Per the Vienna Convention, diplomatic pouches cannot be opened or examined by any nosy customs inspectors or foreign intelligence services. And that is where opportunities for misuse arise.
When the U.S. foreign service needs to send secrets to another country, it relies on diplomatic couriers. Those men and women ferry our nation’s most precious secrets from the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters to U.S. embassies around the globe. In 1985, when I went through basic agent training with the department's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), I was offered the option of serving as one of those couriers. The word around the academy was that the job came with lots of overtime and allowed the adventurous traveler to see the world on Uncle Sam’s dime. Besides the travel opportunities, there were other perks to the job: Couriers travel first class and are the first to board when bearing a diplomatic pouch and the first to deplane upon arrival to keep an eye on any larger diplomatic pouches in the belly of an aircraft.
