Duh story of the week....

[Slappie 9]

Air marshals exposed by fellow federal officers

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Undercover federal air marshals are exposed every day on the concourses of Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport by fellow federal officers, a newspaper said Monday.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said that, like at most airports, there is an exit row alongside security checkpoints at Mitchell for passengers on arriving flights.

It said a U.S. Transportation Security Administration screener stands at the end of the row to prevent anyone from entering the concourse that way.

But the newspaper said that, as passengers recently crowded the Concourse E checkpoint about 6 a.m., it took only a few minutes to catch a glimpse of a screener leading a man and a woman down the exit row with their bags. It said they stopped to sign in at a table on the other end.

The Journal Sentinel said the same scene was repeated just after 6:30 a.m. the same day at Concourse D.

David Knudson, Mitchell's federal security director, and Amy Von Walter, a TSA spokeswoman in Minneapolis-St. Paul, declined to comment specifically on TSA procedures.

But John Amat, first vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, told the Journal Sentinel "it doesn't take a rocket scientist to sit at the gate" and figure out who the undercover officers are.

"It's a problem. It's a big problem," he said, adding that the procedure for air marshals is followed at nearly every U.S. airport.

Von Walter said not all of the people walking up the exit rows were air marshals.

But Amat, who works for the U.S. Department of Justice as a deputy federal marshal in Miami, said some of them are air marshals and others are probably other undercover officers.

Amat's association, which handles lobbying and legal representation for federal agents who are prohibited from forming unions, is trying to change the procedure.

Law enforcement officers at Miami International Airport are issued identification cards that allow them to pass unobtrusively through side doors, the same as airport and airline employees, without drawing attention to themselves at checkpoints, Amat said.

The association has been lobbying to expand that system nationwide, calling it a "trusted agent" program, Amat said.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., said the trusted agent program had become linked to a more controversial idea, the "trusted flier" program that would allow frequent business travelers to pay for background checks and an identification card letting them bypass some security measures.

Both programs are stalled, Sensenbrenner said.

Mitchell Airport Director C. Barry Bateman said he had not heard of the trusted agent concept and was not sure how it would work.

Each airport has a different security system, and an air marshal could not carry hundreds of different cards, he said.

The Journal Sentinel also said Monday that during busy periods, screeners at Mitchell use shortcuts instead of passing bags through huge bomb-detection machines.

The newspaper said that on a recent busy day a screener picked up a cotton swab and ran if over the handles of six bags and then brought the swab to a smaller explosives trace detection machine.

Von Walter declined to comment specifically on procedures for using the explosive trace detection machines.

Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., after being told about the Journal Sentinel report, sent a letter expressing concern about the matter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

The letter also was sent to two of Ridge's top administrators — TSA chief David Stone and Michael Garcia, head of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees air marshals.

"I am troubled by these observations, as they reflect serious security gaps," Kohl said in the letter.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2004-05-03-airport-security_x.htm?csp=28

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."