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Can you imagine if an al Qaeda bureaucrat had ordered the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists to wear "I heart Osama" T-shirts when they embarked on their murderous flights? No idiot would send his men on a covert mission wearing clothes that would so blatantly give them away, right? Wrong. Meet Federal Air Marshal Service Director Thomas Quinn. The man in charge of our in-flight cops, who are supposed to be spying secretly on would-be terrorist hijackers, refuses to allow his employees to dress undercover. Quinn insists that air marshals abide by military-style grooming standards and a rigid business dress policy...

It's unfortunate but true that most airline passengers can easily spot federal air marshals: They're the overdressed ones, and they're the ones flashing their badges to the flight staff. Asked at a June Senate hearing whether overt signals like these harm air marshals' effectiveness, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sensibly said yes. "It defeats the purpose," he said. He vowed that Federal Air Marshal Service director Thomas Quinn would make covering marshal identities "his number one priority." If that's true, Mr. Quinn has a strange way of doing it. As the Washington Times reported last week, Mr. Quinn is...

A Thanksgiving Day morale booster for federal air marshals has instead turned into possible pink slips for air cops who ignore their strict dress code.     Thomas Quinn, director of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), paid a surprise visit to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thanksgiving to thank the law-enforcement officials for their holiday work. He reportedly was angered when nearly 30 marshals deplaned and only one was dressed satisfactorily.     In response, supervisors are being assigned to airports nationwide to inspect the air cops before and after flights to make sure business suits or sports coats are being...

A new policy requires federal air marshals to stay in a limited number of hotels in groups for security purposes, but the officers say it is exposing their undercover status and putting them at risk. In less than 10 minutes, The Washington Times was able to identify which three hotels near Washington Dulles International Airport and which three hotels near New York's John F. Kennedy Airport are mandated under the new policy. Additionally, a document listing the names of 24 undercover federal air marshals and their room numbers inadvertently was left on a hotel counter on Aug. 30 during the...

The Homeland Security Department mandates that federal air marshals must have neatly trimmed hair, and men must be clean-shaven. The issue took on renewed urgency last month, when two marshals were removed from a Southwest Airlines flight leaving Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, after a supervisor saw them improperly dressed.

Autonomy of field offices creates bumpy ride for rank-and-file WASHINGTON - Nearly three years after the government’s dramatic resurrection of the moribund Federal Air Marshal Service in the aftermath of 9/11, the agency is hitting turbulence as it struggles with what one agency official called “growing pains.” The incident involved two federal air marshals from the Cleveland office who were recently stopped from boarding the plane they were assigned to protect because of a dispute with an air marshal supervisor regarding the agency’s dress code standards, MSNBC.com has learned. The plane then took off without any air marshals aboard. The...

For much of the past month a fight has been raging in news reports and over the Internet about the behavior of 14 male Middle Eastern passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. Were the men terrorists casing the plane for a possible attack, as freelance journalist Annie Jacobsen suspected in a long article about the incident? Or were they, as the men said and federal investigators later concluded, a Syrian band on their way to a gig? Until now, news accounts have only featured government spokesmen or airline personnel who were not actually on the...

Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS. The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service. Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women. “The lady was overreacting,” said the source....

WASHINGTON, July 16 - Beards are out. So are jeans and athletic shoes. Suit coats are in, even on the steamiest summer days. That dress code, imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, makes federal air marshals uneasy - and not just because casual clothes are more comfortable in cramped airline seats. The marshals fear that their appearance makes it easier for terrorists to identify them, according to a professional group representing more than 1,300 air marshals. "If a 12-year-old can pick them out, a trained terrorist has no problem picking them out," said John D. Amat, a spokesman for...

WASHINGTON, July 15 — Beards are out. So are jeans and athletic shoes. Suit coats are in, even on the steamiest summer days. That dress code, imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, makes federal air marshals uneasy — and not just because casual clothes are more comfortable in cramped airline seats. The marshals fear that their appearance makes it easier for terrorists to identify them, according to a professional group representing more than 1,300 air marshals. "If a 12-year-old can pick them out, a trained terrorist has no problem picking them out," said John D. Amat, a spokesman...

