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From: wales@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.auto
Subject: U.S. State Department license plates?
Message-ID: <6033@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 17-Jun-85 14:00:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.6033
Posted: Mon Jun 17 14:00:49 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 14:41:32 EDT
Reply-To: wales@ucla-cs.UUCP (Rich Wales)
Distribution: net
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 47

In the past few months, I have started to see numerous cars here in
Los Angeles with U.S. State Department license plates.  (The State
Department, for the benefit of anyone outside the USA who doesn't know,
is the government agency which handles our relationships with other
countries -- our "foreign ministry", if you will.)

These plates have a blue stripe on top, a white area in the middle,
and a red stripe on the bottom.  The blue area extends down to form a
background for the first letter of the (three-letter-and-three-digit)
license number itself; the other two letters and three digits are on a
white background.

In VERY small lettering at the bottom of the plate (so small that I had
to wait until I was stopped behind a car with these plates before I
could read it) were -- if I remember correctly -- the following words:

				Issued By
			U. S. Department of State

I don't recall having seen any annual registration-fee stickers on these
plates -- leading me to suspect that they may indicate "official" cars
of some kind.  However, cars with these plates don't seem to have any
kind of decals or insignias on them identifying them as being "U.S. Gov-
ernment Property -- For Official Use Only" or anything like that.

My questions:

(1) Why do these plates exist?

(2) Do they mean that the car in question is owned by the U.S. Govern-
    ment -- or that the owner is a diplomatic official (one of ours, or
    even from somewhere else) -- or do they mean something else entirely
    different?

(3) Are they used on U.S. cars (official or otherwise) in foreign coun-
    tries?  (It is for the sake of this particular question that I chose
    not to restrict the distribution of this article to the USA.)

(4) Does anyone else know anything else about them?

Please mail any info to me, and I will summarize to the net if I find
out anything.
-- 
Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 213-825-5683
	3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024 // USA
	ARPA:   wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA  -or-  wales@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
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