By Blake Morrison, USA TODAY
McALLEN, Texas — When Jose Rodriguez joined the federal air marshal program in June, he planned to stay at least two years. He quit after five months.
An exit interview form filled out by his supervisor and obtained by USA TODAY described Rodriguez as “an asset to the program.” But like scores of other marshals hired after the Sept. 11 attacks, Rodriguez, 33, says he was driven off by managers who “lied to and betrayed” him and others.
The program that government officials consider the key to thwarting hijackings isn’t what it claims to be, he says, and he worries that its failings could endanger public safety.
“Too many people are quitting — good people, the best,” says Rodriguez, the first former air marshal hired after the attacks to speak publicly about the top-secret program. “The public needs to know how we’re being treated and why we’re leaving.”
Confidential documents obtained by the newspaper and interviews with Rodriguez and nearly three dozen current and former air marshals from 11 regional offices also raise questions about whether program officials may be compromising security as they try to put marshals aboard as many flights as possible:
- Despite policies that require at least two marshals on each assigned flight, marshals in the New York field office were told they would have to fly alone if their partners call in sick, documents show. Marshals who completed a recent training regimen in Atlantic City say they also were warned they could fly solo.
Aviation security analysts contend putting lone marshals on flights might enable a group of unarmed hijackers to take a gun from a marshal, a possibility that would leave passengers more vulnerable than if no marshal were aboard.
- Marshals must accept any seat an airline offers, “even if your assigned seat is not ‘tactically’ sound,” a memo sent Nov. 22 by managers to marshals in New York says. Marshals who recently completed training also say they were told of the new policy.
“My God, that’s crazy. It’s idiocy,” says Billie Vincent, the former director of security for the Federal Aviation Administration who helped resurrect the air marshal program in the 1980s.
Such a policy contradicts the program’s standard operating procedures. Those rules call for marshals to have unobstructed access to the jet’s aisle and, preferably, to sit near the cockpit to protect it from hijackers.
- Even if they believe their cover has been blown before a flight, marshals in the Atlanta field office have been told they must continue with their missions, documents show. “The actual or perceived compromise of your identity is never a sufficient reason to abort your assigned flight,” a memo sent Dec. 10 by the acting head of the Atlanta office reads.
Marshals say that could leave them — and passengers — vulnerable to attack because an unarmed terrorist might then be able to gain access to a weapon. “If somebody knows who I am, anyone can come up and slit my throat. And then he has a gun,” says one marshal who joined the program early this year.
- Some marshals say they use over-the-counter stimulants such as No-Doz to stay awake during flights. Others take what they call “power naps” just after takeoff and battle vertigo. When marshals were hired earlier this year, they were promised four-day workweeks to compensate for the rigors of constant travel.
Marshals say flying five days a week, sometimes 10 hours a day, leaves them so exhausted that staying alert becomes difficult.
“On your fourth or fifth day, you start feeling nauseous,” says Rodriguez, who resigned Nov. 22. “Sometimes, I had to go to the restroom just to splash water on my face and calm myself down.”
Two government watchdog groups are looking into problems in the program. And one marshal faces disciplinary action after he left his gun aboard a Nov. 13 flight from Detroit to Indianapolis. A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the program, confirms that the gun apparently fell between seats on the Northwest Airlines flight. A cleaning crew found it.
The agency responds
Despite such incidents, TSA spokesman Robert Johnson says the program is “going well.”
He says a memo sent to marshals telling them they “shall continue on with the mission” if their partners call in sick was “not an approved and final directive. ... Air marshals do not fly solo,” he says. Johnson also says marshals who say they were told of policy changes during training in late November are simply mistaken.
But another memo, dated Dec. 8 and sent to marshals in New York, reiterates the policy on flying alone. "... Only (Mission Operations Center) will decide whether you will be scheduled to fly a solo mission,” the memo sent from a team leader reads. “If they do, this will be on a low profile flight that only has a small number of passengers.” The four flights hijacked Sept. 11 each had fewer than 100 passengers.
“There was no misunderstanding,” insists one marshal, who says mission operations officials told marshals of the changes during classes just before Thanksgiving. “They said, ‘Don’t be surprised if you might fly solo.’ Everyone was just stunned.”
Too conspicuous
Rodriguez’s account of his short tenure in the Las Vegas field office suggests little has changed since August, when USA TODAY first documented problems in the burgeoning program that places armed, undercover officers aboard commercial flights.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, fewer than 50 air marshals flew, primarily on international flights. But after the attacks, officials expanded the program, lowering marksmanship standards and cutting training to put marshals on flights quickly.