The Homeland Security Department's sense of fashion is endangering the lives of federal air marshals by making them conspicuous to terrorists, says the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.     Marshals, they say, must follow a strict dress code and military grooming that is enforced by the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS).     According to memos obtained by The Washington Times, marshals must wear a suit, or a coat and tie, when flying from all cities, even traditionally casual locations such as Orlando, Fla. Their hair must be worn in a conservative style. No beards are allowed, and dress shoes are required for...

WASHINGTON -- We are fast approaching the third anniversary of September 11, but commercial airline cockpits are hardly any more secure. Air marshals are proving wonderfully ineffective and the plan to arm pilots has not fared so well. Sen. Jim Bunning and Barbara Boxer -- Barbara Boxer! -- have introduced a bill to curb the Transportation Security Administration's stringent requirements that have failed to arm more than two percent of the country's commercial airline pilots. "TSA has slow-walked the program from day one," said Sen. Boxer. "[They are] denying thousands of pilots their right to be trained in this program...

MSNBC is reporting that US Air Marshals are reporting that air passengers are frequently pointing the Marshals out to other passengers. I have played spot-the-Marshal for over a year now. Guess how I spot them... The Air Marshal's management requires them to travel in freshly pressed suits with ties plus brightly shined shoes. In these days when most people fly in comfortable clothes, a fit, a clean cut man in a suit and tie sitting in the back rows of First or Economy stands out like a sore thumb. This reminds me of REMFs who decided that our Special Forces...

They stick out like sore thumbs -- Federal Air Marshals complain. The marshalls say that's a threat to their own and passenger security. An intelligence brief quoted by the Los Angeles Times recalled an incident when two air marshals were spotted by a passenger coming down the aisle who said "Oh, I see we have air marshals on board!" This is something that happens all too often, the marshals say, insisting that the element of surprise may be crucial to their mission. But in a complaint to Congress, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Assn. said they are "as easy to...

Air Marshals Monitor Behavior for Threats. WASHINGTON (AP) -- When someone at an airport is sweating, is it because he's running late or trying to hide something? Could hand signals between people in a terminal be part of an inside joke or a terror plot? A pilot program using "behavior pattern recognition" is under way at Boston's Logan International Airport, where two of the planes used by the Sept. 11 hijackers took off. Air marshals, passenger screeners and state police stationed there have undergone special training in things to look for that could indicate a terrorist plot. Israeli officials have...

<p>The safety of federal air marshals and the flying public was compromised by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executives during a recent TV news program, says the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which wants a Senate committee to investigate "unwarranted security disclosures."</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — With limited resources and thousands of flights with which to concern themselves each day, the Department of Homeland Security has taken an unusual step to protect travelers flying the skies.</p> <p>The government announced Tuesday that it has decided to recruit Secret Service and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to share air marshal duties while those agents are already flying as part of their normal course of business.</p>

BOSTON — The federal air marshals who travel undercover through Logan International Airport each day will become the first in the country to use Israeli-style behavior pattern recognition training to scan the crowd for suspicious activity, according to the leader of the Boston field office. An undisclosed number of Boston-based marshals have been trained by the state police unit at Logan, which launched the nation’s first such program in 2002 to identify potentially suspicious passengers for further questioning. “The responsibility of the federal air marshal doesn’t begin when the door of the aircraft closes,” said Jack Shea, the special agent...

Some European governments and pilots' organizations are stamping their feet because the U.S. has decided that all airlines flying to, from or over this country must be prepared to staff their flights with armed air marshals. If they don't want to, that's fine. They can stay home. The same goes for foreigners who don't like being fingerprinted and photographed upon landing here. Some seem to feel that verifying a visitor's identity is akin to violating the Geneva Convention. Quoth one Brazilian judge: "I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst...

De Volkskrant newspaper reports that ten members of the Dutch military police received secret training in Germany and Israel to become armed security agents aboard commercial flights. The paper says the justice ministry gave permission for the project, initiated at the insistence of national airline KLM, which reportedly hoped to attract more passengers with increased security. KLM has since come out against armed security agents on board its aircraft. The airline denies its part in the story and says the sky marshal issue only arose in response to last month's security demands by the US.