My level of mistrust for the Government has increased ten fold after reading this article and the postings. Who do I blame? President Bush,the Congress,the Republicans, the Democrats, or all of them? A top to bottom overhaul is needed but who should be in charge? Even more alarming is whether these abuses are prevalent throughout Government? My gut reaction is yes. Let us all pray for a reform movement that will actually work. Otherwise many of us should consider leaving the USA for a better life.

Once again, it is obvious that armed officers should not be sitting on a plane waiting to get ambushed, they should be on the ground investigating and preventing terrorists and bombs from getting ONTO the planes.

Lock-mount a buckshot shotgun in the cockpit and install the United Airlines steel barriers. Install video surveillance systems that pilots can monitor anything outside the cockpit.

Get guns off the plane.

When you have a service like the Federal Air Marshal Service that only hires retires you start to question this. I mean were 4 years into this agency and we still have this retires contracts renewed. Plus you have Secret Service Agents who have no experience in this area of work but they are in charge. We should be promoting from within. It would stop a lot of mismanagement and abuse of authority. Right now you have SAC’s (Special Agents in Charge) who lead through threats, intimidation, and corrupt work practices all against federal laws and EEO violations. But as my SAC once said it doesn’t matter because I know DHS OIG guys who will give me a heads up. Also ours once said the only way you will get promoted is if I say you can; meaning you have to be a yes person, 2) he once said if someone called in sick I would get with person and straighten them out. Here he wants to create a hostile work environment. You see his bonus is tied into how many flights we do a year, as it’s alleged. If people start calling in sick then his bonus is gone. All anyone has to do if they really cared is look at TSA’s year report about the job satisfaction and your answers are answered. But who cares things have been like this for to long and even going to the media got these guys nowhere. Well until 3/4 th’s or more of senior management plus SAC’s are replaced by current FAM’s no real progress will be made. All this guys are tainted ASAC’s on UP.

I don't know who this courageous FAM is, but he/she is providing a noble service and should be seen and treated as a patriot. The only antidote for corruption and mismanagement is a bright light. We must protect those public servants who shine the bright light and expose corrupt public officials.

I am a former Federal Air Marshal and I think it's awesome you guys are helping to expose the BS and unsafe practices that have gone on for years!

I can assuredly say, every post written about this subject on here accurately depicts how the FAMS is run. I challenge any agency, law firm etc.. to conduct further investigations into the matter. Mr. Ross you are to be lauded for standing up for fams on this issue. The collective results will serve as a stark public eye opener of how much turmoil is at the FAMS/TSA. It will show that the dysfunction of the Federal Air Marshal Service is worse than FEMA due to poor management (NOT the so oft used phrase senior managers like to call the people bringing this to light “malcontents” that are always blamed for the problems of the FAMS). Knowing full well that there will always be personnel problems in all organizations, I can unequivocally say that I have never been a part of an organization that is so rooted with the most arrogantly pervasive form of favoritism, nepotism and cronyism—bar none. The problem with TSA/FAMS is that there is little to no IG recourse or support for redress because the senior management staffs at the IGs are former SS agents as well and have an oath of allegiance to each other and are all friends in this corrupt esoteric bubble. It is a hostile work environment and although nothing substantial can be done about these troublesome issues at present, I am hopeful that in 2006 and 2008, the new Congress and Presidency will keep this polarizing and divisive problem in the back of their minds once in office.

On another equally important note, the management structure has erased thirty plus years of playing catch up in the Federal Government regarding the progress of fair and equitable treatment of minorities. The management staff (mostly all ex/retired SS) had this very problem while serving at SS. The management staff likes to showcase a few (token) minority promotions in various positions to refute these allegations. It is unconscionable that this is tolerated this day and age. This discriminatory “play by our own rules” mentality has become the par for the course regarding promotions and lateral assignments of highly qualified minorities. Recently, there were at least six supervisory promotions (all making over 120K) in one particular field office of which five out of those six were white fams (the main issue isn’t that they were white because non-Secret Service fams who are white are discriminated against as well). The problem is that those 5 out of 6 newly selected (GS-14) supervisors only held high school diplomas while there were dozens of minority applicants that possessed Bachelors and Masters Degrees, as well as vast work experience who (forget about not being promoted) weren’t even interviewed for the positions. The question I am constantly asked is that why these newly promoted supervisors who don’t have the basic education to get a GS-5 entry level Special Agent position in any other federal agency can get promoted to a GS-14 over African American and Latino applicants with Bachelors and Masters Degrees and more experience to supervisory positions? This is the most blatant and provable form of the gross discrimination that takes place at the FAMS. This is fact! This is not some made up figure from the malcontents group that is always being used as an excuse and scapegoat to mask these inequities at the FAMS. The dissention rate is upwards of 70-80% as the new 2006 TSA work survey will show.

