Posted on 06/30/2009 7:19:09 PM PDT by DBrow
WASHINGTON - The Federal Air Marshal Service is a "useless" agency staffed with under-worked officers who make few arrests, a Tennessee congressman is charging.
U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., has taken to the House floor in recent days to ridicule the service as a "needless, useless agency" and argue that air marshals have "a cushy, easy job" that requires little more than sitting on a plane.
He also contends that the number of air marshals charged with committing crimes exceeds the number of arrests the agents themselves have made.
"I think they are doing almost no good at all," he said.
The air marshal service, which falls under the Transportation Security Administration, is a law enforcement agency that is probably best known for putting armed, undercover agents on selected flights to help thwart possible terrorist attacks or other hostile acts.
President George W. Bush ordered the program to be greatly expanded after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Before 9/11, the agency had roughly 33 air marshals. Today, there are about 4,000, although the exact number is classified.
Megan Norris, an air marshal and spokeswoman for the agency, defended the program, which has a 2009 budget of about $820 million.
"Obviously, aviation is our primary mission, and since 9/11, we've had tens of thousands of flights that have flown successfully under our watchful eye," she said.
While it's a common belief that an air marshal's job consists only of sitting on a plane and flying back and forth across the country, that is a misperception, Norris said.
"We're there to ensure the safety and security of the traveling public, so it's our vigilance and our training that allows us to be ready to react should there be any type of threat or situation on a plane that could harm the passengers, the crew, the aircraft," she said.
The congressman, however, said arrest records show that air marshals do very little. Since 2001, the entire agency has averaged slightly over four arrests per year. That comes to about one a year per 1,000 employees and means the government is spending about $200 million per arrest, Duncan said.
"When we are so many trillions of dollars in debt -- a national debt of over $13 trillion -- we simply cannot afford to waste money in this way," he said.
Norris countered that arrests aren't a good way to measure the agency's success. Federal air marshals are trained to report suspicious activity to local law enforcement agencies, "so even in situations where an arrest would be appropriate, the majority of that is handled by the local law enforcement in whatever airport or location we are at," she said.
Duncan also pointed to news reports that said dozens of air marshals have been charged with crimes or accused of misconduct since 9/11, including drunken driving, domestic violence, human trafficking and attempting to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.
Norris responded that the majority of air marshals are professionals who are dedicated to the job.
"We're out there ready to put our lives on the line to defend everybody on that aircraft and anybody else who could possibly be harmed, so it's disappointing to us when people choose to focus on that (misconduct)," she said.
Duncan stressed that he has never had any run-ins with an air marshal and said he doesn't even know anyone who works for the program. Regardless, he believes the government needs to be more reasonable in its security spending. He'd like to see the Air Marshal Service abolished, although he doesn't expect that to happen anytime soon.
"The problem is, nobody wants to vote against anything that has the word security attached to it," he said. "Well, we're going ridiculously overboard. Even if we spend the entire federal budget on security, we couldn't make life totally, completely safe."
On Wednesday, Duncan saw his contention proved right on the House floor. His amendment to freeze the agency's 2010 budget at the current level instead of giving it a proposed $40 million increase was shot down by a vote of 294-134 as the House wrestled with, and later approved, the program's $860 million budget for next year as part of the broader spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
"I just think this $860 million that we are about to appropriate for them would be much better spent on almost anything that you can think of," he said. "There are hundreds of other good things, maybe even thousands, that money could be spent on. I just think it's a total waste."
Disarm the pilots by killing funding to their training, eliminate the air marshals, next take he fancy detectors out of the security lines at airports.
What could go wrong, Congressman Duncan?
I've noticed more and more articles critical of the Air MArshal program, apparently trying to prepare public opinion for when they pull the plug. Next will come a series of high-profile "scandals" to call further attention to the program. In this article they mention a dozen or so problems out of the 4400 or so people in the program. hey, how many people in Congress have criminal records?
This guy needs to calm down. He sounds like an idiot.
I actually agree with him. Passengers have shown they will step in and take control of any situation if needed.
Pilots should have guns. Air marshals are easy to spot and any serious terrorist would take them out first.
/johnny
About the only thing that the whole airport security thing has accomplished is create huge markets for security devices for airports. As with all things branded as “good for business”, the consumer has to put up with it.
I’m inclined to agree with him. The government has done everything possible to disarm the pilots and copilots, making it almost impossible for any of them to qualify to carry a weapon. If they were actually permitted to be armed, which apparently few of them are, then fewer air marshals would be necessary.
The numbers cited here are pretty telling.
With armed pilots and armed passengers there would have been no 911. Arabs with box cutters? Taste my hollow point 45.
Congressman DUMMY!
Pilots are locked behind their new security doors. For an armed pilot to respond to an emergency in the cabin requiring a gun, he’d have to unlock that armored door and open it, which could be the entire reason for the cabin ruckus.
His logic is saying that we don’t need an armed person in the cabin because nothing has happened is loony. Maybe things don’t happen just because there is deadly force?
If a bank has never been robbed, why post a guard? Or have a vault, for that matter.
I’ll vote for you!
I wonder if this guy flies on commercial flights.
I’d replace it with laws allowing people with CCWs from point-of-origin or point-of-destination to carry on-board the aircraft... and allow all military personnel (retired, active duty, national guard, and honorable-discharge) to carry on-board as well.
Then we’d have far more than 4000 armed personnel on flights. (Besides, “enemies foreign and domestic” would include a terrorist act on a plane, wouldn’t it? If it DOESN’T then how legitimate would the National Guard shooting down a crop-duster dusting the Super Bowl be?)
If you can spot an Air Marshal … he/she ain’t one. Trust me on that one.
I was going through Reagan when they got a strong “hit” for RDX. Turns out the guy worked at an explosives range and had a good reason to have RDX on his briefcase.
Had it been some guy who stole a block of C4 or had made a device of Semtex, he would have been stopped.
The fancy xray machines catch guns, stray bullets, pepper spray, commercial fireworks, so they are not a totl waste of money either.
But the CLEAR system with the low RF freq shoe scanner is a waste.
See post 16.
Considering that the Air Marshall program is one of the cheapest programs in the anti-terrorist program system and conceivably the best active deterrent … what’s the problem?
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