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Diplomatic Couriers — Where Indiana Jones Meets FedEx
File this one under “odd government jobs that almost no one thinks about…”
There’s a mildly funny scene from the otherwise hilarious 1985 adventure comedy Spies Like Us where an intrepid diplomatic courier, with a suitcase handcuffed to his wrist, attempts to deliver information to some federal agency bureaucrats.
He’s not allowed to remove the briefcase from his wrist, so in order for the government agents to view the information inside, they have to shuffle him behind a curtain with only his arm, and the briefcase, sticking out, so they can review the top-secret materials “in private.”
But intrepid only begins to describe the unique mission of the men and women who would often put themselves in harm’s way around the world serving today in the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Courier Service.
Whether carrying moon rocks to Canada or classified diplomatic tape communications between President George HW Bush and Saddam Hussein on the precipice of war, the State’s “Silver Greyhounds” as they’re affectionately known, have been waging a lifelong battle in logistics optimization that has spanned every major geopolitical conflict, in every corner of the world, since the State Department’s establishment in World War I.
