124.83/86a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Egypt (Kirk)
602. 1. The following instructions will enable you and principal consular officers at Alexandria and Port Said to take appropriate action in sudden emergency or when explicit instructions cannot be obtained from Department.
2. Should your departure become necessary and conditions prevent transmission of regular travel orders, travel expense including air travel and per diem and shipment of effects are authorized for all officers and American employees of Department (and of other Departments and agencies if they do not have funds available for the purpose) and for their wives and minor children at discretion principal officer, subject to travel regulations, payable from authorization no. 11–1942. Draw separate drafts and render separate accounts.
3. Terminate services all alien personnel except as directed in paragraph 14 at expiration of 30 days’ leave less leave already taken in calendar year. Commence leaves day after effective date of closing or if services are needed thereafter within 2 weeks after closing. Salaries cannot be paid in advance but Department will endeavor to arrange payments when due.
4. Officers will decide whether to retain premises and leave Government property therein or to terminate leases and store property in commercial warehouses. Officers will make most economical arrangements not incompatible with security of property concerned including effort to obtain reduction of rental of retained premises. Officers will decide whether Government property in retained premises should be entrusted to landlords or custodians should be retained. In the latter event principal officers are authorized to retain one or two of their most trustworthy employees as custodians at salaries same as they were receiving previously in other capacities.
5. The property mentioned above includes furniture, equipment, and nonconfidential archives. Such archives should be sealed.
[Page 82]6. Destruction of all confidential files, seals, codes, ciphers, true readings, legend machine dies, et cetera is of utmost importance. Burn fee stamps and obtain affidavits of two competent witnesses.
7. Thoroughly mutilate and burn all passports of any character, valid or invalid, extra visa pages, certificates of naturalization and certificates of registration and identity, blank or filled in. Retain first pages of destroyed passports for delivery to Department and make complete list with identifying data when possible of all other citizenship documents destroyed. In no circumstances should you bring with you any of above citizenship documents except first pages of passports.
8. Officers and American employees may store personal effects in Government-owned buildings or in retained leased premises. In absence of such facilities Government will pay local storage charges.
9. If possible, submit forms 285 and 298 and telegraph Department effective date of closing of office.
10. At time of closing inform Department of all cases of non-compliance with authorizations to draw drafts and make payments to individuals against deposits with Department.
11. This instruction is a precautionary measure. You should quietly formulate plans to deal with a possible emergency taking no steps that might reveal to local authorities or alien employees on your staff that departure might be contemplated. It is of political and military importance that all offices should be maintained as long as possible and officers should invoke the above instructions and leave their posts only when danger becomes so serious and immediate as to threaten the liberty and lives of the staff.
12. Repeat the foregoing in paraphrase to Alexandria and Port Said.
13. The Swiss Government has agreed provisionally to assume the representation of interests of the United States outside the Western Hemisphere wherever this Government’s representatives must be withdrawn. In latter event you should ask Swiss representative provisionally to assume representation of United States interests in Egypt (as well as Panamanian interests at Alexandria and Port Said) and you should report by telegraph to Department which would then ask Swiss Government to authorize its representative in Egypt definitively to assume such representation. Meanwhile you may in your discretion initiate informal and confidential conversations with your Swiss colleague concerning the foregoing.
14. If you should decide to move the Legation to another place in Egypt rather than to close it and leave the country, you are authorized to modify the above instructions along the following lines: You may take with you not only all officers and American employees and their wives and minor children but also those alien employees whose [Page 83] services you consider absolutely essential. Travel expenses authorized as in paragraph 2 above. You should take with you such files, supplies, and codes as you are certain can be safeguarded during the journey and thereafter, bearing in mind that you should have some means of communicating confidentially with the Department.