Pence requests advance party of 700 to prepare for his trip to one Latin American country (Newsweek)

http://www.newsweek.com/pence-president-trump-2020-pence-2020-pence-president-latin-america-advance-648900

Pence for President? Rumors Likely to Grow as Vice President Heads to Latin America With Huge Advance Party
By Jeff Stein On 8/9/17 at 1:45 PM

The State Department requested “nearly 700” visas for the security and protocol teams traveling in advance to one Latin American country alone to prepare for Pence’s arrival, said a diplomatic source. (Like most others who spoke to Newsweek on the matter, the person asked for anonymity because such details are normally very closely held.)

He and others with long experience in preparing for diplomatic trips say they have never seen numbers like that and couldn’t understand the unprecedented visa requests. The diplomatic source called it a “curious” number that dwarfed even the advance teams for President Barack Obama’s trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador combined in 2011.

The nearly 700 visas the State Department requested for Pence’s advance team does not include his own aides, or top-ranking U.S. diplomats with responsibilities for the region, or businesspeople he might want to bring along, said the diplomatic source, who has firsthand knowledge of the visa requests.

“These people are not in the delegation of the vice president,” he says. “These people are [just] on the protocol, security or logistics teams.”