O
n Christmas Day 2009 a young man from Nigeria, travelling from Amsterdam to Detroit, attempted to ignite a bomb sewn into his underwear. The attempt, mimicking that of Richard Reid, who attempted to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes on 22 December 2001, was also a failure. The latest would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was subdued by passengers on the aircraft - there were no Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) on board.
Shortly thereafter, an
alarmed general public began calling for better security at airport screening checkpoints. By the first week of January 2010, President Obama had opined on the matter. Embracing the time-tested model of action-reaction that has characterised aviation security over the past four decades, he stated that “…human and systemic failures” were
failure”); more money is thrown at the immediate problem and the public is cowed by prophesies of impending doom through the possibility of further and imminent attacks (hence, the “race against time”) .
“
...roiled with cronyism, age, gender and racial discrimination...”
responsible for the attempt, having contributed to a “potentially catastrophic breakdown in security.” The President went on to call for a “surge” of Federal
Air Marshals to
be completed by the beginning of February.
Administration officials
characterised the action as “a race against time.”
The Threat Response The Christmas Day threat response is indicative of the United
States’
reaction to attacks against its citizens, especially where civil aviation assets are concerned. Attention is immediately drawn to the specific event; appropriate technology is identified (in this case the full-body scanning machines, controversial due to their ability to “see” beyond one’s clothing). Millions of dollars are spent, taken from some agency’s budget or through emergency appropriations , and the latest machine – accompanied by appropriate fanfare – is deployed.
A public official –
in this case the President – makes the desired mea culpa (“A failure of imagination”; “unacceptable system
Left: The attacks of 11th September 2001 r the r
esurr in the United States.
Right: The Sig Sauer is the fir Federal Air Marshal Service.
earm of choice for the June 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational
www.asi-mag.com 11 ection of the Federal Air Marshal pr
esulted in ogramme
One is tempted to query precisely when the “race” began. Has the possible utilisation of full-body scanner technology not been a matter of discussion for years? Was the Reid bombing attempt - nine years earlier, almost to the day - significantly different than this one? Concurrent with the notion that there were other bombers in the pipeline, federal authorities felt obliged to add that there was “no specific, ‘imminent threat’” thus managing to both alarm and calm the public simultaneously. Most disturbing was the President’s call for more FAMs. The Federal Air Marshal Service has been heavily criticised since its rapid growth following 9/11. The Service had resided in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Civil Aviation Security prior to these attacks. It was moved to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) shortly after the formation of that agency in 2001 and, in November 2003, it was transferred
from TSA into the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It was finally returned to TSA in October 2005 . In the intervening years, the number of air marshals grew exponentially, from a reported number of “roughly 33” when they served under the FAA to quadruple-digits today.
Criticism
Unfortunately for the marshals, the results of this sudden and dramatic growth have not been kind to the Service. It has been characterised as “roiled with cronyism, age, gender and racial discrimination” by its members. Similar complaints from the FAM cadre itself have been vocal and consistent over the past nine years, touching on subjects from lack of career paths to favouritism and discrimination by management. Criticism from external sources has also been constant and damaging. A cost-benefit study conducted by two academics in 2008 examined “…whether security measures are cost-effective by considering their effectiveness, their cost and expected lives saved as a result of such expenditure.”
The numbers
demonstrated that the annual cost per life saved by the programme was US$180 million. Another critic, citing the above study, suggested that FAMs were “…little more than a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
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