Air Marshals Talk Exclusively To 7NEWS About Problems With Denver Office

I have friends who work out of that office. They were not on the video, but they concurred.

Care to share what the problems were?

Lots of what I've heard involve a mandatory dress code (may as well be in uniform), mandatory grooming standards (bad for undercover work), being IDENTIFIED at the gate in front of the rest of the passengers, and the worst I've heard of is when the pilot announced that there were FAMs on the plane and gave their seat numbers over the intercom.

U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard is calling for a federal inquiry into the Denver office of the Air Marshal Service after several current and former air marshals blew the whistle on serious security breakdowns and talked exclusively to 7NEWS Investigator Tony Kovaleski.

"I am definitely more afraid of my managers than I am of terrorists," another air marshal said...

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9325197/detail.html?rss=den&psp=news

Absolutely! There is a lawsuit by an east coast FAM alleging that his supervisors were accosting him at his home because he blew the whistle on Quinn's "oversights" (Including tampering with sworn statements).

He will win the case and retire.

Michelle Malkin's expose on Imperial Air Security Director Quinn's dysfunctional and stupid management practices. With someone this dumb you wonder what skeletons are in his closet. The Beltway types are only comfortable to have someone as corrupt as they are get to the top of key organizations:

The embattled head of the Federal Air Marshals Service, Tom Quinn, is up to no good again. When he's not bullying rank-and-file marshals for blowing the whistle on idiotic dress code and boarding policies, he's prancing around the FAMS' top-secret training facilities with celebrity pal Lyle Lovett. The New York Daily News reported yesterday:

Some federal air marshals were outraged this month when their top official brought his pal Lyle Lovett on a tour of their training facility in Washington, D.C.
Federal Air Marshal Service Director Thomas Quinn guided the singer and a comely brunette companion inside the secret lair early this month. Quinn personally showed Lovett, an old motorcycling friend, a full-size replica of a plane and cockpit used for training. Lovett was also allowed to shoot a SIGARMS .357 in a target gallery hung with photos of terrorists, and to check out counterattack strategies, according to a government source.

One air cop told The News' terrorism writer James Gordon Meek: "Should a country singer be in a secure facility, firing Federal Air Marshal weapons and participating and viewing Federal Air Marshal training scenarios? Does he have a top secret clearance to do and view this type of training? [Management] is giving Hollywood celebrities their own personal tour and firearms practice."

The source added, perhaps sarcastically, "I'm sure Lyle won't tell anybody."

Lovett's reps did not return calls on the federal holiday, but Federal Air Marshal Service spokesman Dave Adams confirmed that Lovett and Quinn are friends. But, he told us: "No security was jeopardized. I can guarantee that the general public has been able to see what [Lovett] was shown, because we show the same types of displays through the press on national television."

Marshals point out that the kind of blabbermouth puff pieces Adams is talking about include one recently broadcast on Paula Zahn's show on CNN, which endangered marshals by, among other things:

-explicitly describing the Federal Air Marshal Boarding Procedure,

- revealing that FAMs communicate via wireless PDAs and discussing the PDA's capabilities and deadly shortcomings (potential terrorists now know that FAMs cannot receive vital information from FAM operations to their PDA while in flight),

- displaying audio and visual of a FAM briefing the flight crew (potential terrorists are now aware that every member of the flight crew knows the identity of the FAMs and their specific seats),

- disclosing that FAMs carry .357 Sigs (terrorists can now become familiar with the same weapon as the FAM carries prior to attack),

- divulging that FAMs are only allowed to read books, but are specifically prohibited from listening to music or watching movies and are not allowed to sleep (potential terrorists can now observe who is not listening to music or watching movies to further narrow down the identity of the undercover FAM),

- and disclosing that FAMs profile on-coming passengers and will classify men with short haircuts, military insignia or law enforcement garments as people they will seek help from if the need arises (potential terrorists can now change their appearance to look like a “friendly”).

Marshals are livid at Quinn's reckless disregard for their safety and his continued war on FAMS employees trying to put the public interest above public relations. How long will the Bush administration keep this joker on board before something truly catastrophic happens?

I have a friend who is an air marshal, but is not in the Denver area.

The organization has some serious management issues in other areas other than Denver as well. From what my friend said last time I talked with him about it there did seem to be the start of some progress in getting those issues addressed where he is at. That was quite a few months ago.

I hate to see the air marshals have to speak out like this to get problems addressed, but I do think that both they and the TV station handled this well. No real details, but a show of unity on the part of a group of air marshals to provide credibility to their claims of there being real problems.

Hopefully this will be enough to shake up the upper levels of management in that organization and force them to concentrate on fixing problems instead of empire building.

Hopefully this will also wake up the regional managers that insist on a suit and tie type of dress code for those working from them. That stupidity needs to end.

