EXCLUSIVE — U.S. government documents seen by the Washington Examiner raise serious questions of continuing mismanagement by senior ranks of the Diplomatic Security Service.
The State Department’s law enforcement and security agency, DSS, is responsible for protecting Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, certain visiting dignitaries, and U.S. diplomats and diplomatic facilities abroad. It also investigates certain federal crimes, such as passport and visa fraud. But DSS has faced significant challenges in recent years.
Numerous State Department sources have told the Washington Examiner that the agency’s leadership is dysfunctional. For one, DSS’s protective details are stretched thin, with numerous sources complaining that senior agents often delegate undesirable protective assignments to junior agents. Stress in the federal law enforcement agency is also high. As first reported by the Washington Examiner, a DSS agent was arrested by Belgian police earlier this year after becoming belligerent with staff at a Brussels hotel. The agent was serving on Rubio’s protective detail at the time. In another embarrassing moment, DSS failed to match a number of U.S. local law enforcement agencies in securing permission for its agents to carry firearms while protecting U.S. athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
One sustaining complaint of State Department sources is that senior DSS leaders enjoy expensive junkets on the taxpayers’ dime while the agency’s equipment and morale are neglected. As reported by the Washington Examiner, the agency’s former head, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Carlos Matus, had led several expensive diversity, equity, and inclusion-related recruitment trips to cities such as Las Vegas and New Orleans in recent years.
A similar case in point now appears to be found in a multiday trip to Sydney, Australia, this February by high-ranking DSS officials despite the Trump administration’s early guidance that travel be for mission-critical purposes only. An assessment of State Department documents and reimbursement receipts seen by the Washington Examiner, some listed “sensitive but unclassified,” indicates the total trip entailed costs of approximately $200,000. The trip was led by Deputy Assistant Secretary Ronald Stuart of DSS’s countermeasures directorate, responsible for protecting U.S. diplomatic facilities and information against terrorists and foreign intelligence services. The trip included numerous high-ranking DSS officials based in Washington, including Gharun Lacy, the DSS deputy assistant secretary for cyber and technology security, and Tamika Abbott, the director of the Office of Security Technology.
Although the trip’s relevance to his position is unclear, it also included the policy adviser for the U.S. Space Force’s chief of space operations, Ralph Gaspard. Alongside Stuart and Gaspard, six other senior DSS individuals traveled in business class to Sydney. Receipts show that while the airline tickets cost about $7,000 per person, their conformity with State Department guidelines is unclear. Additional receipts show that DSS rented a hotel conference room at a Sydney hotel for more than $15,000. This was justified, as the purchase order put it, “due to the U.S. government not being able to supply a suitable conference room within the region.”
This would appear to be a bold assessment, being that there are numerous large U.S. embassies in the region, including a U.S. Consulate in Sydney with 6,000 square meters of office space. Indeed, numerous sources expressed concern that the conference was held in a hotel in the first place. Discussing sensitive government security and countermeasures operations in a public place poses security risks.
Still, the conference’s entertainment value is not in doubt. The welcome drinks were held at a bar within Sydney’s famed opera house. And the poster below advertises that the conference’s final day was reserved for a photo hunt competition in the city.
Numerous State Department sources expressed concern that trips such as this one are a waste of taxpayer money. One State Department technical specialist told the Washington Examiner that DSS security equipment is now woefully outdated in certain key mission areas. They also observed that they had previously witnessed Stuart, after being asked, “What are DS’s priorities? [DS is an inside State Department shorthand for DSS],” give a “five-minute speech on the importance of diversity but offer no goals, no strategy, and no thinking about how DS can safeguard U.S. Embassies and diplomatic personnel better.” The source added that “great engineers and technicians have left the agency due to a lack of leadership direction and goals.”
Adding to earlier concerns related to Matus’s mission priorities, documents seen by the Washington Examiner concerning a similar trip led by Stuart to Tokyo in March 2024 emphasize the DEI component of the visit, noting that “DAS Stuart fielded numerous questions about DEIA.”
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The broader challenge for DSS is clear. With morale low, resources stretched, and a diverse array of global security challenges omnipresent, it may only be a matter of time until disaster strikes. Over $125,000 might not seem like a great amount in the grand scheme of things, but it could pay for a number of additional local embassy perimeter guards in high-threat locations or new equipment. The operative question: Was the Sydney trip the best use of this money?