Weighing the need for sentries at 35,000 feet

In the life of an air marshal, there are hours of boredom and seconds of unbelievable excitement. The big question: How many of them are really needed?

By BILL ADAIR, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 2, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Before US Airways Flight 969 left Pittsburgh, the passengers got the standard warning: Don't leave your seats.

Security rules require everyone to remain seated during the final 30 minutes on flights to Reagan National Airport, and because this flight was only 25 minutes, passengers had to sit the entire trip.

Perhaps Raho Ortiz, a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, didn't hear the warning.

About 15 minutes into the Nov. 12 flight, he stood and walked up the aisle toward the front lavatory -- and the cockpit.

"Stop! Stop!" someone shouted from the back.

Within seconds, a federal air marshal in first class had pulled his gun, leapt from his seat, tackled Ortiz and pinned him to the floor.

The marshal planted his knee firmly on Ortiz' back and pointed the gun at his head.

"Don't move!" the marshal said. "Don't move your hands! Don't touch anything! Get down!"

Pinned to the floor, Ortiz -- who passengers said had been muttering and behaving oddly when he boarded the plane -- tried to give an explanation for his sudden stroll down the aisle.

He said, "I just had to go to the bathroom."

'Deadly force'

Form No. 59569, the application to be a federal air marshal, demands patriotism and a willingness to kill.

Applicants must attest that "I have not advocated or knowingly associated with a group advocating the overthrow of the United States Government, nor have I participated in a strike against the United States Government."

They are asked if they are "willing to travel to and work in geographic locations that may be dangerous" and to places that "may present health hazards such as poor sanitation and unsafe water."

They are asked, "Are you willing to use deadly force in the course of your duties, as authorized by law?"

Thousands are willing.

In the past six months, the federal government has been flooded with more than 190,000 applications. One woman included a rubber flip-flop to "get a foot in the door." A man sent a videotape of himself doing a martial arts routine.

Federal officials won't discuss the number of air marshals or most other details about the program. As with other security measures, officials do not want to reveal details that might help terrorists find vulnerabilities.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said there were only 32 marshals on duty on Sept. 11. Officials have said about 50 people are graduating from the marshal training program every week, but that estimate is considered high. The actual number is classified.

In the rush to improve airline security last fall, there was extraordinary support to beef up the air marshal program. Fearing that another terrorist attack was imminent, many officials said there was an urgent need to put thousands of armed agents on as many flights as possible.

But now, as the huge cost of the program becomes clear -- it could cost more than $100-million per year just to have 1,000 marshals -- Congress and the Bush administration must decide whether it is cost-effective to have a large force.

Douglas Laird, a Washington consultant who formerly worked as security chief at Northwest Airlines, says the benefit from the marshals is not worth the giant cost. "I just wish the money would be spent in a more logical manner."

Elaborate cover stories

A second marshal rushed up the aisle to Row 1 in first class where Ortiz was pinned. He handcuffed Ortiz as the first marshal stood and pointed his gun at everyone else on the plane.

The marshal swept the gun back and forth across the cabin, making sure the stunned passengers knew he was in charge.

"Everybody put your hands on your head! Don't get up!" he commanded, according to three passengers on Flight 969.

Mike Cannon, a Justice Department consultant who was sitting in Seat 1D in first class, had just gotten a glass of scotch from a flight attendant. But with his hands on his head, he could not drink it.

The incident occurred on an afternoon when many people were nervous about flying. It was two months after the terrorist attacks and just a few hours after the crash of an American Airlines plane in New York.

The drama on Flight 969 provides a rare glimpse into how air marshals work, their disguises, and how they're prepared to act on a moment's notice.

The marshal riding in first class had a stylish haircut and wore a collarless shirt beneath a blue blazer, passengers said.

"He looked like he was James Bond," says Ed Gilmartin, a lawyer for the Association of Flight Attendants who was a passenger on the plane. "He was dark, he was well dressed -- I thought, Wow, they went to Central Casting to get this guy."

The marshal sitting in coach had a denim jacket, blue jeans and a plain shirt. Doug Flanders, a congressional aide flying back to Washington from a trip to Colorado, had noticed the man when he boarded. Flanders didn't suspect the bulky guy was a marshal but he was relieved that he didn't have to sit beside him in the narrow seats.

