The Foreign Service Journal, November 2018

32 NOVEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Diplomatic couriers prepare shipments in 2017. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE/DIPLOMATICSECURITYSERVICE ing and unloading of sensitive shipments. They still use the term “pouches,” but as often as not, a modern one can fill an entire shipping pallet. And although Article XXVII of the Vienna Conven- tion on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 guarantees the inviolability of diplomatic pouches and the couriers who transport them, that doesn’t mean every airport security professional in the world is familiar with international protocols—or willing to adhere to them. “The courier mission is the same as it was 100 years ago,” explains Jose “Eddie” Salazar, director of the Diplomatic Courier Service. “The technology has changed. The vehicles have changed. The security environment has changed. But the mission is the same as it was 100 years ago—to protect our nation’s classified material, to maintain security of classified material across interna- tional borders.” Same Mission, Different Challenges Indeed, the evolution of electronic communication from cables to faxes to secure email has largely taken the place of urgent hand-carried dispatches. Yet the number of diplomatic couriers has held steady at just over 100 for the past two decades, Salazar says. That’s in part because today’s couriers travel to an ever- increasing number of locations. During the 1990s, courier routes typically included only U.S. embassies in capital cities, but today’s couriers also handle shipments to dozens of U.S. consulates. Further, during the final decade of the ColdWar the courier workload began shifting fromdocuments to cargo shipments in earnest as a result of discoveries at the U.S. embassy inMoscow. The embassy had been a target for surveillance from the time it was established in the 1930s, and over the years listening devices and electronic bugs were regularly detected—including in a hand-carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States, presented by Soviet schoolchildren to the U.S. ambassador that turned out to be a transmitter. But in 1984 Embassy Moscow security officers discovered that locally purchased electric typewriters had been fitted with eaves- dropping devices that recorded all their keystrokes. As a result, couriers began transporting U.S.-purchased and tested equipment to all locations where sensitive or classified informationmight be handled. Shortly thereafter, Bureau of Diplomatic Security specialists made another discovery: listening devices had been embedded throughout the structure of a new U.S. facility in Moscow dur-