I was watching one of the Bourne movies, and I was struck by the amount of arms that they conjured up to track Bourne down.
I also vaguely recall the Iranian Hostage crisis, and somewhere I have it in my head that they had very few arms.
So, the question is: How well armed are US embassies?
Thanks,
hh
The Marine Security Guard (MSG) force has weapons, including sidearms, M-16s, and .12 gauge riot guns. The Regional Security Officer (RSO) also has some weapons, but nothing serious. There is usually a Military Attache office at an embassy and also a CIA Station, which may have some handguns.
The primary mission of the MSG force (and supposedly the local security force) is to protect the ambassador in case of an attack, provide delaying tactics against the attackers, and to get him either to a safe-haven or to his escape vehicle. Other employees are pretty much on their own and have a duty to destroy whatever classified gear they can in short order.
Chefguy: spent 12 years working in and around embassies.
The stated main mission is to protect and/or destroy the classified material in the embassy. The RSO is tasked with protecting the Ambassador. I got that from research and speaking with multiple RSOs. I have only worked in and around one embassy for a year.
Thanks, guys!
BTW, about how many actual Marines does this entail? IOW, was the Bourne movie pretty much representative?
Thanks,
hh
Depends on the embassy. I can’t remember what embassy he was supposed to be at.
The only one I’ve worked in was the one in Baghdad. Can’t imagine it’s typical.
Well. . .yeah. And no. Basically, their mission is to do whatever the ranking in-country American tells them to do, which would be the ambassador. Com center guys will slam the vault doors and destroy crypto gear that they wouldn’t let Marines get near. Since classified documents take up an enormous amount of space, there is simply not enough time to destroy it all. What would happen is that everybody would slam their safes and spin off the combos. The Marines on duty at the front door would provide delaying action. Truly sensitive information would be destroyed by Marines and other folks.
I imagine that it varies between embassies. I’m sure our embassy in Canada is a little more relaxed than the one in Iraq.
CSB time. In the very late 80’s I went to The Gambia. I was there as I was dating a girl who’s family lived there. Long story short one of her relatives didn’t like the fact she was dating an American. Her family was (as I found out) militant Muslim (sorry, not trying to start anything, just stating fact) and the whole American thing was a no no.
So, here I am in a strange African country with her cousin threatening to kill me. The only thing that I could think to do was go to the American Embassy. They took me in, but much to my dismay (I got there around midnight) the entire place was staffed and secured by locals and instead of US Marines, the place was guarded by employees of Wackenhut! Man, my Boy Scout troop could have taken that embassy.
Long story short, I spent the night there, the guards smoked all my cigs and I did feel a bit better seeing the picture of George H Bush up on the wall. The family that was trying to harm me has many business interest in America and the US Ambassador personally called the family and told them that if any harm came to me, they would never ever get a visa to the US again, so that took care of that.
To say the least, it was an interesting trip!
Local security can be hit or miss. The local soldiers guarding the exterior of the embassy in Tunis had no bullets for their guns. In some of those countries the local force would probably join any attacking mob to save their own skins.
Back to the question: the number of Marines at an embassy or consulate depends on how many posts there are to man, and how many shifts per post. Some are manned only in the daytime, while the main entry might be guarded 24/7. At an embassy like Cairo, where I was for about five months, there were probably 30 marines. It was the largest embassy in the Middle East at that time, with six RSOs to cover the region. Some smaller consulates, like Lyons for instance, have no Marine presence, while the large one in Frankfurt, where I was for three years, had quite a few, since there were two different compounds that required manned watch.
I would like to think they have something on hand that they can use to destroy large amounts of documents as quickly as possible (bags of thermite in the basement?).
Maybe that is what you meant by your last statement.
If the embassy is truly going to be overun, locking things in the safes won’t do anything, it just delays things a couple hours.
There are shredders and then there are things resembling large chippers that will destroy motherboards and other classified electronics. There are also incinerators in consulates/embassies of any size. Employees put out burn bags with classified paper on a daily basis and part of the MSG duties is to incinerate them each night. Keep in mind that “classified” covers a very broad spectrum of need-to-know info, most of which is just made confidential so that local eyes don’t see it on a daily basis. Truly sensitive stuff dealing with national security or policy is not as common as one might think. The paper kept in nearly all of the embassy office safes falls into the category of routine business and would provide no meaningful info to someone breaking into them, unless they’re fascinated with red tape and bureaucracy.
I ignored the familial death threats and did not go to the US embassy and came to a horrible fate…marriage!
:DNah just kidding about the horrible part, but for whatever reason it seems to be a face saving thing to threaten the american, just ignore it.
(it helps that his idea of me was so bizarre it beggared belief, he was looking for an elderly Swedish man?!?)
That’s a pretty big shotgun 
Little know fact: each embassy has a red button in the Ambassador’s office. When pushed the embassy turns into a giant fighting robot. Like Voltron.
Color me confused. It’s a standard riot-type gun with a collapsible stock, loaded with 00 buckshot.
In Mali, we had “spaz alert” buttons throughout the house, including next to the bed. If you pushed it, the Marine on duty would dispatch a truck full of local security guys to come to your rescue. This is common in countries where home invasions happen frequently, but Mali was pretty safe. We had friends in Zambia who had their front door dynamited with a quarter stick. Fortunately, intruders there were only interested in loot and wouldn’t harm residents unless they tried to interfere. They just barricaded themselves in their safe-haven until it was over.
By my calcs, that shotgun has a 3.38 inch bore diameter :-).
Don’t mean to take this too off-topic, but the joke is that you said a .12 gauge shotgun, not 12 gauge. The rule is that the barrel fits a sphere of lead equal in weight to 1/gauge (in pounds), so a .12 gauge will hold a 8.3 pound ball–pretty sizable.
I think so. I’ve been in the US embassy in Ottawa a few times. Once you go through two metal detectors, heavy doors and then empty out your pockets, you’re then in a locked down lobby with a US Marine in an armour glass plated booth with a murder hole about waist high.