Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Department of State in its training facility in Arlington, Virginia. This
excellent and well-run two-day school is designed to provide the employee
with some of the necessary knowledge about how to minimize threats to
personal security. In addition, the State Department strongly encourages
dependent family members to attend the training. The problem with even
this excellent program is that two days is not enough time to properly
prepare someone, especially a layperson with no background in security
or law enforcement, for the real risks that Americans abroad will likely
encounter. Furthermore, the course subject matter is the same regardless
of which country employees may be posted to. An individual stationed at
the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa gets the same training as someone posted to
Peshawar in Pakistan, despite the very real and significant differences in
the threats that may be encountered in those two countries. The impor-
tant issues are all touched on and the instructors are all experienced pro-
fessionals. However, as is common with most government training
programs, they are forced to present too much information in too short
a time period. This one-size-fits-all approach is, unfortunately, the rule
rather than the exception in almost any type of program offered by the
federal government. Although the State Department could spend more
time providing country-specific training, local Regional Security Officers
(RSOs) do provide more thorough training once employees arrive at their
post, and the Congress has mandated that every U.S. Embassy receive
a security briefing and evaluation by Diplomatic Security Service (DSS)
agents every three years. In addition, employees of the State Department
and the numerous other government agencies maintaining offices in
embassies around the world have the advantage of being protected by the
DSS as well as the embassy's marine guard detail. The RSO, a trained secu-
rity professional, is always available to provide the embassy staff with the
answers to their security questions and needs. This is not the case with pri-
vate industry. No mandatory training program is provided to those Amer-
icans employed overseas by private companies. In fact, to our knowledge,
no programs in private industry mandate that security training be given to
personnel working abroad to familiarize them with the techniques that will
increase their level of personal safety while living abroad. While many of
the large multinationals do have security departments that offer some assis-
tance in this regard, very little actual instruction is provided to enhance
the safety of employees. Private security companies and security consult-
ants can provide this type of training, but they are seldom contracted to