The reason I don’t believe anything will be done about this gross mismanagement is plain and simple—self-preservation. The management staff will only reshuffle the bad-apples of management and allow them to continue to drive a wedge into the careers of the hard-working men and women of this agency. This has become a systemic problem of major proportion and not the company line and proverbial words used, “these are isolated incidents” that management replies to when queried by the numerous congressional inquiries. The only way this problem goes away is with wholesale change of the management climate at the FAMS/TSA. Until such time, there will always be an SS ”do it the most difficult way you can” mentality to problem solving which is the very thing that fuels the utter disdain the rank and file have toward the managers of this organization. There has not been one policy in the FAMS that fosters a pro-employee or pro-organization approach. Management uses this rift as a reason to keep gainfully employed. Ideas toward positive change take a back seat to how an office can discipline a good worker because they whistle blow or they speak up against the hostile work environment. A great analogy by Senator Grassley best personifies the work environment at the FAMS and that is, “ if my neighbor comes up to me and tells me my house on fire, my first inclination is to thank him and put out the fire, FAMS management would rather dump cold water over the neighbor’s head.” FAMS management has created this Gestapo like work environment and wonder why they are so despised and not respected.

What the management is doing verges on criminal. They create jobs for their friends, have no managerial skills and blatantly waste tax payer dollars. The Charlotte field office, for example has seven supervisors when the operation here could be run with no more than three; and in fact it once was. This Agency's budget is so overblown it is ridiculous. It would be the defination to cut tens' of millions and run far more effectively than we do now. Like the thousand who left before me I'll be taking a new job within the next couple of months. The FAM Service has become an embarrassment I want nothing further to do with.

Somone needs to follow up and continue to follow the Air Marshal Service. The Leaders of our service have no idea what it means to take care of the people working for them. They worry more about the numbers and recoveringa mission then they do about if our cover is blown or if we are about to blow our ear drums out and we are sick from 5 to 6 days of flying. The public and the airlines have no idea what we go through everyday to complete our missions and then the crap we put up with from our leaders in our offices. This job could be one of the best jobs in Federal Law Enforcement, however they are driving us all out with thier poor work ethics and policies. they have no idea what it is to fly everyday.

thank you and please continue to follow us.

Ms. Rhonda Schwartz, it is imperative that you continue to look into the gross mismanagement bordering criminal activity in the Chicago Federal Air Marshal Office. The public would be outrage at a similar incident involving the female FBI agent in Minnesota.

It's about time somebody lets the American public know what is going on. I am a retired federal law enforcement officer (26 years on the job). Congress has to step up to the plate and really protect these brave employees who expose wrongdoing and corruption of management.

As a former Federal Air Marshal I think its great that a flying FAM is courageous enough to committ career suicide! I joined the Air Marshals shortly after 9/11 because I believed in the mission. That idea was quickly choked out of me with the ever increasing mismanagment. It seems to me and many of my former colleagues that our lives were worth nothing to the secret service cronies that were given management jobs based on who they knew and not experience in the field. Management's unspoken rule was shut up and fly!

I have never been a part of an organization that could care less for its employees. They could care less about our concerns with respect to airline and personal security. As long as the numbers looked good who cared that our covers were being blown daily by the same airlines we swore to protect. It was more important to show Lyle Lovett around our top secret facility and let him shoot off a few rounds than take a meeting with the troops actually flying the missions.

Thomas Dewey Quinn, the original Air Marshal Director should be held criminally liable for the nepotism and waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars. Someone should look into the contract the FAM service signed for the original PDA's that we were issued. The ones that never worked but Quinn's wife made a lot of money on.

Just scratch the surface of the Dallas Office. Racism, Corruption Abuse of Power......

"It looked like Somalia, not the United States of America… There were dead bodies next to the baggage claim. There were guys with machetes trying to protect their families. One guy had an AR-15… People were urinating in buckets… It was like the end of the world. Federal Air Marshals are supposed to be pretty tough, but some of us were breaking down."