I do have something good to say about the organization from what little my friend has told me. They do keep up on weapons training. They do get a lot of range time. They aren't like a lot of police type forces that let neglect their firearms skills or hand to hand skills.

I only know one air marshal, so I don't know if he's a reasonable representation, but he's definitely someone I would want around in a tense situation. Not just because he's quite capable in a physical conflict, but because he's got a steady temperament, and a great deal of common sense.

I haven't been impressed with the stories I've heard of their management, but it seems like they have some good people. Hopefully the management issues can be gotten under control so they aren't reducing their effectiveness.

Geez... what ELSE can Bush do to help the Dems win both houses of Congress this fall?

From what I understand, that depends upon the office. From what I can tell, Denver doesn't get much range time.

potential terrorists now know that FAMs cannot receive vital information from FAM operations to their PDA while in flight

This could be disinformatsia

No telling really... Bush appointed Quinn for some reason.

I suspect that Quinn has pictures of someone with a dead girl or a live boy... I can't think of any reason other than that to explain his longevity.

$500,000.00 to remodel ONE office??? Not the whole building, not the whole floor, ONE damned office!!! The money should come out of his retirement check.

Yea, Quinn did a considerable number of things wrong, and I'm glad he's gone. I am however very impressed with the fact that we were able to grow the Air Marshal Service from a few dozen to a couple thousand in a few years time.

I suspect that Quinn was selected because he knew where to find people and how to get the organization grown and operational that quickly.

The stupidity of the dress code was something he seemed to have brought with him from his days in the "secret" service, but even that seems to vary from office to office.

It's amazing to me that we were able to grow this organization this quickly and have it be this effective. Not only do you need people with law enforcement training, you need people with security clearances. Those security clearances often took over a year to process before 9/11 and afterwords usually took even longer.

I suspect the FBI was also growing at this point, military personnel were being activated, a lot of law enforcement was stretched thin due to the heightened state of alert.

The organization grew too quickly to grow well and had a limited pool of people from which to choose.

Quinn obviously isn't the perfect man for the job. It sounds like the managers of a number of offices aren't the best choices either, though maybe they can do well with better leadership from the top.

However, considering what they had to do, a lot of people seemed to have overcome their own failings and the failings of others to do an amazing job of growing the FAMS to that size that quickly.

Malkin's concerns are valid, and her intent is good, but some of her criticisms seem overblown to me.

Quinn let people know that the FAMS uses SIGARMS .357 sig guns? It was a huge publicly awarded gun contract. It's not a secret. It's commonly knows by firearms hobbyists, and the entire firearms industry.

Communications on the airplane? I have to agree that it was stupid of Quinn to confirm that wireless devices don't work on the plane, but that's not exactly a secret to anyone working in the avionics industry, and it's not hard to find out.

Boarding procedures? You want to find out about boarding procedures, you don't have to go farther than publicly available congressional reports. Congress just doesn't seem to care about operational security. Maybe Quinn should just have kept his mouth shut other than responding to Congress directly, but I'm not sure how it really made things any less secure.

Having Lovett into the top secret training facility? Lovett was not the first person without a clearance in that facility and he won't be the last. Many if not most secure facilities have proceedures and regulations regarding access by people without clearances. I've been in a number of secure facilities due to my work.

They announce that you are going to be there ahead of time. They announce when you arrive. They turn on the little red strobe light as a reminder and a warning.

They escort you everywhere and watch everything you do.

Things you are not allowed to see are kept out of sight. People don't say things you aren't allowed to hear.

Shooting a SIGARMS .357? I can drive across town to one of a couple public ranges and rent one.

Shooting on a Air Marshal firing range? So what?

Watching a mock response on a mock-up of a plane? I've watched mock SWAT team exercises. I've never seen Air Marshal training, but I suspect that how to face threats doesn't change a whole lot from one such group to another.

What is a Country Music artist going to learn from seeing a mock exercise (especially one in which they know a visitor is watching) that they could understand and articulate in such a way that a terrorist could gain something from it?

So why bring such a person into that location? It could have been a decent PR idea. Country music listeners are generally a reasonably patriotic bunch, but a lot of that group don't tend to have a favorable opinion of the Feds.

Air Marshals have enjoyed the benefits of a public that is generally appreciative of their presence rather than suspicious and aggravated by being watched by a federal agent. It's important to keep things that way if possible.

Hopefully new management is improving things. The FAMS needs to address internal issues, and they need to be able to address them internally.

Congress needs to lean to keep the details of such operations out of the public eye when they are providing oversight.

Management in the FAMS needs to adopt a policy of simply not responding to the media. They should respond to Congress as and they should respond up through their boss in the Department of Homeland Security. However, they should simply not deal directly with the public, because no matter what they say or do, some portion of the media is going to sensationalize it.

Thanks for the enlightening response.