After 9/11, one of the many changes put into place was beefing up the forgotten service of the Air Marshals, those covert people on planes with guns who would travel across the skies to keep our planes safe.  On 9/11, there were 33 of them.  Today, there are somewhere between 3 and 4 thousand.  

We haven’t heard much about Air Marshals in a while, until now. Pro Publica decided to see how they were doing, and found out that it’s not very easy to find thousands of good people quickly.

Before 9/11, the Air Marshal Service was a nearly forgotten force of 33 agents with a $4.4 million annual budget. Now housed in the Transportation Security Administration, the agency has a $786 million budget and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 air marshals, although the official number is classified.

But not all of these new people have turned out very well.

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. They’ve been found sleeping on planes and lost the travel documents of U.S. diplomats while on a whiskey-tasting trip in Scotland.

Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.

On top of this, there have been numerous instances of “inappropriate” use of weapons, like when a gun was pulled over a parking space, or to shot up a Vegas hotel room, or when the gun was left in a lavatory and found by a teenager.  And that doesn’t cover drug smuggling or child sexual abuse.

So what is the Air Marshall service supposed to be?

The Federal Air Marshal Service presents the image of an elite undercover force charged with making split-second decisions that could mean the difference between stopping a terrorist and shooting an innocent passenger.

The difference for Air Marshals is that they are sent out to do their job on their own.  This requires a level of trust and professionalism that is different from any other law enforcement officer.  There’s no supervisor staring over their shoulder, no team behind them.  They are all alone, armed and capable of doing whatever they need to do, whether that’s to protect or abuse.

Only a fraction of them have been charged with crimes, and some degree of misconduct occurs at all law enforcement agencies. But for air marshals, the stakes are uniquely high. Their beat is a confined cabin with hundreds of passengers in firing range. There are no calls for backup at 30,000 feet, putting a premium on sound judgment and swift action.

No doubt the vast majority of Air Marshals have earned and deserve the trust and confidence placed in them.  But the fraction that have used their freedom and power to break the law represent a serious problem.  It reminds us that it’s not easy to cobble together a force overnight.

Under heavy congressional pressure, the government rushed to hire thousands of air marshals after 9/11. Partly motivated by enduring images of planes hitting the World Trade Center, the Pentagon aflame and a charred Pennsylvania field, 200,000 applied. With limited spots, the Air Marshal Service had an acceptance rate of about one in 40 — four times as tough as Harvard’s.

“We’re getting the cream of the crop,” then-TSA spokesman David Steigman told reporters. “The people who are going into the air marshal program are the best of the best.”

Easy to say.  Harder to do.  Background checks were inconsistent and sketchy, and hiring standards were loose and got looser.

In 2002, the agency decided that recruits no longer had to pass a rigorous firearms test requiring them to prove speed and accuracy in close quarters similar to an airplane. The test is still used in training but is no longer a hiring qualification.

After all, shooting a gun inside an airplane at 36,000 feet is pretty much like anywhere else, right?  Anybody can learn to do it.

The Pro Publica investigation is replete with instances of specific conduct that’s quite shocking, and calls into question the Transportation Safety Administration’s hiring and oversight of these cowboys of the sky.  It was so devastating that Bob Bray, head of the Air Marshall Service, responded immediately.

What was the Bray’s response? 

As an organization that was quickly enlarged in the wake of 9/11, growing pains are expected.

After all, all children experience growing pains?  Of course, that’s a very good reason not to put guns in the hands of children.

Air Marshals play a very unusual role in the scheme of law enforcement, and it hardly seems too much to expect that they will be adequately vetted in the hiring process, and properly trained and supervised, so that they can fulfill their lone wolf duties without becoming a new breed of government-empowered criminal.  It would be so nice to not have to find excuses or explanations for why yet another branch of law enforcement has proven unable to control its own.