It’s Time to Reset the Federal Air Marshal Service
More than a thousand, and perhaps several thousand alleged terrorists, entered the United States from 2021 to 2024 under the policies of Biden Open Border. Aviation remains a favorite and raised award target for those who plot an attack, and since September 11, 2001, federal air marshals have been responsible for countering this imminent threat.
With an annual budget of $ 700 to 800 million, the American public has invested more than $ 18 billion in the past 22 years for Federal Air Marshal Service to ensure flight security, identifies aviation threats and generally hardens the aviation objective. Unfortunately, we did not get what we paid.
Under the mismanagement of the Safety Transportation (TSA), the Marshal Service is only a shadow of what it should be. TSA policies have diluted the preparation of the air marshal and eroded their vital anti -terrorist mission. TSA decisions have withdrawn air marshals and airports, sacrificing their criticism of application of the law to support TSA initiatives. Outward the resources of the only law organization of the law responsible for protecting the area of aviation from our country is an error that cannot continue.
There is a way to follow, and it starts by getting the tidal waves out of the ASA air.
The Congress is currently working on legislation to release the air marshals of the bureaucratic and regulatory channels of the TSA. The bill, now to the revision of the Legislative Council, will allow air marshals:
- Develop a specific aviation intelligence
- Make more difficult targets of planes for terrorists
- Investigate aviation crimes and incidents
- Improve the training, candidates and the culture of air marshals
It is essential that air marshals are assigned to planes according to supported intelligence. Our place within the Federal Community of the Application of Laws is unique and we must treat and use intelligence differently from other agencies. TSA failures were presented during the Silent Scandal in Heaven, where air marshals were assigned to follow Tulsi Gabbard using data borrowed and not filtered from customs and border protection. Fortunately, the worried denunciators transmitted this information to me, I informed the congress, and the impact that resulted in the heavenly error in the sky. Federal air marshals cannot follow innocent Americans on the basis of non -relevant rules collected by other agencies. The Marshal Aerial Service must invest in a team of intelligence analysts who will work alongside our air marshals to make informed decisions on risk mitigation and the allocation of flight coverage.
Federal air marshals in training re -examine the TSA training center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, November 7, 2023. (Rachel Wisnietski / Getty Images)
A federal air service instructor is preparing to draw his weapon for a demonstration in a shooting field at the TSA training center in Atlantic City, New Jersey on November 7, 2023. (Rachel Wisnietski / Getty Images)
Future Federal Air Marshals participate in a shooting exercise at Atlantic City International Airport in Egg Harbor Township, NJ, March 29, 2017 (Astrid Riecken / Getty Images)
We have to do a better job to make planes difficult to attack in flight. We cannot hire enough air marshals to work on nearly 25,000 commercial flights operated by the United States, but there are better solutions. The Air Marshal service must arm more drivers and facilitate additional responsibility. We must train more self -defense flight crew, teach tactics to counter violence and work with airlines to provide this as a recurring training. We must cross other federal agents to tactical standards of aerial marshal so that we have a ready reserve if necessary. We must capture and use data on the agents of the flying police forces armed, armed and the crew formed defensively so that we can make informed evaluations and informed threats.
But the simple fact of having more air marshals and crew formed on board planes is not enough. We must find terrorists in the planning steps, when they are the most vulnerable. We must commit ourselves to developing investigative capacities of aerial marshal, generating unique cases work and to become a static federal presence in airports. When criminals commit crimes in airports, air marshals should be involved. The reasons and contraband methods of five heroin pounds aboard an aircraft are the same as the smuggling of five pounds of explosives. Aviation is used daily by criminal organizations of all kinds, and air marshals must analyze their methods and apply countermeasures.
There was once a time when air marshals had the highest shooting and tactics in federal police. I accepted the position of aerial marshal after finishing the recovery efforts zero soil in 2002, and all the new agents were required to shoot a tactical pistol of FAA aviation difficult to hire. We regularly trained in 360 -degree shooting houses, we were organized by physical and tactical packaging sessions four times a month, and we spent six to eight hours at the range every week by pulling thousands of ammunition balls. Each aerial marshal was certain of the skills and capacities of the other, and we all knew that there was no one to save us at 35,000 feet.
Today, air marshal standards have been reduced to correspond to the federal minimums of the application of federal laws. Over the past decade, the ASD has not hired for excellence; They hired for sex and race. The instructors of the air marshal were ordered to place faultless security screening that applied for employment. The cultivation of air marshals collapsed and it must change immediately. The standards must be increased at the ancient levels of the FAA, the evaluations must be gender and blind color, because during a diversion, the only thing that counts is physical form, skills and precision. Finally, the management and leadership of the TSA must be left to ensure a new start in the new agency.
The aerial marshal’s mission is succinct and finished: protecting planes and aviation against terrorist attacks. As long as the Air Marshal Service is hosted in another larger agency with a different mission, air marshals will be poached for other tasks and their anti -terrorist role will be more diluted. Air marshals want to get out of the TSA. Fortunately, the legislators of the Chamber and the Senate understand what is at stake and is about to introduce legislation which will create an autonomous agency for federal aerial marshals.
The reset of federal air marshals cannot occur quickly enough. The terrorists are there, they are preparing and time is exhausted.
John Casaretti is founder and president of Air Marshal AssociationThe organization of work representing exclusively more than 4000 current and old federal aerial marshals. He is the denunciator who exhibited the silent sky program in 2018 and provided Congress and Tulsi Gabbard detailed information on his surveillance by the federal marshals in 2024. John is also a key denunciation in the FEMA 2024 scandal where the air marshal President Trump.
