Bodyguards: the new diplomats

Press, 20 February 1986, Page 12

Bodyguards: the new diplomats

From

HUGH NEVILL,

, in Washington

The United States is planning to set up a new force of State Department "heavies” to guard foreign ambassadors in Washington. It also plans a big increase in the number of security men at American er Th^ S United States Secretary of State, George Shultz, went up to Capitol Hill to seek Congressional approval for the new domestic force, and for millions of dollars for stronger security at American embassies. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he needs SUS7O2 million this year and SUSI. 4 billion next year, with the total by 1990 reaching SUS 4.4 billion. ’ . . , . Senator Claiborne Pell, a Democrat from noted that more American Heads of Mission have been killed since World War II than have generals and admirals on service. Now, the State Department has only 225 security officers overseas, 50 of them boffins working on such things as computer security. Mr Shultz wants to beef up the overseas force by more than 1000, and to institute a 190-strong' force of bodyguards for the foreign ambassadors in the American capital. The immediate reaction of senators was to ask for a trade-off, with Mr Shultz finding some other area in the State Department were he could cut spending. The senators questioned the details of the proposal, but not the over-all need for better protection for American diplomats abroad. One cost questioned, by Senator Daniel Evans, a Republican from Washington State, was SUS6.S million for a senior officers residence “That’s a pretty good senior officer residence, is that all that it is,” Shultz replied that the high cost of residences and embassies , was due to security, among other factors. .. “It is the -case that when you build in all of these security dimensions, and when you make provision for communications equipment and worry a lot about counter-intelligence aspects, you run the costs of the buildings up very considerably over what it would cost vou to build a sort of standard commercial building,” he said. A programme is already under way to recruit 300 security agents to the State Department this year, and the number of security officers abroad should double by the end of fiscal 1986. “In addition,” said Mr Shultz, “we have added more Marines to posts nearly doubled the size of our armoured vehicle fleet world wide’(and) made significant physical security improvements at 152 of our posts overseas in 1985.” , The United States has also created a new office — Ambassador at Large for Counter-terrorism — and a Bureau of Diplomatic Security. “Already,” Mr Shultz said, “we can identify quite a number of instances of plots that were being hatched to assault one of our embassies in one way or another that we had intelligence about, and which were abandoned because those who were doing the planning saw that somehow we had beefed up the security.” Many overseas posts fronted on to busy streets, he said. Some had extensive glass facades and some shared walls with non-United States Government tenants. “All this is generally undesirable and simply unacceptable in a great many situations.” TT .. . In the spite of the rebuilding planned, the Secretary said, the United States did not want “to overwhelm our hosts with the aura of our power by erecting forbidding fortresses.” An arm of America’s secret service now protects embassies in Washington, but not the ambassadors themselves, or other diplomats. The secret service does protect visiting Heads of State and Heads of Government, as well as President Reagan and other senior American officials. , x . Senators raised eyebrows at the concept of the secret service protecting embassies and the State Department protecting ambassadors, but Secretary Shultz assured them that the secret service had resisted the idea of bodyguarding the ambassadors.