From the WSJ:
SKY PATROL
U.S. Air Marshal Service
Navigates Turbulent Times
Armed Secret Agents
Have Gripes After 9/11;
Dress Codes Blew Cover
By LAURA MECKLER and SUSAN CAREY
February 9, 2007; Page A1
On Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Air Marshal Service -- an undercover squad trained to stop or kill hijackers on U.S. carriers -- consisted of just 33 agents scattered on more than 26,000 daily flights around the globe.
None were aboard any of the hijacked planes on 9/11. Six days later, Congress passed legislation calling for a massive expansion of the law-enforcement service as part of the nation's mobilization against terrorism. More than 200,000 people applied to become agents. Soon, thousands of recruits were quietly training in hand-to-hand combat, advanced marksmanship and techniques for discreetly defusing onboard disturbances without ever identifying themselves as marshals.
The service swelled to a current force somewhere between an estimated 2,500 and 4,000. (The exact number of marshals is classified.) Their presence, combined with new provisions allowing U.S. pilots to carry guns in the cockpit, has changed the equation of onboard security. Would-be terrorists now must enter into their calculations a fair chance that a fellow passenger is a well-trained policeman concealing a semiautomatic weapon.
But building and maintaining the force in recent years has been an uneasy ride. Marshals have griped that it's unhealthy flying four or more flights a day and say the job is a monotonous rut that doesn't lead to advancement. Another big complaint: Their cover can be easily blown, particularly when they go through special boarding procedures.
Budget issues led to a hiring freeze, and in some cases resulted in heavier schedules and fewer flights covered. Government oversight bodies, including the House Judiciary Committee and Homeland Security's Inspector General, raised concerns as to whether the marshals were able to do their jobs effectively.
Some marshals say many of their colleagues have quit, although agency officials say defections have been minimal. But Dana Brown, the current director, concedes that the program's $700 million budget wasn't enough to sustain any new hires between July 2002 and fall 2006.
In an interview, Mr. Brown said the agency challenges are largely due to growing pains. "It's the equivalent of having a mom-and-pop or good small business that worked very well and overnight it turned into a large Fortune 500-type corporation with many more issues than it had previously," he said. Mr. Brown is now taking steps to address the marshals' complaints.
The job is a stressful mixture of tedium and high pressure. Marshals have made 59 arrests since 2001 and drawn their weapons only twice -- once shooting a man dead. In the end, none of the incidents were found to be related to terrorism.
Last summer, their secretive operations came into rare public view after Northwest Airlines Flight 42 lifted off from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Aug. 23 for a nearly nine-hour flight to Mumbai, India. Less than two weeks earlier, British authorities had foiled an alleged trans-Atlantic airliner bombing plot, and officials were on high alert.
A group of 11 Indian passengers on Flight 42 attracted the attention of flight attendants and one undercover marshal when they allegedly didn't follow crew member instructions while boarding. Shortly after the DC-10 left the runway, one of the Indian men allegedly handed several cellphones to another, while a third member of the group appeared to be deliberately obstructing the view of what was happening.
Within minutes, as the plane continued to climb, three air marshals on board broke cover and took control of the cabin, moving into the aisles, revealing badges and assuming defensive positions -- according to an internal Federal Air Marshal Service report on the incident and accounts from passengers and crew. A pair of Dutch F-16 fighter jets scrambled to escort the plane back to Amsterdam. Half an hour after takeoff, Flight 42 touched back down, and the Indian men were detained by Netherlands law enforcement.
The incident was a classic demonstration of the marshals' daunting, and often imprecise, task. A potentially dangerous situation was defused with no injuries. But in the end, there had been no security risk at all. The cellphones were just cellphones. All of the suspects were quickly released. Some passengers, particularly Indian nationals, believed the marshals overreacted to plainly innocent conduct.
"We were not passing cellphones," said Shakil Chhotani, a 33-year-old Mumbai exporter of women's garments who was among the arrested men. "Just because one of us was wearing kurta pajamas and four or five of us had a beard, they thought we were terrorists."
Mr. Brown backed up his officers' actions. "I'm comfortable that the federal air marshals did exactly what they thought they should do under the circumstances," he said, noting that the decision was made in consultation with the crew.
President Kennedy launched the air-marshal program in 1961, in response to a wave of hijackings of U.S. flights to Cuba. In the years prior to 9/11, its ranks rose and fell, amid various threat levels and bureaucratic shuffling. Today, after obtaining top-secret security clearance, marshals undergo 15 weeks of preparation for the job, divided between facilities in Artesia, N.M., and Atlantic City, N.J. Each is issued a Sig Sauer sidearm, a small but powerful, Swiss-designed weapon popular in law enforcement.
They are trained to shoot in small areas that replicate airline cabins, practicing with low-powered paint balls. They drill repeatedly through scenarios they might encounter.
The flying force is more than 95% male, and includes recruits from the Secret Service, the Border Patrol, the Bureau of Prisons and the military. The full-time positions pay salaries starting at about $36,000 and average just under $62,000 a year, with a premium for working in certain cities. Marshals travel in teams of at least two, often sitting in first class to be near the cockpit door. Routes considered to be high-risk are given priority.
At the Mission Operations Center outside Washington, stars dot a digital map of the U.S. looming large over the control room, each one representing a plane with a marshal on board. Officials here relay intelligence to marshals in the field and are poised to redeploy marshals if need be.
While marshals train for the most dangerous criminal scenarios, the job is usually uneventful. Many spend their hours in the sky reading. At the same time, they must stay constantly alert.
