To Serve the Public Good?

The Air Marshal Association, in a 30 November 2022 press release, commended what it called “the exemplary service of Federal Air Marshals” serving at the U.S. southern border in response to what the organization artfully referred to as “the crisis created by an unprecedented number of undocumented alien entries.”

The press release continued: “Although the assignment is inconvenient for the Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) deployed, and the agency must adjust mission priorities to comply with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mandate, the order for FAMs to assist border agencies is lawful. The Air Marshal Association has worked closely with Congressional offices and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) to reduce the duration of the border deployment from 30 days to 21 days, has worked to ensure deployed agents have appropriate clothing and equipment to complete their mission, and is providing full union representation to deployed agents.

“It is unfortunate that some Federal Air Marshals would resort to incendiary, partisan, and insurrectionist rhetoric to avoid being deployed to an undesirable assignment. Fraudulent Air Marshal groups have formed that are espousing ‘mutiny’, and advising FAMs to disobey orders to deploy to the border. These groups, and the individual agents that make them up, must be cut from government like a cancer. The AMA believes these individuals should be investigated as an insider threat, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no room in law enforcement for agents that lack integrity, promote insurrection, and fail to honor their oath of office.

“For decades, Federal Air Marshals have deployed to dangerous hotspots around the world to advance U.S. interests. Although the AMA believes that our highly trained FAMs should be primarily used to investigate threats, generate intelligence, and serve as the last line of defense on high-risk missions, we also recognize that border integrity is critical to the safety and security of our nation. The men and women of the Air Marshal Association are proud to serve our nation in this hour of need.”

The Air Marshal Association’s statement starkly contradicts sentiments recently and very publicly expressed by Air Marshal National Council (AMNC) executive director, Sonia LaBosco, who called upon the Biden administration to stop deploying air marshals to the U.S.’s southern border.

The Air Marshal National Council provides its members—primarily U.S. Air Marshals—a united voice by which to articulate priority issues to lawmakers and authorities within and without the Federal Air Marshal Service. It differs ideologically from the Air Marshal Association in the sense that the latter promulgates the infallibility of Biden administration policy and encourages its members to follow such without question.

On 28 November 2022, LaBosco unequivocally warned a national television audience that air-travel is becoming increasingly unsafe as marshals are diverted from their duties aboard commercial flights and sent to Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico to help mitigate a border crisis resultant of lax Democrat immigration policy and Biden’s own duplicitous campaign promise to open the U.S.’s southern border outright.

Addressing Americans’ widespread perception that air marshals are present on many, if not most commercial airline flights, LaBosco stated: "they're just simply not."

"We have been decimated,” LaBosco deplored. “We have been depleted. We're on less than one-percent of flights. These ground-based duties that they're pulling us out of the sky to go to the border are just demolishing our chances at stopping another 9/11."

The infighting between air marshal organizations speaks to growing tensions among the agency's roughly three-thousand marshals over the Biden administration protractedly and repeatedly diverting them and other government personnel from the critical jobs for which they were trained, and in which their expertise truly lies.

Air Marshal National Council president (and LaBosco’s boss) David Londo confided to news outlets that dozens of rank-and-file air marshals intend to risk termination by refusing to deploy to the border on 07 December 2022.

“You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of," Londo remarked.

Speaking to the AMA’s accusations of insurrection, Londo asserted: "Obviously, we are not insurrectionists. That is an outrageous allegation that we will be taking up with our legal counsel.” Londo went on to call the AMA’s 30 November press release “a desperate attempt for them to remain relevant."

Londo and LaBosco are former AMA officials, having served in the respective capacities of association delegate and board member. Both left the AMA in 2018 and created the Air Marshal National Council.

"We left because we had serious concerns about the leadership and direction that group was going,” Londo averred—adding that the AMNC has legal action against the AMA pending in Florida. "That organization [the AMA] has routinely defended TSA leadership in the past,” Londo added, “and, I believe, is working with them now, and this is another attempt to help TSA save face in the midst of this border scandal."

FMI: www.airmarshalnc.com