Spotting the marshals has become a pastime for frequent travelers, a game that FAA officials have dubbed "Make the Marshal." You peer around the cabin and try to figure out who looks like a Fed.

Bogdan Dzakovic, who served as a marshal and a team leader in the late 1980s and early 1990s, says they do a good job of blending in. He could recall only one exception, a marshal who wore a T-shirt with a big American flag that said something like "The USA is No. 1."

"He got a little chewing out," Dzakovic said.

Marshals have elaborate cover stories so they can pretend to be normal travelers.

Dzakovic says he used a variety of stories. When he was talking with a drunk passenger, he would occasionally try a far-fetched explanation. "I had one guy convinced I was going to the Orient to hunt vampires," he says.

Michael Mooney, a marshal during the early 1970s, told people that he was a school administrator flying to an education conference. Mooney, who usually rode first class, says passengers he sat beside "were not very interested in a school administrator."

Air marshals usually fly in teams of two or more, and they usually sit apart. Mooney got to ride in first class because his partner felt it was safer to ride in coach. "My partner had a theory that planes don't back into mountains and he stood a better chance at the back of the plane."

When a passenger got curious about his occupation, Mooney was skilled at changing the subject.

"I'm an Irishman, I was born with the gift of gab," says Mooney, now a fire captain in Atlantic City, N.J. "It was easy to turn my story into their story."

'Bored out of his mind'

Hour after hour, they sit and sit and sit.

They fly New York to London and Tampa to Washington and L.A. to Chicago. They are sentries at 35,000 feet, battling terrorism by being invisible.

To stay alert for an attack that could come at any minute, they drink soda but no alcohol. They read books and magazines -- they must blend in, after all -- but they are not supposed to sleep. (An exception, Dzakovic says, were the 12-hour international flights when his team took turns for 15-20 minute catnaps.)

"It's one of the most boring jobs in the world," says Billie Vincent, former security chief for the Federal Aviation Administration. "All you're doing is riding an airplane, ready for an event that you hope never happens."

There have been a handful of incidents where marshals have confronted hijackers. In July 2000, a Jordanian marshal on a Royal Jordanian flight shot and killed a man who tried to hijack a plane with a gun and a grenade.

But that kind of incident is rare. For the most part, marshals just sit and wait. The days become a blur of honey roasted peanuts and sterile airport terminals.

Vincent doubts that ambitious people would last long.

"Do you want to do your whole career as an air marshal? You don't get frequent flyer miles and you have to eat airline food," he says.

When Dzakovic was a team leader for the marshals in the mid 1990s, he usually worked long international flights that were viewed as high-risk for hijackings. He and the other marshals had enough time off between trips that they were able to stay alert. "You could maintain enthusiasm," he says.

With the new mandate to focus on domestic routes, Dzakovic says he has heard from marshals that the heavy workload has become monotonous. He says one marshal was flying the same route every day and was "bored out of his mind."

Dzakovic says the marshals try hard to remain alert.

"There was a very tedious side to it," he says. "You just get used to it. What separates a professional is that you keep in the back of your mind that something could happen at any time. You just try not to get drowsy."

Mooney says he loved the job and would have stayed if the program hadn't been scaled back in 1971.

"It wasn't boring for me," he says. "You had the lives of 440 passengers on your shoulders."

'We are federal air marshals'

Once Ortiz was subdued, another agent came up the aisle.

Some passengers have speculated he was a third marshal, but it appears he was another type of law enforcement agent who happened to be on Flight 969. The marshals directed him to search the area around Ortiz' seat. He found marijuana in a suitcase belonging to the EPA lawyer, authorities said.

In the meantime, a marshal announced over the PA system that the flight was being diverted to Washington Dulles International Airport.

"Let me explain what has just happened," he said. "We are federal air marshals. We've had an incident. Please, everybody keep their hands on their head."

Flight 969 appeared to pick up speed and made what Gilmartin described as "a beeline" for Dulles.

As the plane descended toward the runway, Ortiz remained handcuffed, lying on the floor on his belly. The marshal kept his knee planted firmly in Ortiz' back to keep him from moving.