Marshals say that after flying four or more flights in a single day, they experience fatigue, headaches, and other maladies. Compounding their frustrations, marshals -- mostly in their 20s and 30s -- have little opportunity to advance in or diversify their careers. "Federal air marshals cannot sustain a career in an airborne position, based on such factors as the frequency of flying, their irregular schedules, and the monotony of flying repetitive assignments," the Government Accountability Office concluded in November 2005 report.
Since the post-9/11 expansion, marshals have protested that their anonymity hasn't been adequately protected. Agents are required to check in at airport ticket counters, and in most cases display oversized credentials. Until recently, a jacket-and-tie dress code was mandated on all flights, even those filled with tourists headed for Disney World. They also were instructed to stay in designated hotels, where they had to display their marshal credentials to secure a discounted rate.
To bypass security checkpoints, where notice would obviously be taken of their guns, marshals typically enter concourses through the exit lanes. But they often wait for several minutes while a security guard checks their IDs -- a process that sometimes draws attention from passengers. In some cases, they must enter via alarmed exit doors. "The lights and sirens go off. Everyone turns and looks," one marshal said in an interview.
At the gate, at least one marshal must board the plane 10 or 15 minutes before passengers to check for hidden weapons and meet briefly with the crew. Marshals report being thanked and given the "thumbs up" from passengers who had obviously figured out who they were.
"Without anonymity, an air marshal is reduced to a target that need only be ambushed and eliminated or an obstacle that can be easily avoided," wrote former air marshal William Meares in a letter resigning from the service in 2004. "There is no question that terrorists, using known tactics and methods, can easily determine whether or not a particular flight is covered by air marshals."
Don Strange, the agent formerly in charge of the Atlanta field office, says he repeatedly complained about the stuffy dress code -- internally and to the House Judiciary Committee. "My views were not well received," he said in an interview. Mr. Strange was subsequently dismissed, in October 2005. The Federal Air Marshal Service wouldn't comment on Mr. Strange's termination.
Federal law prohibits marshals from unionizing. But in 2003, mounting discontent prompted them to organize and seek affiliation with the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. That gave them a unified voice to deal with management. In October 2003, Frank Terreri, the group's newly elected president, wrote to the agency's then-director, Thomas Quinn, complaining about issues including boarding procedures, dress code, transfer policy and scheduling. In the spring of 2004, the House Judiciary Committee launched its investigation into the service.
Mr. Quinn, a retired Secret Service agent who took over the service a few months after 9/11, told the committee that the problems were exaggerated and that complainers were "disgruntled amateurs" who were bringing the whole organization down.
In February 2006, Mr. Quinn retired from the federal government. Three months later, the Judiciary Committee issued its findings, saying that Mr. Quinn included "factual inaccuracies" in his responses to the committee. The committee also concluded that the check-in and boarding procedures were "unacceptable to ensuring the anonymity of Federal Air Marshals" and criticized the formal dress code and hotel policy.
Now a private security consultant, Mr. Quinn dismissed the report. In an interview, he called those who voiced complaints "insurgents" and "organizational terrorists."
So far, few marshals or security experts believe that the tensions inside the agency have affected the performance of the agents' flights or their judgment in the most critical question they face: when to blow cover and intervene in a situation on board. The decision is more art than science. One air marshal says that officers get drawn into onboard conflicts so often they seem more like in-flight security guards. Says another: "You have to wait until it seems bad before you do anything. You're not a bouncer."
False alarms are sometimes inevitable. Marshals must quickly judge if suspicious behavior is criminal or just odd. They also have to weigh the need to remain undercover as long as possible against the needs of passengers who might be under distress.
"We don't want to ... be drawn out only to find out there was a situation designed specifically for that purpose and now our presence, our positions have been compromised," says Mr. Brown. But even if a situation is not necessarily life-threatening, "We're not going to let anyone get hurt on that aircraft."
In the first of the two incidents when marshals drew their weapons, in August 2002, an agent held the entire coach section of a Delta flight to Philadelphia at gunpoint while his partner restrained an unruly passenger. Once the plane landed, the disruptive passenger and a second flier were detained by authorities but later released and not charged.
The second came in December 2005, when Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old paint salesman from Maitland, Fla., frantically ran off an American Airlines flight about to leave Miami, with his backpack strapped to his chest. "I'm going to blow up this bomb," he said as he reached into the pack, according to two air marshals who were on board.
When the man, later determined to have been mentally ill, advanced toward the marshals, they shot him nine times, killing him. State prosecutors later concluded that the shooting was legally justified. Calls to Mr. Alpizar's widow, Anne Buechner, weren't returned.
After Flight 42 from Amsterdam, the air marshal service's investigative and training divisions reviewed the incident, according to standard policy, and determined that it had been properly handled, according to a federal official familiar with the process. "It was textbook, that was really the bottom line," the official said.
Mr. Brown, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, took over after Mr. Quinn's retirement. He initially saw the complaints from marshals much as his former boss had. But soon after taking office, he began inviting marshals to small dinners in Washington, and soon came to a different understanding. In July, he sent an email to all air marshals. "Candidly, the morale was much worse than I thought," he wrote.
Mr. Brown has begun taking steps to deal with some of the discord. In August, he loosened the dress code, instructing marshals to "dress at your discretion." A new pilot program allows them to check in for flights at airports using kiosks, rather than ticket counters. The marshals are also free to choose their own hotels. Mr. Brown has set up 29 working groups to address such matters as scheduling and promotions. He's also opened up a dialogue with the officers' association, meeting with its leaders to hear their complaints.
Still, he said he hasn't found a way to change the boarding procedures. In a December memo, he noted that the agency was able to reach its hiring goal for the year, but didn't specify how many new marshals were recruited.
Meanwhile, some marshals who had been highly critical of management "are more optimistic that things are going to get better," says Mr. Terreri.
---- Daniel Michaels and Binny Sabharwal contributed to this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment