Kicked Out: An MSG Regional Commander on Being Declared Persona Non Grata

Most people who talk about the MSG program talk about it from the watchstander's perspective. Craig Wiggins saw it from a completely different angle. As a Mustang officer and Inspecting Officer for Region One from 2012 to 2015, he traveled alone through the former Soviet bloc — Moscow, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the Baltic states — inspecting MSG detachments every six months with no weapon, no backup, and in some cases, active warnings about Americans being targeted in the area.Craig talks about what an IO actually does on the ground, what he was looking for when he walked into a detachment, how Benghazi changed the program, the creation of MSAU, and what it was like living overseas with his family in Frankfurt while inspecting embassies across one of the most complex regions in the world. He also talks about the brutal reality of transitioning out of the Marine Corps after twenty years and the veteran nonprofit he started to keep veterans connected after they get off the bus.

John Dailey, and infantryman and Marine Sniper, went to MSG school in 1989 thinking he might end up as a government assassin in a foreign country. What he got instead was Budapest as the Soviet Union was collapsing, where Hungarian intelligence agents used him and his fellow Marines as surveillance training aids, and Buenos Aires where tanks rolled through the streets two days after he landed.He watched the Cold War end from inside an American embassy, met President Bush, called home from Air Force One, and fell in love with the woman he has been married to for thirty four years.After MSG he went to Force Recon and helped stand up what became the Marine Raiders. He retired as a Master Sergeant and wrote a book called Tough Rugged Bastards.Visit John's Website @ WalkingPoint.org

What do you do when a rocket hits your embassy during a Friday night party? If you're Marine Security Guard John Leabeater, you put on your flak jacket, grab your M-16, and go to your post. John served as an MSG in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War — navigating Stasi agents, defectors, and a city still bombed out from World War II — before volunteering for Beirut, where 19 armed factions controlled the streets and the ambassador's motorcade was ambushed with RPGs. He was there when rockets hit the embassy. He knew 46 of the people killed in the 1983 bombing by name. Also, one of his instructors at MSG School became the 14th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps.

In this episode of the Post One podcast, Dr. J. Scott Frampton, a former MSG regional commander who oversaw Marine Security Guard detachments across Central America, the Caribbean, and Canada. Fresh out of Iraq and newly in command, Frampton found himself on the wrong side of a politically appointed ambassador — and was declared persona non grata, kicked out of the country, and barred from visiting his own Marines for two months.Frampton explains what a regional commander actually does, and breaks down the weighty process behind relieving an MSG or detachment commander from post. He also gets candid about his leadership philosophy — why a lieutenant colonel needs to drop the formality with the Marines standing post, what kept him up at night as a commander, and the lessons he learned the hard way about trust.Finally, we dig into the long shadow of Clayton Lonetree, plus Frampton's advice for captains and lieutenant colonels considering MSG duty, and his closing message for the Marines standing post tonight.

In the 1980s, Marine Security Guard Mike DiBello stood post at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. At both, he raised the same alarm: the buildings sat too close to the road to survive a car bomb. He was a lance corporal, the junior man on site, and no one listened. In 1998, both embassies were destroyed in the al-Qaeda bombings that killed hundreds.In this episode, Mike describes the warnings he gave and the trouble he caught for testing his own guard force by planting a fake device under a Marine vehicle. He walks through the flaws he saw firsthand — thin, unreinforced perimeter walls and no standoff from the street. He remembers serving alongside Patrick Kowalski, later killed in the Zona Rosa attack in El Salvador, and reflects on the camaraderie of the third-world posts he loved.

In December 1981, Marine Security Guard Chuck Mellette was serving at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw when Poland declared martial law. He takes us inside that night — the failed communications, the armored vehicles in the streets, and the days of continuous watchstanding as Marines locked down the embassy and held it until things stabilized.Chuck describes serving behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War: the constant counterintelligence threat, the honey traps aimed at young Marines, and how a spy exfiltrated on the night of the Marine Corps Ball turned out to be one of the Cold War's most important intelligence sources.He then moves to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, where he stood post in the espionage capital of the Pacific and worked a visit from Secretary of State George Shultz.

