Normally the violations of 18 U.S.C. § 970 under consideration occur in the course of demonstrations involving a sizable number of persons. When this is so, United States Attorneys should look to the local police to maintain order and to make any necessary arrests. However, that alone does not relieve Federal officials of responsibilities in the matter. Those responsibilities commence with participation in the coordination of appropriate exchange of intelligence information on potential disturbances likely to affect a foreign facility and arrangements for needed law enforcement response.

As pre-planned or immediately upon notification of a demonstration likely to result in a disturbance, an Assistant United States Attorney should be assigned to monitor the activity on the basis of spot reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) observers at the scene. Presumably the local police will make arrests as the occasion and their judgement dictate. Generally, conduct in violation of the act will also violate local law, but, if only a Federal violation appears, an arrest may be made without obtaining prior authorization from the Criminal Division.

Some suggestion has been made that the FBI observers should make such arrests, but this would not only defeat their purpose as observers but also, because they do not operate in uniform, would be a most ill-advised enforcement effort, inviting the very resistance a uniform is designed to aid in dispelling. This does not mean that an agent on the scene would stand idly by while a mission member entering or leaving the premises was attacked in his/her immediate vicinity. But absent some such exceptional circumstances, any necessary protective measures for protected foreign officials, including arrests for attacks made on their persons should be taken by uniformed officers.

The Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division has general responsibility for those matters which are of Federal interest. United States Attorneys should be alert for indications of militant political motivation, international in scope with subversive overtones, in reported violations and insure that the presence of any such features of other factors, which may highlight the Federal interest as well as affect the prosecutive merit of a possible violation, are reflected in the FBI's report.

[updated May 2012]