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For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. (Jacksonville-AP) -- A Jordanian air marshal, reported missing when he failed to show up for a Royal Jordanian Airways flight, was found yesterday on an Amtrak train in Jacksonville. Drug Enforcement Administration agents conducting a routine drug sweep of the train spotted Ali Ahmad Al-Omari who had been sought since failing to show up Saturday for a Royal Jordanian Airways flight in Chicago. Airline officials, fearing foul play, contacted Chicago authorities, who contacted the FBI. Al-Omari told authorities he was traveling to Miami to visit friends. Bill Hurlburt, a spokesman for...

WASHINGTON — The 27-year-old Qatari diplomat who caused a full-blown, midair security scare when he tried to sneak a cigarette and then joked about it will probably be catching the next flight to Doha, a senior State Department official said Thursday. "His ability to function effectively has been compromised," the official said, adding that the diplomat will probably not be returning to the United States after the incident. Fox News also has confirmed that the diplomat was on his way to Denver for a consular visit with a jailed Al Qaeda operative -- perhaps adding to the tension with the...

WASHINGTON – The federal government improperly posted an internal guide to its airport passenger screening procedures on the Internet in a way that could offer insight into how to sidestep security. The document outlines who is exempt from certain additional screening measures, including members of the U.S. armed forces, governors and lieutenant governors, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and their immediate families. It offers examples of identification documents that screeners accept, including congressional, federal air marshal and CIA ID cards; and it explains that diplomatic pouches and certain foreign dignitaries with law enforcement escorts are not subjected to any screening...

-snip- WSMV-TV in Nashville reported that a passenger had to be subdued by other passengers after he began quoting Bible passages. -snip-

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...

Dozens of federal air marshals charged with protecting the public from airplane terrorists have themselves been accused of criminal wrongdoing, including 18 who were charged with felonies. The tally comes from an investigation by the investigative journalism group ProPublica. Its story says marshals have been accused of aiding a human trafficking ring, smuggling drugs and money, trying to hire a hitman and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan. "Since 9/11, air marshals have taken bribes, committed bank fraud, hired an escort while on layover and doctored hotel receipts to pad expenses, records show,” the story reports. They have also “used...

Passenger bill of rights proposed Fri Feb 16, 1:00 PM ET Senator plans passengers' bill of rights WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) says she plans to introduce a "Passengers' Bill of Rights" that would give passengers the right to deplane when an aircraft has been on the ground for more than three hours past its scheduled departure time. "I've been stuck on the tarmac many times in my travel back and forth to California," Boxer said in a statement posted on her Web site. "Sometimes with the weather and traffic, it's unavoidable. But to keep...

Dana Brown, the new director of the Federal Air Marshal Service, never really thought there was a morale problem when he was promoted to the top position in March, but then again, he never asked. But now he is asking, and the Transportation Security Administration's 2006 Organizational Satisfaction Survey confirms what he is hearing from his men and women who are protecting America's skies from another terrorist attack. "The results are not good," Mr. Brown said in a five-page memo last week to all agents within the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS).

DENVER -- Since Sept. 11, 2001, federal air marshals have been traveling on thousands of flights. Their job is to track suspected terrorists and deter anyone who might try to hijack a plane. But some marshals are concerned about what happened when one of their bosses was reported sleeping on a flight, according to KMGH-TV in Denver. The concern is about the agent in charge of the Denver office, Tony Hedges. According to a former senior United Airlines flight attendant, Hedges, who was carrying a gun, was sleeping on a flight to Washington, D.C., which made him vulnerable to being...

HOMER -- A Minnesota fugitive wanted on drug charges pulled a handgun during an attempted arrest at the Homer airport Wednesday, touching off a gunfight that left him dead in the parking lot, Alaska State Troopers said. His two-year-old son remained in critical condition Thursday night from a bullet through the head. Troopers are investigating the shootout involving U.S. marshals and Homer police outside the airport terminal, which was crowded with high-schoolers and their parents. Jason Karlo Jacob Anderson, 31, of Duluth, Minn., had been living under an alias in Alaska with his girlfriend and their two small children for...

