The exterior guards at the US Embassy in Kabul are very well armed private contractors. They have M4s, riot shotguns and MP5s on display, and no doubt some larger weapons hidden from easy view. I won’t speak as to the specific armament of the interior guards, but they’re no less well armed than a regular US Army infantry platoon.
D’oh! :smack:
South Park is all you need to understand why we don’t trust those those sneaky, perfidious Canucks. Hell, they put gravy on their fries!
Thanks for the info!
hh
btw, IIRC, the embassy was either Paris or Berlin…
In the first Bourne movie, he’s in the Zurich embassy. In real life, the US does not have an embassy in Zurich.
You forgot the squeaky cheese curds with that gravy. 
As I recall, it was actually the consulate in Zurich, but I could be misremembering. The embassy, of course, is in Bern.
I’m pretty sure there are some Marines around the US Embassy in Bangkok, but security is generally contracted out to a local private service. But they seem much more professional and efficient than your standard sleepy department-store guard.
Local security services generally have severely limited access to embassy facilities. They usually don’t get any further than the front guard post, although a supervisor may have an office in the embassy proper. These services are usually there to discourage people from loitering outside the compound and can be used for a variety of interactions with local civilians, including doing background checks for embassy employees, investigating theft by local employees (Foreign Service Nationals - FSNs), etc. Quite often, the guards standing on the sidewalk around an embassy’s perimeter are host country army personnel, provided as a courtesy.
They do control access to who goes inside, making sure you leave cellphones etc with them. They’re pretty beefy too. But that’s right, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen seen any deep inside. In times of emergency, such as intelligence pointing to a possible incident, the riots of recent years or even last month’s Iranian bombers blowing themselves up, the government posts some police or soldiers outside for extra protection.
I always thought that was Berlin for some reason (of course, it looks nothing like the Berlin Embassy, which is right on the biggest street in Germany.
Language is an issue , too.
Using locals (instead of American guards) outside on the sidewalk solves problems of language and culture. Locals can speak to passersby as necessary- tell them to get out of the way, not to loiter, etc. And locals know the culture, so they can identify potential troublemakers.
If we’re talking about the first movie, he was still working his way through Europe, having just gotten off the boat in Marseilles and having the Swiss bank account number in his possession. He went to the bank in Zurich to retrieve the contents of the box, then ran into the consulate when he was being chased by local cops.
Digression: The problem with the whole scenario is that the visa mill can be accessed by locals applying for a visa, but they can’t get into the main core of the consulate from there. Business is done through window slots and the only access into the inner areas is through a Marine guard post. Nobody gets through there unless he is an American with an access badge, or is escorted by a consular employee. So Bourne would not have been able to run wild in the building, as depicted in the film. Good movie, though.
Your comment gave me pause. The American mission to Germany used to be in Bonn back when there was an East and West Germany. There was a sizable facility in West Berlin at that time, and a mission over on the east side that I visited once.
Chefguy - any thoughts on what went wrong in Iran? IIRC the student riots went on for several days before they stormed the Embassy. But, I don’t recall anyone evacuating before the crap hit the fan. Just wondered why so many hostages got taken. Six guys (mostly Consular Officers) did avoid capture.
We owe the Canadians big time for saving our six diplomats in Iran.
That was before my time with the FS, but by the time of the takeover any dependents had probably been sent home. I think it just came as a big surprise to everybody that a crowd of what was basically rabble could gather the wherewithal to successfully breach the place. This incident was probably one of the main motivators for legislation that required certain construction criteria for any new embassies. Unfortunately, it’s almost prohibitively expensive to build embassies with those criteria and they are often waived for the sake of expediency. What happened at existing embassies was the hardening of entries with man-traps, Lexan enclosures and deterrent measures put into place.
One of the most effective deterrents was hit upon by a Marine guard during the incident (or so the story goes): he dumped a jug of cooking oil on the stone entry and stairs of the facility, which effectively kept attackers from gaining access long enough for the ambassador to make his escape. I don’t know if it’s still done, but one used to see a couple of gallons of oil sitting in the guard booth at some embassies.
Very interesting. Getting caught in the middle of a country’s revolution has to be the worst possible situation for the Embassy guards. No one expected the Shah’s gov to fall that quick.
Thanks. 
It’s no picnic for anybody. In the event of an evacuation, you leave with what you can carry. You end up being stuck in temporary quarters someplace or having to rent a place (if you don’t have a home to go to), while everything you own is stolen or destroyed back in your country of assignment. It’s the next worst thing to being taken captive. Any diplo with a brain has a kit at the ready in the event of an evacuation. It includes money, passports and other vital documents and is kept in your home’s safe-haven. I also kept gold and silver coins in there, as there have been instances of people having to evacuate overland and cross borders that may want bribes.
Remember how much fun SNL had with it, at the time?
They were going to try the hostages as spies. Pretty shitty spies, who failed to notice the population in the streets demanding the exit of the Shah. They had skits about the employees complaining about how bad traffic was, ‘unrest? what unrest?’, it was pretty spot on.
And while American’s see the Canadian action as heroic, the Canadian’s not really so much. I mean, seriously, what were the choices? Toss them out into the mobbed streets? They just did the right thing, and most Canadian’s could keep it in perspective. I do remember at the time, how initially they wouldn’t say how many hostages there were. I kept thinking something was up with that, they are all about numbers, at embassies.
Then it became clear, if they spoke in numbers it would soon become obvious someone was hiding people some where. Interesting times, indeed.
The Iranian incident was an indictment of the Ambassador, CIA and political officer types who were posted there and never saw it coming. All the non-critical personnel (at the very least) should have been evacuated way before that happened.