Although the precise number of marshals flying today is classified, sources within the program now say officials were not able to hire the 6,000 marshals they had hoped to deploy. At its peak last summer, the program had grown to slightly more than 4,000 marshals, the sources say.
Since then, sources within the program say hundreds of marshals have quit, been fired or transferred to other federal agencies. The TSA disputes those numbers and says the attrition rate is less than expected.
To keep marshals flying, officials tightened sick-leave policies this fall after USA TODAY reported that 1,250 marshals called in sick during an 18-day period. A TSA spokesman insisted that “no such thing has ever occurred.”
But a confidential memo from Robert Byers, the program’s assistant director, dated Oct. 28 — four days after the story — says “sick leave requests are running at what appears to be extraordinary levels.” Marshals say calling in sick is the only way to get a day off without asking two months in advance.
The agency also has yet to address marshals’ concerns that a dress code requiring “business attire” easily identifies them. Rodriguez says passengers often spotted him and his partner in airports and flashed them a thumbs-up as they passed. Such episodes reinforced his fear: Wearing business clothes makes marshals too conspicuous.
“The TSA and the government have deliberately created a perception in the public’s mind that we’ve got the cavalry here,” Vincent says of the air marshal program.
“But the more I hear, the less comfortable I get. The government is misleading the American public.”
Manager called them ‘amateurs’
Rodriguez shares the concern.
After a USA TODAY story in August documented morale problems and concerns about the dress code, TSA head James Loy dismissed the report. In a letter to the editor published weeks later, he called the story “irresponsible and misleading ... based of course on ‘anonymous sources.’ ”
That’s one reason Rodriguez came forward, he says. He says he and other marshals were appalled by Loy’s letter and by comments from air marshal director Tom Quinn that marshals who complained were “amateurs.” A TSA spokesman says neither Quinn nor Loy was available for comment.
“When somebody is risking their lives for this nation and we’re being called amateurs because we made comments about being sick or we fear that we’re going to be picked out for what we wear, it’s not right,” Rodriguez says. “When they come out and lie — flat out lie — and say it’s all untrue and everything’s fine, what needs to be done to help the public understand?
“I know I’m going to open up a Pandora’s box here. But do they not know?” he says of TSA leaders. “I hope they open their eyes.”
For Rodriguez, who had been working as an investigator at the Hidalgo County (Texas) Sheriff’s Department, the appeal of becoming a marshal — of serving his country and going into federal law enforcement — was impossible to resist.
Just before he applied to the marshal program last summer, he had been assigned to an undercover drug task force. But the air marshal job paid $52,000 a year — about $12,000 more than his job at the sheriff’s department. Moreover, officials doing the hiring promised chances to ascend quickly within the marshal program. “It was just bait,” Rodriguez says now.
When he accepted the job, Rodriguez knew he’d be stationed in Las Vegas — more than a thousand miles from his wife and children in Texas. But like other marshals, he says he was told during training that he could transfer to an office closer to home after three months on the job.
Instead, he says, his transfer requests were rejected with form letters, even after he arranged to swap assignments with a marshal in the Dallas field office. He says managers allowed the Dallas marshal to come to Las Vegas. But he wasn’t allowed to go to the Dallas or Houston offices, both closer to his home near McAllen.
In Rodriguez’s Nov. 21 exit interview, a supervisor acknowledged that Rodriguez “was advised that he would be able to transfer to the station of his choice within three months ... This agreement has not been honored.” After his second transfer request was denied, Rodriguez says his decision to leave became an easy one.
“I’ll deal with the dress code. I’ll deal with working five days a week. I’ll deal with being nauseous,” he says. “But I need to be close to my family.”
Rodriguez says he was rehired last week by the sheriff’s department, but he lost his seniority. Now, he’ll be a patrolman and make $27,000 a year — a $13,000 pay cut from his old job working narcotics.
Fear of retaliation
After USA TODAY stories earlier this year, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., asked government investigators to determine whether the marshal program was being “effectively run.” The General Accounting Office and the Transportation Department’s inspector general subsequently launched an investigation and audit, respectively.
But Rodriguez holds out little hope that either agency will be able to delve deeply. He says marshals are constantly reminded that they will be fired or prosecuted for talking about the program. As a result, he says, marshals are wary of anyone in the federal government.
During his months in the program, Rodriguez says he never talked to the media. When he left, he signed a confidentiality agreement that prohibits him from discussing matters of “national security.” He says he may be putting his law enforcement career in jeopardy by going public now.
What he saw before he resigned late last month — and what he fears will happen in the months ahead — left him with little choice, he says.
“I’m concerned for the safety of the air marshals getting picked out — for the safety of the public,” he says. “We’re tired of hearing that it’s growing pains.”