Originally Posted by
sbagdon
Protocol Office would also include affairs of State. You can presume that just about every embassy has the direct phone-line to that office.
This. In other words, not US politicians, but VIPs from other countries. "Protocol Offices" are typically Ministry-of-Foreign-Affairs stuff.
At airports that lack a Protocol Office, you end up with the club's "conference room" being taken over by Secret Service or Bureau of Diplomatic Security for the VIP to use, and lots of linebacker-sized guys in suits with earpieces and lapel pins (the kind of lapel pins that are inconspicuous unless you know what they are, in which case they're
very conspicuous) hanging around the club making small talk.
(I was in the EWR WorldClub a couple years back, at the same time as the King of Sweden.)