"Air Marshals Still Hiding in Plain Sight"

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Air marshals still hiding in plain sight
Changes meant to protect identities are slow to be implemented
By LARRY SANDLER
The Milwaukee (WI) Journal Sentinel 


Contrary to assurances from top federal officials, security procedures
continue to expose the identities of undercover federal air marshals at
Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport and other airports
nationwide, internal federal memos and e-mails show.

Chief among the concerns, air marshals say, is a dress code that makes
them so obvious that they're spotted by 12-year-olds, chatted up by
congressmen and ridiculed by flight attendants.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security say officials
recognize problems with boarding procedures and are working to correct
them, although not as quickly as they had hoped. But they dismiss
concerns about the dress code as inaccurate and overblown.

Air marshals are supposed to remain undercover, allowing them to
surprise hijackers.

In May, however, the Journal Sentinel reported that undercover air
marshals and other plainclothes law enforcement officers were required
to walk up exit rows at security checkpoints, show their identification
and sign logbooks, all in full view of passengers.

Since then, U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has taken the lead in demanding
changes to protect air marshals' identities. On Thursday, the Senate
Appropriations Committee approved a Kohl amendment to authorize Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge to issue badges to air marshals that would
let them use side doors to bypass checkpoints, as airport employees do.

Currently, such badges differ from one airport to another. Air marshals
now have badges only for their home airports, but not for other airports
they fly into. The new badges would be universal passes, if Kohl's
amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill becomes law.

Slow response

After the Journal Sentinel article appeared, Federal Air Marshals
Service Director Tom Quinn said he would work with the Transportation
Security Administration and the airports to get air marshals past
checkpoints unobtrusively. Quinn said he hoped to start those changes
within 30 days and complete them within 90 days.

But more than a month later, air marshals are still being escorted up
exit rows and air marshals service spokesman Dave Adams admits Quinn
"might have been a little optimistic" in his timetable. Changing
procedures at more than 400 U.S. airports is a complicated process that
will take time, said Adams and Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle.

Nonetheless, Ridge told Kohl at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
June 9 that he had launched a full-scale review that would lead to
significant changes in checkpoint procedures.

John Amat, first vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers
Association, called Ridge's commitment encouraging, but added that the
procedures could have been changed months ago if Quinn had listened when
concerns were raised by the association. The organization provides
lobbying and legal representation for federal agents who can't legally
form unions.

Other gaps in air marshals' security remain, based on federal memos and
e-mails obtained by the Journal Sentinel and on postings by air marshals
on an Internet forum. Among the issues:

Dress code

Air marshals have long complained about what they call "military-style"
grooming rules and a dress code that requires men to wear sport coats in
many instances.

In Internet postings, one air marshal said a congressman started asking
him about aviation security on a Washington, D.C., flight, adding, "He
picked me out because he saw that me and my partner didn't want to have
our jackets hung when it is 90 freaking degrees on the plane."

Another air marshal wrote, "When we stepped off (the plane), one flight
attendant blurted out, 'Oh, they're real obvious,' and (they) all
started laughing at us. Now we have moved on to outright humiliation
from flight attendants about our dress code."

Still another air marshal said that after a friend's 12-year-old son
asked him questions about his job, the boy started picking out other air
marshals in an airport.

Adams said the dress code "has been totally inaccurately portrayed." He
and Doyle said the special agents in charge of each office can let air
marshals dress appropriately for each flight, whether it's suit and tie
for a New York-to-Washington run or a casual shirt for a flight to
Florida.

"However, we're not going to let them dress unprofessionally," Adams
added.

Amat said air marshals want to blend in, not "look like some kind of
1970s beach bum."

Checkpoint rules

On May 4, Quinn issued a memo that said air marshals no longer had to
sign checkpoint logbooks, effective May 11. The same memo said they no
longer had to wait for a uniformed law enforcement officer to check
their credentials and could show their identification to a TSA
supervisor instead.

But in a May 19 e-mail, John Shea, special agent in charge of the air
marshals' Boston office, said the Massachusetts State Police considered
the new rules to be "minimum standards" and had decided that air
marshals would continue to sign logbooks and present their credentials
to troopers at Logan International Airport.

Other e-mails indicated that many airports, including Washington's
Reagan National Airport and San Francisco International Airport, were
taking similar positions.

Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports
Authority, said Reagan National has airport police officers stationed at
each checkpoint and they can check air marshals' credentials quickly,
unlike other airports where uniformed officers must be summoned.

Reagan National needs different procedures because far more armed
plainclothes officers board airliners there than elsewhere, Hamilton
said. In addition to air marshals, the airport is used by Secret Service
agents, diplomatic security teams and numerous federal agents visiting
their agencies' headquarters and training academies, she said.

Spokesmen for the Boston and San Francisco airports, the Massachusetts
State Police and the San Francisco Police Department declined to
comment. Doyle and Adams said authorities would deal with any airport
not following the rules.

Boarding procedures
Quinn had told Kohl that air marshals could board airliners at any time,
after they complained that boarding a few minutes before other
passengers made them too obvious.

Internal memos show, however, that only one member of each two-person
air marshal team can board at a different time. One still has to board
in advance to brief the crew.

Representatives of the law enforcement association have talked to Kohl's
staff about all these issues, but changing the checkpoint procedures
remains Kohl's top priority, Kohl spokesman Zach Goldberg said.


 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************