The New Pentagon Status Symbol: Bodyguards

If you go to a conference in Washington featuring high or even mid-level speakers from the Defense Department, you'll encounter a bunch of guys with short hair and funny looking ear plugs, part of the ever growing corps of executive bodyguards.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks created a real and understandable need for what are known as High Risk Personnel Program Protective Service Program Details (why use one word, "bodyguard," when eight is much better?). But since about 2005 the terrorist threat has declined, while the number of bodyguards has not, the House Appropriations Committee observed in its report on the 2012 Defense budget bill.

Why not? For that most Washington of reasons, the House report said: Bodyguards "have become viewed as a status symbol for department personnel." The report also noted "decisions to provide service details are based on position rather than potential threat or risk level. "

A 2009 review of bodyguards found that "the number of personnel assigned to protection details could be reduced significantly from current levels, which would both provide significant savings to the program and enable service members to be reassigned to other critical security functions," the lawmakers said.

Here we are two years later and all those bodyguard status symbols are still around, protecting folks at mystery meat lunches and dinners. The House wants the secretary of Defense to direct a reduction and, oh yeah, deliver a report.

Anyone care to bet whether anyone in the Pentagon with a bodyguard team will give it up anytime soon?