Air Marshals Group: TSA Investigation Creates Terror Risk

Is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) taking its mission of watching the watchers a bit too far?

The question of oversight regarding federal air marshals (FAMs) has been in the news in recent weeks—especially after an air marshal accidentally left a loaded gun  (opens in a new tab) inside a Newark Liberty International Airport bathroom stall last month. And going further back, a 2012 incident involving air marshals  (opens in a new tab) drinking alcohol while on duty has put extra pressure on FAMs.

But the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) says that the TSA may be taking things too far, at least on foreign soil.

On Thursday, the association sent the TSA Office of Inspection a cease-and-desist letter, ordering the agency to stop its investigation of air marshals, saying that such investigations revealed their identity and, as a result, could threaten their safety.

“The ‘investigations’ are being conducted in the absence of alcohol use or any prior individualized reasonable suspicion that any particular FAM has consumed alcohol in violation of agency policy,” the legal order, written by FLEOA General Counsel Lawrence Berger, states. “In every sense, these ‘investigations’ are without basis.”

The investigations, which were first disclosed on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal site in February  (opens in a new tab) and followed up on in a April update  (opens in a new tab), suggested that the issues went far beyond alcohol use, with the reports listing lurid details, such as sexual trysts and the purchase of drugs while on duty. The reports drew parallels to the recent scandals  (opens in a new tab) that have befallen the Secret Service.

But FLEOA points out that such investigations create unnecessary risks for rank-and-file air marshals, who are tasked with doing difficult jobs that can put them in harm’s way. The association pointed to a terror attack last year, in which an air marshal was stabbed with a syringe  (opens in a new tab) and injected with an unknown substance while on duty in Lagos, Nigeria. The material did not test positive for toxins but created a major scare for the air marshal nonetheless.

“It is unfathomable that the TSA and FAMS management would promulgate a policy that directly divulges the undercover identity of FAMs, especially overseas,” Frank Terreri, FLEOA’s federal air marshal agency pesident, said in a news release. “TSA is not only endangering the American public by this inane policy, they are setting up FAMs to be identified by terrorists while unarmed overseas and for possible abduction.”

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