Scouting jetliners for new attacks

[2RHPZ]

My Life As An Air Cop

As new marshals take to the skies, a TIME reporter is the first to train with them. A look at the rigors

By SALLY B. DONNELLY/ATLANTIC CITY

(will be on) Monday, Jun. 28, 2004

Arms locked out in front of me, I sweep my .357 semiautomatic pistol back and forth across the panicked passengers. My heart is thumping wildly, my breathing too rapid. Fighting the tunnel vision that comes from fear, I try to remember to scan the plane for threats. Just seconds earlier, I had heard the first bloodcurdling yell--"They're stabbing people back here!"

My partner had gone to the back to take on the attackers, and I had drawn my gun, rushing to the front of the first-class cabin and shouting "Police! Police! Police!" I whirled and faced the passengers, with my back to the cockpit door that I am to protect with my life. In these close quarters, I feel confident about only one thing: my Sig Sauer 229 handgun and its hollow-point bullets designed to mushroom inside the human body.

I can't see my partner. I can't hear him either; stress can impair hearing as well. I am only a few feet from horrified people yelling their lungs out, but it is as if I were deaf. I also feel that my eyes are bulging with the same terror I see in the passengers' faces.

Suddenly I see a passenger jump into my aisle, grasping something in both hands. I start to aim at him, but under the pressure I am experiencing, my muscles aren't responding well; it's as if my arms were moving through setting concrete. I hear the pop, pop, pop of his weapon. One round hits my stomach, another my right arm. The last, just below my eye. Trained to keep fighting even if shot, I focus the front sight of my Sig at his heart and pull the trigger repeatedly, riding the recoil. My assailant drops to the floor. I look for my partner and see he has taken down the other attacker. The plane is secure.

If this scenario had been real, I would be dead. Instead, it was just another day of hellishly realistic training for federal air marshals, the armed, plainclothes agents who patrol the skies. In this case, the bullets were made of paint; the terrorists and passengers were actors. And I was standing in as a federal air marshal in training — the first journalist ever allowed into the program's secure facility to drill alongside recruits.

The men and women selected to be federal air marshals spend 11 weeks in one of the best — and most specialized — federal law-enforcement training programs. Before 9/11, the U.S. employed just 33 marshals. Since then, thousands have been hired (the precise number is classified). The government has spent $31 million improving facilities at the Federal Air Marshal Training Academy in Atlantic City, N.J., adding, among other things, mock airplane cockpits and a $400,000 NFL-size gym.

Nearly every air marshal was once a soldier or a cop, so most ease right into the male-dominated, boot-camp atmosphere. Even a sedentary office worker like me felt a little bolder when I put on the trainee uniform (gray T shirt, black cargo pants, black boots), strapped my leather holster to my side and listened to the first instructor tell the class, "You've got to have a winning mentality. You have to believe you're Superman. Or maybe the Black Knight in Monty Python." I laughed, but my classmates didn't; they just nodded in silent agreement.

There is a locker-room camaraderie at the academy, but the atmosphere is never really relaxed. The staff plays to the peer pressure that already exists in this group of macho, Type A personalities. "If you're lying in your own blood at 30,000 feet, it's your own fault," warned a physical-training instructor, letting the words linger for a few seconds. "If you can't stay in the fight, thousands will die."

The key to an air marshal's work is his weapon. These agents have the highest standards for marksmanship in the law-enforcement business. I learned that actually firing the gun is almost an afterthought. Much more important were my stance, my breathing, my grip and my focus on the front sight of the gun. If a human target was wearing body armor, I was told to aim at the lower abdomen. "People will bleed out more quickly," my instructor said, "and a moving head can be hard to hit."

Air marshals are required to be not only accurate shooters but also fast. In one test, agents must draw their guns and hit a target 7 yds. away with two shots in 3 sec. More than one marshal has flunked out of the academy for being .001 sec. late. Under pressure, I was quick but not very accurate. In one hijacking exercise, I "killed" two civilians.

Physical training at the academy is designed to ensure that air marshals are fit enough to endure a struggle. We did wind sprints, jogs broken up with calisthenics and a three-mile run through the rain. We kicked, punched and kneed one another through a thick pad. At one point, as I held my body in a Pilates position — sideways, supported by only my forearm and the side of my foot — I wondered where all the water on the concrete floor had come from. It was just sweat pouring off my face.

During one classroom session, an expert briefed us on the vast array of bombs available to terrorists, from so-called pregnancy bombs (strapped to a woman's stomach) to tiny ones set off by $5 watches to cell-phone-triggered devices. The instructor went over some of the four types and 700 models of hand grenades. Another bomb specialist noted, "You guys are the only law-enforcement agents who have to move toward an explosive device rather than away from it." He explained how to place blankets and luggage around an onboard bomb so that if it goes off, the damage is limited. Another instructor underscored the sophistication of the enemy. "Look," he said, "al-Qaeda is a serious military organization that is very methodical. They are not going to launch an operation to fail."

