The guy from the State Department is a long-time member of Metafilter in good standing, and got involved quite early on of his own volition. In his own words,

The guy from the State Department is a long-time member of Metafilter in good standing, and got involved quite early on of his own volition. In his own words, "For future reference in situations exactly like this please contact the US State Department at jvisas at state dot gov. We (and by that I me my coworkers and I) will get this situatuation rectified imediately upon learning of such situations. We cannot take action to ensure that women like fake's friend here are not exploited unless we know about these situations!" and "Usually I get these cases weeks or months after they've stepped off that bus." While it is plausible that the involvement was for PR reasons, I think it's unlikely. Media coverage didn't really kick in until well after we had the "happy ending" of IFDSS#9 picking up K and S.