'An able-bodied, quick-thinking man'

Since the program started about 40 years ago, the number of air marshals has swelled with each rash of hijackings and then withered until another crisis came along.

Originally dubbed the "sky marshal" program, it grew dramatically after several hijackings in 1970. A story in the St. Petersburg Times described the government's urgent effort to recruit marshals and said the job "takes an able-bodied, quicking-thinking man with a tinge for adventure as in the golden days of the old West."

A year later, the job didn't sound quite so romantic.

The Associated Press quoted a marshal named Hugh M. Vandervoort saying it was boring and "a real disappointment." Asked if other marshals shared his feelings, he said, "You bet your bippy."

In late 1971, the Nixon administration said it was cutting two-thirds of the 1,500-2,000 marshals. The rate of hijackings had remained the same, and the marshals had not prevented any of them. Administration officials said they planned to rely more on a "behavioral profile" to identify possible hijackers and then use metal detectors to determine if they were carrying guns or knives.

The program grew again after the hijacking of a TWA flight in the Middle East in 1985. During the two-week ordeal, the hijackers shot a U.S. Navy diver who was a passenger on the plane. President Reagan called for up to 500 marshals. They focused exclusively on international routes.

But once again, the program shrank until there were only 32 marshals on duty on Sept. 11.

Now, the marshal program is growing once again under the new Transportation Safety Administration, which has taken over the program from the FAA.

Many of the new marshals have law enforcement or military backgrounds that prepare them for the intensive training in how to subdue hijackers. The program has stringent shooting requirements to reduce the chances that marshals will shoot a hole in the plane. As Mooney says, "You wanted your shot to hit meat and not tin."

Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, says the new marshals have a mixed reputation.

"Some of them are very straightforward and supportive and make people comfortable. And some of them are cowboys and are pushy. Some of them believe they have some sort of entitlement that they must be seated in first class."

She said some have also been callous about possible casualties. "We've had incidents where air marshals (tell the flight attendants), 'I'm here to guard the cockpit and if we lose a few people, so be it.' "

A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration declined to comment on Friend's complaints because the agency does not discuss the marshal program.

Now Congress must decide how big the program should be.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee have recently complained that the government is spending too much on new security jobs. Although the committee members have not singled out the air marshals, their comments indicate the program is likely to face scrutiny.

Laird, the former security chief for Northwest Airlines, says the program is not a wise investment.

"I think the money would be far better spent to provide a truly impenetrable cockpit door and armor the cockpit bulkhead," he says. "It would be far more effective and allow the pilots to get the airplane on the ground where they can deal with the issue."

There is a huge cost for covering even a small fraction of the 30,000 daily domestic and international flights, Laird says. "You are probably going to need 40,000 or 50,000 marshals to do the job right. I don't see them hiring anywhere near that number."

But supporters say the program can have a deterrent effect with a small number of marshals because a terrorist will not know which flights have the marshals.

"I think it's useful as a deterrent," says Friend of the flight attendants union. "It's a comfort to us when we know there are one or more marshals on an airplane."

Vincent, the former FAA security official, thinks the government should have a small cadre of agents and supplement them by training pilots to act as marshals. The pilots would be given the same handguns and have the authority to "take lethal action if necessary."

An upset pilot

When Flight 969 landed at Dulles, the marshal still had Ortiz pinned to the floor.

The lawyer was taken off the plane in handcuffs and questioned for several hours. The marshals did not charge him with a crime, but local police charged him with marijuana possession. He has a court date on those charges next month and could not be reached for comment.

The mood in the cabin remained tense after the plane landed.

Gilmartin said a US Airways pilot who was riding in coach looked upset about the incident and yelled at some other passengers to stop giggling.

"You people up there!" the pilot said, according to Gilmartin. "What's wrong with you? Don't you know this is an emergency?"

Later, when Flight 969's captain came out of the cockpit, he said, "I know I was a little nervous. I hope everyone was okay."

Cannon, the consultant riding in first class, finally got to drink his scotch.

He and the other passengers praised the marshals and said they acted appropriately.

"I was impressed with their professionalism and demeanor," Cannon says. "They did what they needed to do."

-- Times researchers Kitty Bennett, Mary Mellstrom and Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Staff writer Bill Adair can be reached at (202) 463-0575 or adair@sptimes.com.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright