Post One: True stories from Marine Embassy Guards

In 1979, Jeanne Jacko became the first female Marine Security Guard. She served in Amman, Jordan and Paris, France — part of a ten-woman test program that opened doors female Marines are still walking through today. When the Iranian hostage crisis and the Karachi riots broke out, the State Department pulled the female MSGs from their posts. Jeanne talks about what it felt like to be ordered out, w...

Trey Salmon served as a Marine Security Guard in Calcutta, India and San Salvador, El Salvador. On Christmas night 1989, he found himself in the middle of a firefight between FMLN guerrillas and the Salvadoran Armed Forces. In Calcutta, a taxi hit him mid-run, broke his leg, and left him fighting gangrene in an Indian hospital. When he got home, he spent nearly a decade navigating Marine Corps bur...

Jesse Wagner is the first career detachment commander in the history of the Marine Security Guard program — a title that didn't exist until he helped create it. In this episode, he breaks down what that means, how the MOS got built from the ground up, and why the program needed it. Beyond that, Jesse pulls back the curtain on MSG school as it exists today — what's getting Marines dropped, how the...

When an entire Marine Security Guard detachment in Shanghai got sent home, the Marine Corps needed replacements they could trust. Chris Wright was one of them. Shanghai was a designated country post — the highest hostile intelligence threat on the program. The restrictions were tight, the scrutiny was real, and the pressure to not make things worse was constant. Chris and the incoming Marines knew...

Before Mike Pellow held the U.S. Embassy in Panama through a night of RPG attacks during the U.S. invasion  (Episode 12) , he was a young sergeant on his first MSG tour in Cold War Leningrad — and he was already finding trouble. A night out with the wrong people ended with Mike and a fellow Marine in a Soviet holding room, a man with a gun posted at the door, and the phone getting ripped out of th...

Melvin "Mac" McField was in a shoe store in Beirut when the walls shook. The radio said the American Embassy annex had just been bombed. He raced back to the compound. That night, the RSO came to the Marine House with a warning — they were next. Mac and his buddy climbed to the rooftop armed and ready. What happened up there, he still can't fully remember. What followed were decades of untreated P...

In 1986, Staff Sergeant George Holguin arrived in Kampala, Uganda as a brand new detachment commander with one mission — establish the first permanent MSG detachment at the American embassy. Uganda had just come through a coup. On day one, the RSO handed him a .357 and an Uzi and told him to carry both around the clock. George talks about building a detachment from scratch in a post-coup country,...

Jim Vetternik was an MSG at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade when Yugoslav secret police arrested him outside a casino and threw him in an interrogation room. What happened over the next five hours is something most Marines never experience — and something the Marine Corps would rather not talk about. That wasn't even the strangest night of his MSG career. That came later in Madrid, standing post outs...

In this episode of the Post One Podcast, retired Marine Bill Gwaltney takes us back to the late 1990s and life as an MSG in Cold War Belarus. Bill shares what it was like standing post in Minsk during the Y2K scare with embassy vehicles gassed up and a plan to run for the Lithuanian border, navigating constant counterintelligence threats, and accidentally CS gassing the Russian embassy next door.

Former MSG Glenn Parsons takes us inside the first takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Glenn arrived in Iran to 100,000 people chanting "Death to America" at the airport. Weeks later, armed attackers stormed the compound. Glenn dodged sniper fire sprinting to his post, destroyed classified material as rounds came through the walls, and was lined up against a brick wall with machine gun...

Retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Doug Drummond takes us back to 1975 Saigon, where he served as a young Lance Corporal. Doug shares what it was like to go from standing post in Dress Blue Charlies to wearing flak jackets and fixing bayonets as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the city. He recounts burning classified documents around the clock, screening evacuees as helicopters landed in the emb...

In 1979, the Marine Corps opened the MSG program to women for the first time. Only a handful were selected. Vicki Gaglia-McGuire was one of them — and when given the choice of posts, she picked Karachi, Pakistan. What followed was a front-row seat to one of the most volatile moments in modern diplomatic history. Three weeks after American hostages were taken in Iran, 10,000 rioters descended on th...

In Part Two of our conversation, Marine Security Guard veteran Cody McCabe reflects on life after the 1998 embassy bombing in Tanzania — from struggling through a low-morale post in Vienna to being reassigned to Sana’a, Yemen following an NJP. Cody shares powerful stories about security threats, leadership, PTSD, and the moment he nearly became compromised while securing his visa, along with what...

On August 7, 1998, the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was ripped apart by a terrorist bombing that changed lives forever. In this episode of the Post One Podcast , Marine Security Guard Cody McCabe walks us minute-by-minute through that day—what felt off the night before, the moment the blast woke him, and the chaos that followed as Marines scaled gates, entered a burning compound, and w...

Darienzo Peña was a Marine Security Guard who served at U.S. embassies in Beijing, Jakarta, and Brussels. He survived the intensity of MSG school, where great Marines get voted off the program and peer evaluations can end your tour before it starts. In Beijing, a stranger walked up and dropped an unmarked package in his lap at a coffee shop. In Jakarta, he was standing Post One when 25,000 protest...

In December 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause — a full-scale invasion of Panama. Nobody told Staff Sergeant Mike Pellow, the detachment commander at the U.S. Embassy, it was coming. His FAST team, the one that was supposed to reinforce him if things went bad, didn't show. What followed was hours of RPG attacks on an embassy held by seven Marines armed with shotguns and revolver...

Marine veteran Richard Leydet reflects on his time as a Marine Security Guard during one of the most volatile periods in Beirut’s history. From surviving the embassy bombing to returning decades later, Rich offers a deeply personal look at the cost of service, the bonds forged under fire, and the long road toward healing. Through candid conversation, he unpacks the realities of guarding U.S. embas...

Retired Master Sergeant Josh Schenkler breaks down the demanding role of the Marine Security Guard Detachment Commander — a billet unlike any other in the Corps. He discusses the selection and training process, leadership expectations, and the balance between administrative and operational duties. Schenkler also reflects on peer evaluations, family life at post, and the vital partnership between c...

On Valentine’s Day, 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun. Former Marine Security Guard Henry Lojkuc believed he was about to be executed. In this episode, Henry describes being outnumbered, cut off, and forced to rely only on fellow Marines. He speaks candidly about leadership failures, why he believes the Regional Security Officer was looking out for themselves, and how that day shaped hi...

This conversation dives into the complex story of Clayton Lonetree, a Marine Security Guard whose romance with a KGB asset spiraled into one of the Cold War’s most debated espionage cases. Author Rodney Barker —whose book Dancing with the Devil: Sex, Espionage and the U.S. Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story remains the definitive account—unpacks the human side of the scandal: loneliness, identity...

In this episode, Former State Department Counterintelligence expert and RSO Robert Booth draws on decades of experience in diplomatic security to reveal the hidden world inside U.S. embassies. He explains how Marine Security Guards serve as the frontline eyes and ears for counterintelligence , why foreign spy services actively target them, and what makes them both an asset and a vulnerability. Boo...

In this second half of our two-part conversation, retired Colonel Steven Hasty reflects on his time as Commanding Officer of the Marine Security Guard Battalion — a role he took on just weeks before 9/11. Overnight, the program’s priorities shifted as the world changed, and Hasty had to steer the battalion through uncertainty, manpower shortages, and new demands on security worldwide. He addresses...

In April 1975, as South Vietnam collapsed, the Marines at the U.S. Consulate in Can Tho faced a mission no one had trained for: evacuating by boat. Retired Colonel Steven Hasty — the only Marine to have served as an enlisted watch stander, detachment commander, and later as the Commanding Officer of the MSG Battalion — recounts how he and his MSGs, alongside Consul General Francis Terry McNamara,...

On June 19, 1985, gunmen disguised as Salvadoran soldiers opened fire in a crowded restaurant district of San Salvador targeting U.S. Marines. In minutes, twelve people were dead, including four Marine Security Guards—the deadliest attack in MSG history. In this episode, we hear from Anton Koszuth , a Marine Security Guard who survived that night. Anton recounts the chaos of the ambush, the split-...

When Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on December 6th, 2004, Greg Matos was on Post One. What started as a routine morning shift turned into a sustained terrorist attack within seconds. Armed with not much more than the systems at his post, Greg locked down the compound, gassed the terrorists at the front door, and got his detachment into the fight before the situation...