..., it became increasingly apparent that the Maitland man killed by federal air marshals may have been fleeing in panic as he suffered the symptoms of bipolar disorder. --SNIP-- A Miami-Dade police spokeswoman said Thursday that multiple witnesses reported that the 44-year-old was yelling that he had a bomb as he made his way down the aisle with a backpack slung across his chest. Later, the agency's chief of investigations insisted that Alpizar was yelling about a bomb but declined to say whether he was on the plane at the time. Seven passengers interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel -- seated...

by J.R. As many of you already know, a passenger on an American Airlines jet was shot and killed by an Air Marshal, when the male passenger stated that he had a bomb in his carry on bag. The Air Marshal attempted to apprehend the man who then ran out of the plane toward the airport terminal, when the Air Marshal caught up to the man, the man reached into the bag and was shot and killed by the Air Marshal. It was later learned, unforunately, that the man did not have a bomb in his carry on, and that...

MIAMI — An agitated passenger who claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal Wednesday after he bolted frantically from a jetliner that was boarding for take off, officials said. No bomb was found. It was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an air marshal had shot at anyone, Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said. Another federal official said there was no apparent link to terrorism. The passenger, identified as Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, was gunned down on a jetway just before the American Airlines...

What If They Made a Propaganda Film and Nobody Noticed? By Brad Linaweaver and J. Neil Schulman On March 30, 1981 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, an insane young man named John Hinckley, Jr., in an attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, shot the President, the White House press secretary, James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and DC Police Officer Thomas Delanty. The president’s life was saved by emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital, as were Agent McCarthy’s and Officer Delanty’s. Press Secretary Brady suffered incapacitating and permanent brain injury. When asked why he attempted to kill...

After the pervasive failure of airport security on 9/11, the Air Line Pilots Association sought federal permission for pilots to carry handguns to defeat hijackers. Capt. Steve Luckey, chairman of the association’s flight-security committee, explained, “The only reason we want lethal force in the cockpit is to provide an opportunity to get the aircraft on the ground. We don’t have 911. We can’t pull over.” The Bush administration rejected the request, preferring instead to rely on jet fighters to shoot down hijacked civilian planes. U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta declared on March 4, 2002, “I don’t feel we should...

It's unfortunate but true that most airline passengers can easily spot federal air marshals: They're the overdressed ones, and they're the ones flashing their badges to the flight staff. Asked at a June Senate hearing whether overt signals like these harm air marshals' effectiveness, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sensibly said yes. "It defeats the purpose," he said. He vowed that Federal Air Marshal Service director Thomas Quinn would make covering marshal identities "his number one priority." If that's true, Mr. Quinn has a strange way of doing it. As the Washington Times reported last week, Mr. Quinn is...

Can you imagine if an al Qaeda bureaucrat had ordered the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists to wear "I heart Osama" T-shirts when they embarked on their murderous flights? No idiot would send his men on a covert mission wearing clothes that would so blatantly give them away, right? Wrong. Meet Federal Air Marshal Service Director Thomas Quinn. The man in charge of our in-flight cops, who are supposed to be spying secretly on would-be terrorist hijackers, refuses to allow his employees to dress undercover. Quinn insists that air marshals abide by military-style grooming standards and a rigid business dress policy...

U.S. Air Marshal Forgets Gun in Restroom Fri Apr 9,10:14 PM ET Add U.S. National - CLEVELAND - A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, an airport spokeswoman said Friday. A passenger found the semiautomatic handgun Thursday and notified an airport employee. The employee then told airport police, who secured the weapon, said the spokeswoman, Pat Smith. "They later found it belonged to a federal air marshal who apparently was using the restroom and put it up on the shelf while she was washing her hands and forgot about it," Smith...

www.suntimes.com Back to regular viewhttp://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-air10.html Passenger finds out who cops are, the hard way March 10, 2004BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter Flying to Washington on Monday, the Glencoe man allegedly sized up each first-class passenger as a potential federal air marshal. Allegedly he pointed at one and declared him "too fat'' to be a marshal. Before it was over, Jeffrey Samuel Silverman caused enough trouble that he was arrested and charged with interfering with a flight attendant through assault or intimidation on United Airlines Flight 620 from O'Hare to Ronald Reagan International Airport. On Tuesday, Silverman had a removal hearing...

A British system that will allow officials on the ground to receive continuous video in the event of an airline hijack is being tested in the US. Air crew or air marshals would have devices hidden in their pockets to switch the system on at the first sign of trouble. Continuous video would then be automatically fed via satellite to security forces who could monitor the situation inside the aircraft. Cameras controlled remotely from the ground could be concealed or visible. The project, being tested by the US Department of Homeland Security, is only possible as a result of a...