Prior to Foreign Travel, All DoD Government Personnel Must Do What?

The answer

Prior to foreign travel, all DoD government personnel must provide advance notice of the travel to their Security Office and ensure their Antiterrorism (AT) Level I awareness training is current before they depart. Depending on the destination and their clearance, they must also receive a defensive foreign travel security briefing. These are baseline requirements in DoD security awareness training precisely because personnel — especially those holding a security clearance — become targets of foreign intelligence collection when they travel abroad.

The two core, always-required actions are:

• Notify the Security Office / security manager in advance. This lets the organization flag high-threat destinations, provide tailored briefings, and know where cleared personnel are traveling.
• Complete AT Level I awareness training (within its validity period, typically annually). This training covers recognizing surveillance, avoiding predictable patterns, protecting information, and reacting to threats such as hostage situations.

Why the incomplete answers fall short

Exam distractors typically offer one correct action while omitting the other, or substitute something optional. For example, an option that says only "complete AT Level I training" is incomplete because notifying the Security Office is equally mandatory. Likewise, an option that says only "tell your supervisor" misses the point — the Security Office is the required point of contact for a foreign travel briefing, not just your chain of command for leave approval.

Other wrong choices suggest that no action is needed for personal (leave) travel, or that reporting is only required after returning. Both are misleading. Cleared personnel generally must report foreign travel — official and personal — beforehand, and separately must report certain contacts and incidents after returning. Choosing an option that skips the pre-travel notification or the current AT Level I training is choosing an incomplete, and therefore wrong, answer.

The bigger picture

Foreign travel security is built around a simple reality: an American, and especially a cleared DoD employee, is a valuable target for foreign intelligence and security services (FISS). Hotels can be searched, electronic devices can be cloned or bugged, and seemingly friendly contacts can be intelligence approaches. The pre-travel requirements exist to prepare personnel for this environment.

Best practice extends beyond the two mandatory items:

• Electronics precautions — carry "clean" or loaner devices, assume no privacy, avoid public Wi-Fi and free charging stations, and never leave devices unattended.
• Defensive briefings — for high-threat areas, receive a country-specific threat briefing.
• Low profile — avoid displaying affiliation with the U.S. government or military, vary routines, and stay alert to surveillance.
• Post-travel reporting — on return, report any suspicious contacts, attempts to obtain information, security incidents, or unusual events to the security office (part of continuous-evaluation and counterintelligence reporting).

So the fully correct exam answer combines advance notification to the Security Office with current AT Level I training — the two together, not either one alone.