Those are the haunting words of a Federal Air Marshal (FAM) with whom I recently spoke, a man just back from a five-day tour of duty as part of a team evacuating victims of Hurricane Katrina out of New Orleans via the Louis Armstrong International Airport. FAMs were among the first law enforcement officers on the scene, tasked with a nearly impossible job: restore order at an airport where thousands were trying desperately to evacuate.

It started early Friday morning (September 2, 2005) with a message on his PDA: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had ordered all FAMs within driving distance of the New Orleans airport to get there as quickly and as safely as humanly possible.

To do so, approximately 30 FAMs from the Houston, Texas, office set out on the six-hour journey traveling in a convoy of Chevy Suburbans with the lights flashing. One group drove in a rented RV -- a choice that would prove critical as this vehicle would end up serving as FAMs command post once the group got to the airport. It would also house the hundreds of weapons the FAMs would eventually confiscate from the evacuees before they boarded passenger planes.

Once the FAMs arrived

at Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans and began to deploy, they found themselves playing every role imaginable. They handwrote passenger manifests, confiscated weapons that people were carrying to protect themselves, manned the jetways so passengers could get on board aircraft and even pushed the planes back from the gates.

One FAM in particular, a man with whom I have been in contact with many times in the past year (and who must remain anonymous because FAMs aren't allowed to talk to the press), shared his story with me.

War Zone
I asked the FAM what happened after the team arrived at the airport on September 2.

"When we got there, it was like a war zone. In the parking lot there were all these cars with the windows smashed in. All the radios had been stolen. It was lawless. No one was in control... There was trash and destruction all over the place. And then the airport doors opened and all these people came out. They looked like they had been through hell. Once we got inside, there were dead bodies everywhere. They were people that had evacuated the city -- they made it as far as the airport and then just died. It was total chaos. Total chaos… You know some of our guys [FAMs] are vets -- some just got back from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was totally unbelievable to them. It was rough -- we were loading the sick and dying out of 18-wheelers and onto planes. It was like a third world country. What we saw, it was lawlessness."

All of the Above & Much More is why I recently left. It's a joke & pitiful yet no one cares. All of us who came on right after 9/11 were SF, Feds or Cops with the tact experience needed. This is what happens when you have pencil pushing desk jockeys running the show. It's like putting carrot top in the UFC Ring!!! I feel bad for those who stay. But it's typical....reactionary & control.

I guess the Secret Service managers of the FAM Service were not able to censor and control ABC as they have other media outlets in the past. Inside info says that the SS cronies are in a panic over damage control already.

What I still find troubling is the fact that myself and several family members have written our congressmen on several occasions about the corruption of the FAM Service. Each and every one were ignored. We will each remember that at the polls.

I hope this 20/20 special starts a sweeping change in our service, my fear, the more things change the more the stay the same!

Until the SS is out of the FAM Service the problems will only continue. SS cronies are now in every branch of the government keeping the retires in second jobs after retirement. Congress needs to look into the behind the scenes control the SS exerts over all government operations.

FAMS are heroes. Their Secret Service retiree managers need to go back on retirement. I hope this report results in a re-interviewing of rank and file FAMS and a full reconsideration of the FAM agency policies and procedures.

I applied for the FAMS a few days after 9/11. I left a local law enforcement career of 13 years and spent 10 weeks away from my son to complete training. I believed and still believe, that what I do is necessary. I have given up much to be here, as everyone I work with has.

I am disgusted that FAMS management has turned a noble effort by many to protect our country's civil aviation, into a money making enterprise for themselves. Their only motivation is empire building and fleecing their personal portfolios. Otherwise, they would have strapped on a gun and worked flights over the holidays and elevated threat levels. I challenge them to work a schedule and then have the guts to call me an amateur! They can't hack it!

People like Don Strange and Frank Tererri threaten them.(management) They threaten them because they can and have done the job.

Those of you at the LAFO that don't thank Frank the next time you see him should be ashamed!He has given up much and taken alot of abuse to make things better for all of us!

I will continue with the mission because I believe in it! Those of you that don't believe anymore, I totally understand and don't blame you for leaving. I thank all of you for your dedication and "stepping up to the plate" when your country needed you!

Semper Fi!