Gunnery Sergeant Nic Poon went to MSG school as a detachment commander in 2020 and got dropped at the board — told by the program director he needed more time to mature. He returned to the fleet for four and a half years, deployed twice, and came back to graduate at the top of his class. Now he runs the Marine Security Guard recruiting, advertising, and screening team.In this episode, Nic tells the story of that drop and the long road to earning his spot, and lays out what it takes to get on the program. He explains how MSG school works as a nine-week job interview with the State Department, what board week is and why Marines get dropped, and how the screening process actually evaluates an applicant — medical history, criminal record, finances, mental health, and dependents. He breaks down how detachment commanders get their post assignments, what the job is really like when you arrive at an embassy, and how the relationship between a detachment commander and the regional security officer can make or break a tour.He also covers the questions fleet Marines ask most: which MOSs qualify, what disqualifies an applicant, whether spouses can work and where kids go to school, the difference between watchstanders, detachment commanders, and the Marine Security Augmentation Unit, and how enlisting straight into the program works. Nic closes with how MSG duty pays off for a Marine's career — including a possible change that would finally give watchstanders special duty assignment credit.

Retired Master Sergeant Lance Brown was a Marine Security Guard in Damascus in 1982 — a busy way station for envoys headed into war-torn Beirut fifty miles away. In this episode, he describes standing post at a small, exposed embassy with just nine Marines, the intel warning of thousands of Iranians about to storm the walls, and the two negligent discharges that put holes in a door handle and a wall.He recounts watching a reporter get chewed out for calling Secretary of State George Shultz an ex-Marine, and getting smuggled out of Syria after the post held him so long his exit visa expired.Lance then moves to Tokyo, night and day from Damascus. He stood post at one of the largest embassies in the world and handled a nervous walk-in trying to defect. He watched Japanese police beat back a protester climbing the embassy wall. And when his Marine Corps Ball was cancelled for a Reagan visit, the president arranged a cake cutting at a Tokyo palace instead.He closes on how the program built the independence and judgment that carried him through twenty years in the Marine Corps.

In 1980, Joe Johns was a Marine Security Guard at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut — an old hotel on the Corniche, protected by little more than sandbags, a blast wall, and thirty Americans' worth of resolve. He arrived with one order from his battalion commander: if you receive fire, you'll return fire. Within his first hour in the embassy, the React alarm sent the detachment scrambling into position.In this episode, Joe walks through a year of standing post in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. He describes the ambush on Ambassador John Gunther Dean's motorcade — three rounds in the bullet-resistant glass right where the ambassador's head had been — and how Dean walked back into the embassy looking like he'd been through a storm. He recounts the night Hezbollah set French rockets on a timer aimed at the Marine House bar during a Friday-night gathering, and the scramble into React positions as the Marines waited to be overrun. And he tells the story of the young Marine who cracked under the strain, leveled a shotgun at post one, and was off the compound within twelve hours.Joe also reflects on the human side of the post — the Lebanese staff who became family — and the psychological toll he didn't feel until he left, when the pressure of that year finally caught up with him in Paris.

On September 11, 2001, Marine Security Guard Mark McCabe was standing post at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia. In this episode, he takes us inside that day from behind post one — the local guard chief walking past with a warning, the RSO rushing in to react the detachment, and piecing together the attacks from blurry images loading on a slow embassy computer while his fellow Marines watched it unfold live on a TV out in town. Hours later, a bomb threat came in, and a normal Tuesday became a day none of them would forget.Mark describes how the attacks pulled a young, still-forming Marine Security Guard detachment together, then takes us to his second post at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway — a glass-fronted building with almost no standoff, and the massive protests that came as the Iraq war kicked off. He closes on how MSG duty shaped him, the road it opened toward federal law enforcement, and why he'd tell any Marine considering the program to do it without hesitation.