DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 2A): None Swifter Than These: 100 Years of Diplomatic Couriers:
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Description of Pictures: None Swifter Than These: 100 Years of Diplomatic Couriers
September 14, 2019 – January 26, 2020
In wartime and peacetime, the U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service carries the sensitive materials, equipment and information that make diplomacy possible. The U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service traces its origins to the U.S. Army courier detachment, established at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in December 1918 to support the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the end of World War I. A century later, the Department of State's 100 badged diplomatic couriers travel the globe safeguarding our nation's most sensitive information and materials. Today's diplomatic couriers constantly trouble-shoot and innovate to ensure secure logistic supply chains while supervising the delivery of classified equipment and documents, as well as secure construction materials to nearly every nation where U.S. diplomats work. The exhibition was developed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Diplomatic Security Service.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SWIFT_191002_001.JPG: 100 Years of Diplomatic Couriers
None Swifter Than These
SWIFT_191002_009.JPG: A Century of Service
SWIFT_191002_013.JPG: Diplomatic couriers stand pier-side in front of U.S. Navy vessels bringing humanitarian aid to Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland) in March 1919.
SWIFT_191002_018.JPG: Secured sea containers are sent to the U.S. Embassy in Havana from Miami, Florida, January 2016.
SWIFT_191002_021.JPG: In wartime and peacetime, the U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service carries the sensitive materials, equipment, and information that make diplomacy possible.
SWIFT_191002_025.JPG: A diplomatic courier hands over a pouch to air crew for the daily flight to Brussels in 1919.
SWIFT_191002_027.JPG: Diplomatic couriers on a mission from Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, to Monrovia, in May 2017.
SWIFT_191002_034.JPG: "Silver Greyhounds" with pouches, shipboard, in 1919.
SWIFT_191002_037.JPG: A diplomatic courier at the courier warehouse in Virginia, May 2017.
SWIFT_191002_042.JPG: Diplomatic couriers in Paris prepare to fly a diplomatic pouch to Brussels in 1919.
SWIFT_191002_046.JPG: A diplomatic courier loads several pallets of classified material on a charter flight, June 2012.
SWIFT_191002_051.JPG: A diplomatic courier on an Orient Express railroad car hands a diplomatic pouch to the U.S. vice consul in Milan, Italy, in 1957.
SWIFT_191002_054.JPG: Diplomatic couriers monitor the unloading of pouches in 2010.
SWIFT_191002_061.JPG: A diplomatic courier holds a canvas and leather pouch used to transport documents until the 1950s.
SWIFT_191002_064.JPG: Diplomatic Pouches
SWIFT_191002_066.JPG: Diplomatic pouches are loaded off a ship, to continue on their journey to U.S. posts in the East Asia Pacific region, February 2018.
SWIFT_191002_076.JPG: U.S. Diplomatic Couriers Before Amos Peaslee...
SWIFT_191002_079.JPG: Benjamin Franklin was among the members of the Continental Congress who commissioned the first American diplomatic courier, Captain Peter Parker, of the sailing ship Dispatch, in 1776.
SWIFT_191002_081.JPG: The S.S. Baltic was one of the steamships that dispatch agents regularly used to carry U.S. diplomatic mail and pouches to and from Europe, 1852.
SWIFT_191002_083.JPG: The Mauretania carried U.S. Department of State pouches across the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. dispatch agents had the ship's purser sign for the pouches. The purser then placed the pouches in a "strong room," which he kept locked.
SWIFT_191002_094.JPG: Amos J. Peaslee
Diplomatic Courier
SWIFT_191002_100.JPG: Members of the U.S. Army's Silver Greyhounds, forerunners of today's Diplomatic Courier Service, in Paris, in 1919.
SWIFT_191002_113.JPG: Amos J. Peaslee's Passport
SWIFT_191002_114.JPG: Major Peaslee's service medals
SWIFT_191002_118.JPG: Major Peaslee's diary, 1918
SWIFT_191002_158.JPG: Ambassador Amos J. Peaslee served as U.S. Ambassador to Australia from 1953-1956.
SWIFT_191002_164.JPG: Diplomatic couriers stand pier-side in front of U.S. Navy vessels bringing humanitarian aid to Danzig in March 1919. The Baltic port city is today Gdansk, Poland. Diplomatic courier duties included supporting the delivery of humanitarian aid by the American Relief Administration, headed by business philanthropist and future president Herbert Hoover.
SWIFT_191002_170.JPG: Major Peaslee's personal copy of the Treaty of Versailles
SWIFT_191002_173.JPG: Peaslee's postcards
SWIFT_191002_175.JPG: Course of the Silver Greyhound book (1936)
Open to map of diplomatic courier routes, c 1919
SWIFT_191002_184.JPG: A 1919 portrait of Major Amos Peaslee shows the Silver Greyhounds diplomatic courier insignia on the shoulder of his uniform.
SWIFT_191002_197.JPG: Major Amos J. Peaslee, founder of the Diplomatic Courier Service, c 1919.
SWIFT_191002_204.JPG: Diplomatic courtiers in Paris prepare to fly a diplomatic pouch to Brussels in 1919.
SWIFT_191002_212.JPG: Bugs' and Diplomatic Couriers
SWIFT_191002_222.JPG: After recovering an antenna system hidden by the Soviets in a chimney, a security officer searches for other Soviet listening devices at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, June, 1978.
SWIFT_191002_224.JPG: Soviet Technical Attack
New Office Building (NOB)
US Embassy Moscow
1980-1985
SWIFT_191002_237.JPG: Nighttime image of a diplomatic courier on the tarmac in Paris in 1957, wearing a trench coat and fedora. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, diplomatic couriers were symbols of intrigue and adventure in movies and television.
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2019 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
a four-day jaunt to Massachusetts (Boston, Stockbridge, and Springfield) to experience rain in another state,
Asheville, NC to visit Dad and his wife Dixie,
four trips to New York City (including the United Nations, Flushing, and the New York Comic-Con), and
my 14th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Utah).
Number of photos taken this year: about 582,000.
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