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Tuesday, April 29, 1997

Federal marshals on secret mission to protect airline passengers

By G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas - Who is the passenger in the adjoining seat on the flight to Florida?

She looks like a college student on spring break, wearing hair ribbons and a beachy outfit.

But she just might be a federal air marshal, packing a pistol in her Gucci purse and a G-man punch in her fists.

Members of this elite Federal Aviation Administration security force fly incognito all over the world aboard U.S.-based airlines, watching and waiting for someone to make a wrong move. Their mission: to prevent terrorist acts aboard passenger airliners.

Last week, the marshals - whose numbers are kept secret - were at the American Airlines Flight Academy by Dallas/Fort Worth Airport for training on aircraft emergency procedures, such as land and water evacuations.

They spent an afternoon jumping out of a mock McDonnell Douglas MD-11 jumbo jet onto an inflated slide or into a pool of water, wearing under-the-seat life vests.

To keep from being identified, they wore black hoods, with only their eyes and mouths showing. Allowing the news media into the training was a rare occurrence, FAA spokesman John Clabes said. Photographers were warned that they would be expelled if they tooks photographs of marshals with their hoods off.

Passengers aren't supposed to know whether a marshal is on board, and that's part of the strategy. Almost anyone on a plane could be a member of the force, which is a mix of men and women of various races. Average age is 36, 93 percent are college educated, 44 percent have military experience and 45 percent speak at least one foreign language, said an air marshal who lives in Keller and is based at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

The marshals' identities are kept secret even among other FAA employees, and they never allow their faces to be photographed, he said.

"I can tell you that there are more than 800 people who are employed in the FAA's security division, and the air marshals are taken from those people," the marshal said.

The marshals identify themselves only to the pilots of the airplane that they are traveling on - unless something happens and they have to intervene.

"Passengers otherwise never know we're there," he said.

As fully certified federal law enforcement officers, these air marshals carry firearms onboard the planes and are authorized to make arrests for any violation of federal law from hijacking to drug smuggling to disruption of a flight crew.

"We can deal with any in-flight disruption, down to and including an unruly drunk passenger," the Keller marshal said.

Marshals must undergo an eight-week basic federal law enforcement training course, followed by a four-week special course with emphasis on marksmanship and physical fitness. Periodically, they must retrain.

Marshals of both sexes and of varying ages, sizes and ethnicities participated in aircraft familiarization training at D-FW, which included cabin evacuation exercises at the flight academy.

During training, they are taught, among other things, how to fight fires on airplanes, operate exit doors and emergency slides, and deploy life rafts.

"They learn the same emergency procedures as the flight attendants and pilots, and can do everthing but fly the plane," said American spokesman Tim Smith, who was on hand to watch the recent training session because the marshals were using the airline's training facilities.

Some of the marshals can fly a plane, the Keller marshal said. Demographic information he was allowed to release shows that at least 16 percent of the marshals are licensed pilots.

Air marshals are based at all major U.S. airports and are on duty around the clock. Their official mission, according to federal law, is to provide a "strategic deterrence against criminal acts targeting civil aviation." And their mission statement says the marshals' "tactical objective is to save lives."

President Kennedy ordered the formation of an airline security force called sky marshals in 1962 after a spate of hijackings to Cuba.

But it was not until 1974 that the current federal air marshal program was established, the Keller marshal said.

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