In my time they were part of the Marine Security Guard Battalion but this has changed. Administratively they were under the control of that Battalion commander, but locally in the Embassy they under the overall command of the Ambassador, and are under the operational control of the Regional Security Officer (RSO), tactically by their unit commander and senior NCOs. After my last deployment to Vietnam, I spent several months attached to the American Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia as part of a small group of Marines and others assessing the activities of a regional Communist insurgency for the Ambassador.
So, if the Ambassador tells the Marines to destroy their weapons or whatever, and neither the RSO nor the unit commander countermands that, they have to do it, right?
