Reaction to New Alert: Ground the Air Marshals

The TSA wants all would-be terrorists to know, so they put the word out: Air Marshals won't be 'protecting' those long cross-country and international flights, starting Friday.

Though international flight coverage by the 'cops in the sky' has been better in the press than in reality (just to make us feel better), the announcement of the reduction in protection, so soon after public warnings about the increased likelihood of airline-specific AlQaeda events, seems almost counter-intuitive. That is a long-standing TSA specialty.

Those long flights, like the ones hijacked on September 11, are the likeliest targets of terrorism, some say, because of the high fuel load they carry. Yet those are the very flights the TSA is now abandoning.

Is the TSA afraid of being accused of the politically-incorrect practice of 'flight profiling?' No -- it's simpler than that. Miffed that they got caught putting up hundreds of screener-hiring teams at posh, yet remote hotels, the TSA is reacting. Rather than cut the salaries of their airport czars (some of whom make Senator-class salaries, while also receiving federal pensions for other jobs they held down) or streamlining procedures to match customer loads (the airlines fly to schedules, and the traffic IS predictable), the TSA is having its hissy fit, saying that if it can't spend money profligately, they just won't spend it at all.

Those poor Air Marshals. They certainly haven't had to do much all year. They mostly, if not exclusively, fly First Class, and stay in what must be really great hotels. They haven't actually stopped any hijackings, or done anything much at all. Now the TSA is keeping them home -- and TELLING everybody.

Part of the reason for the lack of hijackings since the Air Marshal program so publicly ramped up might just be -- are you ready? -- that travelers assumed there were more of them than there are, and that they could be on any flight, any time. The TSA, in its little public fit of pique, has now effectively negated any good effect all their millions in spending could have done.

First, though, the TSA dropped the 'Phase II' training for existing Air Marshals, according to an MSNBC report.

TSA's goal revealed:

If the TSA wants to catch hijackers, its odds will increase if it actually encourages hijackings; and its odds will further improve if it can trick hijackers to reveal themselves. So, maybe the TSA is really going to beef up patrols on the long flights, in hopes that it can get more hijackers to do their thing, and in the hope that, when the hijackers do show up, the Air Marshals will be on the flight -- and also able to do something.

Of course, it's better to prevent hijackings, and the above strategy -- designed to catch glory for the TSA -- will not prevent hijackings. Rather, it will encourage and enable them. The TSA seems to be following that plan.

However, if the TSA isn't trying to get some glory by finally catching a hijacker, and really wants to merely prevent hijackings, it should let us think it's beefing up patrols, rather than telling us where hijackers will have free reign.

Don't despair: there are 44 armed pilots, out there. But... maybe the TSA merely wants the hijackings to occur, and the last-line-of-defense pilots to fail. That would justify the TSA's apparent policy of keeping flights as defenseless as possible, and have the bendfit of coercing Congress into giving the agency yet more money.

[The TSA won't say. Their stock answer, "The agency cannot comment on details of federal Air Marshal mission operations," is all that gets communicated. It's easy to tell what they want, though. Their actions give them away. Or they're as stupid as they look --ed.]

FMI: www.tsa.gov