The Diplomatic Security Service was once thought of as a premier law enforcement organization. It was always supposed to be that way.
After all, the State Department security agency has critical responsibilities. It must protect U.S. diplomats and diplomatic institutions around the world, American athletes competing at the Olympics and other high-profile competitions, the secretary of state and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and certain at-risk foreign ambassadors in Washington. The agency is also responsible for criminal investigations relevant to counterterrorism concerns such as visa and passport fraud. While DSS’s successes are often unsung, the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi underlined the grave confronting its people.
The vast majority of DSS agents, analysts, engineers, and other technical officers are serving with skill and courage at home and abroad. They do so with little fanfare and often with insufficient gratitude from the foreign service officers they protect. Unfortunately, these people are being failed by an upper management that cares more about treating itself to expensive junkets and fixing the Biden administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion habit.
That’s the conclusion that must follow from the Washington Examiner’s latest reporting on DSS. In new reporting this week, one of our writers documented the oft-absurd lengths to which DSS leaders are going in order to keep themselves and their Biden administration bosses happy.
These efforts include allowing biologically male agent trainees to identify as female so as to enable them to pass courses under female qualification standards. They include allowing “nonbinary” agent trainees to avoid otherwise mandatory search training in deference to their identity politics. They include numerous domestic trips that reek of junkets for the brass rather than of efforts to boost the recruitment of the best. All of this is happening even as younger agents are forced to carry the unfair burden of undesirable assignments and overtime work because higher-ranking agents prefer the easy gigs.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Other problems are far more serious.
Our reporting shows, for example, a DSS leadership so obsessed with DEI initiatives that it has even hired a dedicated chief DEI officer for DSS. This comes in addition to a large DEI team at the State Department headquarters. DSS leaders have also established a DSS Countermeasures Directorate-specific DEI hiring team. Our sources say that this has worsened already severe shortages of the specialist technicians and engineers needed to help bolster the defensive capacities of U.S. diplomats and diplomatic outposts globally.
Put simply, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gentry Smith and DSS Director Carlos Matus appear far more interested in making DSS a cog in the Democratic Party’s identity politics machine than in ensuring DSS is ready to fulfill its crucial statutory role.
This is no small concern.
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DSS is already overwhelmed by operational taskings. Iranian assassination threats to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran czar Brian Hook mean DSS must maintain protective details for both men. Because Pompeo makes frequent international trips, the personnel and resourcing expenses involved in protecting him are significant. Similar Iranian threats are forcing the U.S. Secret Service to maintain protective details for former national security advisers John Bolton and Robert O’Brien. And DSS’s overstretched resources are showing in the form of mistakes that risk safety. As the Washington Examiner first reported, two of Hook’s vehicles were stolen from outside his residence in December 2022 even as he was under full-time protection. One of those vehicles was then used in a Washington, D.C., homicide.
The situation is unsustainable. Either DSS is rejuvenated with new leaders dedicated to its core mission or the nation risks another catastrophe. The Biden administration is unlikely to view Smith and Matus as anything other than loyal DEI disciples. Republicans in Congress should consider a different perspective. They should hold hearings to assess whether these two men and their subordinate ideologues are those best placed to lead this most important organization.