For those of you with experience or interest in such things, State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS, long ago SY), has developed for itself a very negative reputation in personnel security arena.
Through AFSA, American Foreign Service Association (I am not a member having never been a FSO), I have read numerous accounts of horror show DS cases.
Overall, DS comes across as an internal State Dept Gestapo, much different from the RSOs I dealt with in embassies in LATAM and Africa.
State Dept. moves to fire Peter Van Buren, author of book critical of Iraq reconstruction effort
Lisa Rein
Washington Post, 14 March 2012
Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote anunflattering bookabout his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file.
Phi Beta Iota: Most Departmental “security” services turn into little Gestapos, but they do so on command from the top. Peter van Buren's book was APPROVED by the proper Department of State publication review process, which has integrity. Evidently now someone at the top, probably not the Secretary of State but one of the top six mandarins, is abusing their authority and perhaps giving Peter van Buren a $10 million lawsuit on a platter. When governments stop telling the truth they lose legitimacy. When they begin persecuting people who tell the truth they lose authority. We're there.
