Bureau of Diplomatic Security

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The Bureau of Diplomatic Security, more commonly known as the Diplomatic Security Service is the law enforcement arm of the United States Department of State. The Bureau's personnel -- who include special agents, security engineers, diplomatic couriers, Civil Service specialists, and contractors -- work together as a team to ensure that the State Department can carry out its foreign policy missions safely and securely. Diplomatic Security has a broad scope of global responsibilities, with protection of people, information, and property as its top priority.

Overseas, DS develops and implements effective security programs to safeguard all personnel who work in every U.S. diplomatic mission around the world. In the United States, the Bureau protects the Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and foreign dignitaries below the head-of-state level who visit the United States. DS develops and implements security programs to protect the more than 100 domestic State Department facilities as well as the residence of the Secretary of State.

DS also holds many investigative responsibilities. DS Special Agents conduct personnel security investigations, issues security clearances, and handle varied types of criminal investigations. The Bureau also assists foreign embassies and consulates in the United States with the security for their missions and personnel.

Since 1984, the Bureau also administrates the Rewards for Justice Program, which pays monetary rewards of up to $5 million, or in recent years even more, upon special authorization by the Secretary of State, to individuals who provide information which substantially leads to countering of terrorist attacks against United States persons. Through 2001, $62 million had been paid to over 40 people in this effort.

Agents and personnel

Diplomatic Security Special Agents are Federal Law Enforcement Officers with the power to arrest, carry firearms, and serve arrest warrants and other court process. When assigned to domestic field offices, they are responsible for conducting investigations into Passport and Visa fraud as wells as providing protection for the United States Secretary of State, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and visiting foreign dignitaries below the head of state level. Overseas, DS agents are called Regional Security Officers (RSO), and are charged with the security and law enforcement duties at U.S. missions, embassies, and consular posts.

DS agents are hired after an extensive recruiting process that includes a computerized exam, a Foreign Service Board of Examiners interview, a medical exam, and an extensive background investigation. When a new DS agent is hired, he or she begins an intense training program that includes the Criminal Investigators Training Program at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, a Diplomatic Security Basic Special Agent Course, and courses at the Foreign Service Institute. A new agent is usually assigned to a domesitc field office for two years before taking on an overseas assignment, although an agent can expect to be sent on Temporary Duty (TDY) overseas even when assigned to a domestic post. Agents are expected to spend much of their career living and working overseas, including hazardous environments such as Iraq, and the Central Asian nations known in the foreign service as "The 'Stans". Because of the overseas duty requirements, the DSS is known in the law enforcement community as being very stressful to family and personal life.

DS agents have been involved in the investigations of most terrorist attacks on U.S. interests overseas in the past twenty years; including the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998. Perhaps most notably, in 1995 DS agents assigned to the U.S. embassy in Pakistan were involved, along with Pakistani police and intelligence, with arresting Ahmed Ramzi Yousef, who was wanted in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

DS agents have increasingly found themselves in harms way with four agents and 28-contract security specialist killed in the line of duty thus far. The vast majority of DS casualties have taken place within the past two years in Iraq where DS continues to conduct its most critical and dangerous protective missions.

Fictional references to DSS

• 1998 -- U.S. Marshals (film) staring Tommy Lee Jones.
• 1992 -- Patriot Games (film) staring Harrison Ford.

References