Embassy Security

On the night of September 11, 2012, four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed in terrorist attacks at U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. These attacks highlighted the highly volatile environments in which U.S. diplomatic personnel sometimes operate, and led to a period of sustained scrutiny of the ...

The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, which grew out of the Inman Report recommendations, was never meant to be a war zone security force.  But then again, diplomats were never meant to conduct business as usual in places that were still, in effect, war zones.  Simply put: Iraq was a ...

It was just after lunchtime on April 18, 1983, when a suicide bomber attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.  63 people were killed and the shocking nature of the attack prompted the U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to order an evaluation of the State Department’s security posture overseas.  ...

The Cipher Brief spoke with Kevin Hulbert, a former senior intelligence officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, to get his thoughts on embassy security three years after the Benghazi attacks. Kevin consults on a variety of international and security issues and served multiple overseas tours as CIA Chief of ...