After Tuesday’s armed attack against the US embassy in Damascus, Anthony Gioia said: “You were always aware that there was a possibility that someone wanted to do you harm.”

Gioia knows all about embassy security during tense times.

The Buffalo businessman became the US ambassador to Malta only weeks before the 11 September attacks.

When it came to security, he said, nothing was left to chance.

“For a period of time after 9/11, we did not go out to restaurants, and leading up to the Iraqi war, we never made reservations under our name; we made them under a fictitious name,” he said.

As for security during his term as ambassador to Malta, Gioia says it was very good. “I had a driver and I had an armoured car,” he said, adding “and I had a bullet-proof vest in the back.”