI has just broken up a major drug and gun smuggling ring.

Those agencies that crave publicity have had no trouble getting it. The FBI, of course, has been mythologized in scores, maybe hundreds, of movies and TV series ranging from The FBI Story (1959), which was J. Edgar's own Authorized Version of his creation narrative, to grotesque travesties like The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977). But many other agencies are featured almost as often, and with greater or lesser degrees of hagiography.

The U.S. Marshals Service had a TV series once, and a few good recent movies, one of which (U.S. Marshals) had a DS agent character as the bad guy! Since that part was played by Robert Downey, Jr., it was a case of true to life casting, perhaps. The CIA, U.S. Secret Service, Customs, Border Patrol, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, etc., etc., etc., have all had TV series and / or movies that made them familiar to the American public. And those omnipresent reality TV shows, such as COPS, have profiled seemingly every obscure police outfit imaginable; I wouldn't be surprised to see "True Tales of the GSA Parking Lot Police" on some cheesy cable channel.

But poor old DS just gets no respect from the cop-happy viewing public. It is curious.

Shocking Statistics on Subprime Mortgages

You can find two spreadsheets at the website of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (here) that provide the shocking, state-by-state, statistics for subprime and "Alt-A" [a type slightly less risky than subprime] mortgages for 2008. The numbers are shocking because they show that those mortgages are in far, far, better shape than I had expected.

- Only 8.7% of subprime mortgages, nationwide, are in foreclosure; that number is higher in some states, particularly California and Florida, but, judging by the overheated news media coverage of foreclosures, I'd have guessed the national average was around 50%.

- Those foreclosures represent only 1.8 per 1,000 housing units, nationwide.

- Only 55.2% of the subprimes mortgage holders have been late with a payment even once in the last 12 months, and 57% are current in their payments, as are 81% of the Alt-A holders.

- Only 10% of the subprime holders were 30-to-60 days overdue with their payments.

Remember, these numbers are for the riskiest of all mortgage types, the ones that are at the rotten core of the derivative financial instruments whose failures brought on the current financial crisis. If that's what the worst is like, than maybe the markets and the news media need to take a deep breath and calm down.

Right now, Warren "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful" Buffett's $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs this week is looking pretty smart to me.

Gons Nachman, Inmate Number 72616-083

Gons Nachman on Copacabana Beach in happier times








Gons Nachman packed a lot of experiences into his 42 years of life. He was raised in Costa Rica, emigrated to the U.S. at age 17, went to college and law school, became an activist for the rights of nudists, worked in Miami for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and in the Congo and Brazil as a Foreign Service Officer, got charged with and plead guilt to possession of (self-produced) pornography, and is now serving a 20-year sentence in a Federal prison.

It's been a long road with many a twist and turn, but fate has finally deposited Gons here, in the Federal Correctional Institution at Petersburg, Virginia.

FYI, you can keep track of Gons' whereabouts for the next decade or two by going to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate locator page.

I confess that I find Gons fascinating, in a criminological sort of way. I've met a few sociopaths just like him - some of them also went to prison - and they were all intelligent and charming. I'm sure I would like Gons if I met him. Most people seem to.

You can find some background on Gons and the predatory behavior that landed him in prison here, and here. If you scroll through the comments on those posts you'll find one from a Brazilian visa applicant that he hit on, and a few from others who knew him.

Pre- and Post-Blast Marriott Hotel Photos

Here's the pre-blast hotel




Here's a post-blast photo



And here's another

And finally here's a pre-blast photo showing the main vehicle entrance. Note that the only barriers were drop bars (effective only against light vehicles).

The four wedge barriers that stopped the bomb-laden dump truck were added after the above photo was taken. Whichever Marriott executive signed off on the purchase of those expensive security products - probably around $250,000 total cost - earned his salary that year.

"The working man gets hurt the worst if you don't save the rich ones first"

I've posted a couple of times before about Merle Hazard, the financial analyst turned country music singer, but it seems he just keeps getting more topical every day. The Holy City of Washington has never needed Merle's lyrical wisdom more urgently than it does right now, as the Treasury Department is on the verge of bailing out nearly every big investment firm that wasn't already bailed out by the Federal Reserve earlier this year.

The issue Merle sings about the most is what economists call "Moral Hazard," which is what happens when you assure financial gamblers that the government will save them from the consequences of their risky behavior. That is to say, they indulge themselves in even more risky behavior than they would have otherwise. They're relentlessly logical in that way.

Merle's lyrics never fail to be on the cutting edge of financial news. A major goal of Treasury Secretary Paulson right now is to overturn the 'mark-to-market' accounting rule for valuing mortgage-backed securities, something that would save the big firms from having to honestly report the diminishing market value of their assets. Well, Merle saw that one coming:

Now the CMOs [Collateralized Mortgage Obligations] ,
And the other mortgage-backed securities
Are gettin' marked down to market causing much unease
In the Hamptons

Much unease, indeed.

Islamabad Marriott Hotel Bombing

As I write this, I'm still not completely certain that a co-worker of mine, who was returning via Islamabad from a visit to Kabul, was not at the Marriott when the attack took place. So far as I know, he's safe. But two U.S. military members are reportedly among the dead, and one State Department contractor is still missing. It will be another day or two before the casualties are fully known

One thing, however, is perfectly clear right now. Had an explosion of that size happened in front of the hotel, rather than 60 feet away at the entry control point, the building would have collapsed and the fatalities would have been in the several hundreds. The hotel was full at the time: 290 rooms were booked and over 200 people were in the restaurants.

The bomb was huge. The 2,000 pound TNT-equivalent figure is being reported from various sources, but I wouldn't be surprised if the final assessment placed it much higher. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) that leaves a crater 24 feet deep and 59 feet wide, according to the figures in the Pakistan Interior Ministry's press releases, and breaks windows two miles away, as reported by CNN, could easily turn out be in the 5,000-pound range. That would be about the largest VBIED on record since the 1995 Al-Khobar towers bomb. The bomb was carried in a medium-size dump truck, which could accommodate over 5,000 pounds of payload.

And the only thing that stopped the truck at the hotel's outermost entrance was an anti-ram vehicle barrier (see the video here). Marriott is the industry leader in hotel security at high-threat locations, and it is apparent that they spent the money for genuinely effective vehicle barriers. It isn't entirely clear from the video, but there were two layers of barriers - an outer line of wedge barriers capable of stopping large trucks, and an inner line of light-duty drop bar barricades. Also, and of critical importance, entering vehicles had to go through a chicane approach pattern that forced them to lower their speed; the VBIED had to make a very tight left turn into the vehicle entrance, and it looked to me like it was moving at only 15 to 20 miles per hour when it hit the outer barriers. A truck that size could have over-run even the most robust vehicle barriers if it had been able to get up to higher speed.

This hotel had an intelligently planned and well-funded ring of perimeter security, and that likely averted a death toll that could have gone to 500 victims or even higher.