Homeland Security Chief Compromises with Federal Officers Association
By Ron Marisco
The Star-Ledger (NJ)
(August 10, 2007)

Federal air marshals will no longer have to participate in special ground security operations wearing law-enforcement jackets and badges that compromise their anonymity, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff decided yesterday.

Chertoff changed the policy during a meeting in Washington with representatives from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, who wrote him last month about marshals' concerns the program could blow their cover.

But while he agreed with the group on that issue, Chertoff rejected the association's request that U.S. Transportation Security Administration screeners not be given new police-like uniforms and gold badges.

The group said outfitting the nation's 43,000 screeners like police officers would give the public a false sense of security and jeopardize everyone in the war on terror because screeners are not trained in law enforcement and are not armed.

Jon Adler, the association's executive vice president, said the group's meeting at Department of Homeland Security headquarters with Chertoff and Kip Hawley, the TSA's administrator, was "very fair" and resolved a serious fear among air marshals.

"They will not be standing there in 'Raid' jackets and with badges around their necks," Adler said. "Their identities won't be compromised."

The main role of air marshals has always been to fly undercover to thwart potential terrorists, but about a year-and-a-half ago they were also directed to participate, with unarmed screeners, on special ground units at airports, rail and bus stations.

Those teams, known as Visual Intermodal Protection and Response units, or VIPR teams, gained increased exposure this summer after terrorist incidents in England and Scotland.

Adler said the air marshals' role will now be more undercover intelligence gathering and law-enforcement support but that they would "intervene" in emergency situations, if necessary.

"We are working to protect the anonymity" of federal air marshals, said Christopher White, a TSA spokesman. He said some corrective steps have already been taken, and that others will soon be implemented to decrease marshals' visibility.

White, however, defended the decision to provide screeners with the new uniforms and badges this fall as part of the agency's desire to increase the professionalism of the work force.

The TSA, for example, already has officially changed the job title of its screeners to "transportation security officers" in an effort to boost their stature.

"We don't feel like the new uniforms will confuse passengers," White said.

But the law enforcement group, which says it represents some 26,000 federal officers with police powers, remains opposed to the screeners' new uniforms and badges, as well as their presence on the VIPR teams.

"If you bring a scarecrow to a gunfight, it's not likely you're going to come out victorious," said Adler.