Increasingly, air marshals are being trained not just to respond to hijackings but to detect them in advance. "Every criminal act requires some surveillance," says Thomas Quinn, director of the federal air-marshal program and a 20-year veteran of the Secret Service. "That is why we are out there looking for threats." An instructor taught us how to recognize suspected terrorists whose photos we had seen by focusing on the central triangle of a person's face, which doesn't change much with age or weight. We were trained in the use of the specially configured PDAs that all air marshals carry. These contain 34 categories of suspicious behavior--"taking pictures," "not taking a seat," "wearing clothes incompatible with the season." When a marshal makes an entry, it is immediately relayed to the systems operation division outside Washington, where analysts decide what kind of action to take.

Once they're in the air, marshals, unlike cops on the beat, know there is no backup. "There's no waiting for the cavalry to arrive," says Quinn. My fellow students say they are ready. "The threat is always there," a marshal told me at graduation. "We're permanently switched on. We'll stay in the fight."

[2RHPZ]

Scouting jetliners for new attacks

Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.
At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane.

"No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," an air marshal said.
Pilots and air marshals who asked to remain anonymous told The Washington Times that surveillance by terrorists is rampant, using different probing methods.
"It's happening, and it's a sad state of affairs," a pilot said.
A June 29 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles is similar to a Feb. 15 incident on American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.
The Northwest flight involved 14 Syrian men and the American Airlines flight involved six men of Middle Eastern descent.
"I've never been in a situation where I have felt that afraid," said Annie Jacobsen, a business and finance feature writer for the online magazine Women's Wall Street who was aboard the Northwest flight.
The men were seated throughout the plane pretending to be strangers. Once airborne, they began congregating in groups of two or three, stood nearly the entire flight, and consecutively filed in and out of bathrooms at different intervals, raising concern among passengers and flight attendants, Mrs. Jacobsen said.
One man took a McDonald's bag into the bathroom, then passed it off to another passenger upon returning to his seat. When the pilot announced the plane was cleared for landing and to fasten seat belts, seven men jumped up in unison and went to different bathrooms.
Her account was confirmed by David Adams, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), who said officers were on board and checked the bathrooms several times during the flight, but nothing was found.
"The FAMS never broke their cover, but monitored" the activity, Mr. Adams said. "Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. But there was enough of a suspicious nature for the FAMS, passengers and crew to take notice."
A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling "ready-to-build" bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms.
On many overseas flights, airlines have issued rules prohibiting loitering near the lavatory.
"After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together and eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified," Mrs. Jacobsen said.
"One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves ... one of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down."
In an interview yesterday with The Washington Times, Mrs. Jacobsen said she was surprised to learn afterward that flight attendants are not trained to handle terrorist attacks or the situation that happened on her flight.
"I absolutely empathize with the flight attendants. They are acting with no clear protocol," she said.
Other passengers were distraught and one woman was even crying as the events unfolded.
The plane was met by officials from the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, Federal Air Marshal Service and Transportation Security Administration. The Syrians, who were traveling on one-way tickets, were taken into custody.
The men, who were not on terrorist watch lists, were released, although their information and fingerprints were added to a database. The group had been hired as musicians to play at a casino, and the booking, hotel accommodations and return flight to New York from Long Beach, Calif., also checked out, Mr. Adams said.
"We don't know if it was a dry run, that's why we are working together with intelligence and investigative agencies to help protect the homeland," he said.
Mrs. Jacobsen, however, is skeptical the 14 passengers were innocent musicians.
"If 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?" she asked in the article.
The pilot confirmed Mrs. Jacobsen's experience was "terribly alike" what flight attendants reported on the San Juan flight.
He said there is "widespread knowledge" among crew members these probes are taking place.
A Middle Eastern passenger attempted to videotape out the window as the plane taxied on takeoff and, when told by a flight attendant it was not permitted, "gave her a mean look and stopped taping," said a written report of the San Juan incident by a flight attendant.
The group of six men sat near one another, pretended to be strangers, but after careful observation from flight attendants, it was apparent "all six knew each other," the report said.
"They were very careful when we were in their area to seem separate and pretended to be sleeping, but when we were out of the twilight area, they were watching and communicating," the report said.
The men made several trips to the bathroom and congregated in that area, and were told at least twice by a flight attendant to return to their seats. The suspicious behavior was relayed to airline officials in midflight and additional background checks were conducted.
A second pilot said that, on one of his recent flights, an air marshal forced his way into the lavatory at the front of his plane after a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in for a long period.
The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side.
The second pilot said terrorists are "absolutely" testing security.
"There is a great degree of concern in the airline industry that not only are these dry runs for a terrorist attack, but that there is absolutely no defense capabilities on a vast majority of airlines," the second pilot said.
Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, said there is no "central clearinghouse" for them to learn of suspicious incidents, and flight crews are not told how issues are resolved.
She said a flight attendant reported that a passenger was using a telephoto lens to take sequential photos of the cockpit door.
The passenger was stopped, and the incident, which happened two months ago, was reported to officials. But when the attendant checked back last week on the outcome, she was told her report had been lost.
Recent incidents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have also alarmed flight crews. Earlier this month, a passenger from Syria was taken into custody while carrying anti-American materials and a note suggesting he intended to commit a public suicide.
A third pilot reported watching a man of Middle Eastern descent at the same airport using binoculars to get airplane tail numbers and writing the numbers in a notebook to correspond with flight numbers.
"It's a probe. They are probing us," said a second air marshal, who confirmed that Middle Eastern men try to flush out marshals by rushing the cockpit and stopping suddenly.