AMERICANS ABROAD: The Junketeers

For a select group of Americans there is a global plan of expense-paid travel. In Paris, for example, such a privileged person may be met on arrival by an officer of the U.S. Embassy—sometimes fondly called "the Boodle Man." The traveler is handed an envelope containing the boodle: as much as $500 in French francs. From then on, the visitor is on his own, needs only to check in with the embassy's boodle man to replenish his wallet. In 1955 in Paris alone, some 700 Junketeers availed themselves of this service, to the...

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