Additional Embassy Guards Will Come With a Steep Price

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/world/additional-embassy-guards-will-come-at-steep-price-each.html?ref=us&_r=0

Additional Embassy Guards Will Come With a Steep Price
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: May 24, 2013

WASHINGTON — When the State Department fields the first of 350 additional Marine security guards at high-risk embassies and consulates around the world later this year, the price tag will be steep: about $1.6 million per Marine.

Why so much?

It turns out that about $525 million of the $553 million that Congress approved this year to deploy more Marine guards — fulfilling a recommendation of the independent review panel that investigated the attacks last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya — is going toward building new command-and-control hubs in the posts and living quarters for the Marines.

The department plans to send 35 new Marine detachments, with about 10 Marines each, to diplomatic posts over the next few years. The first 90 are expected to arrive by the end of the year, officials said.