Speaker 1: The Federal Air Marshal Service was created during the nineties
Speaker 1: sixties after a series of hijackings in the Middle East
Speaker 1: and problems in Cuba. On the morning of nine eleven,
Speaker 1: there were thirty three air marshals who worked within the
Speaker 1: Federal Aviation Administration. Following nine eleven, thousands of air marshals
Speaker 1: would be hired under the Transportation Security Administration to make
Speaker 1: up one of the largest law enforcement agencies in America.
Speaker 1: Working at thirty five thousand feet in the air, they
Speaker 1: were having some problems, medical problems, up and down three
Speaker 1: or four times a day, just like the flight of
Speaker 1: tennis and the pots, and it's not really healthy for you.
Speaker 1: This is nine eleven. Two decades later, I'm Steve Gregory
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. The Federal Air Marshal Service or FAMS,
Speaker 1: got a big boost following nine eleven. There was funding available.
Speaker 1: There was a scramble to hire qualified agents and open
Speaker 1: up field offices around the country. Frank John Sandy was
Speaker 1: brought on board right after nine eleven to run the
Speaker 1: field office in Los Angeles. He was the special Agent
Speaker 1: in charge. So where were you on nine eleven? So
Speaker 1: I was on the UH. I was assistant Special Agent
Speaker 1: charge on the former President for detail in Beaver Creek, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're we always had a TV on for
Speaker 1: for intel and news in the command post, and it
Speaker 1: came on early in the morning, and that's that's when
Speaker 1: we saw it. So we immediately it was pretty shocking
Speaker 1: for everybody. We watched it several times before we realized
Speaker 1: this was really happening and it was an attack as
Speaker 1: opposed to an accident, right, because initially that's what we
Speaker 1: thought it was. We I mean, you know, President Ford
Speaker 1: was in his eighties and his mid eighties by then,
Speaker 1: he was no longer really a threat to anybody. His
Speaker 1: what he knew and all. But they have Secret Service
Speaker 1: protection until the day they die, the President of first Lady.
Speaker 1: And we thought, gee, this this will be a possibility
Speaker 1: maybe for some terrorists to kidnap former presidents. That was
Speaker 1: on my mind. So of course we we swung an
Speaker 1: act and we put a we He lived in a
Speaker 1: cul de sact, so we blocked the cul de sac
Speaker 1: with vehicles, and he lived in a private community, so
Speaker 1: of course we notified the security of the community and
Speaker 1: the local security and Eagle Veil said, if he's anything suspicious,
Speaker 1: any individual suspicious, anybody looking for President Ford or any
Speaker 1: asking any questions like that, we need to know right away.
Speaker 1: And of course we brought some long rifles out on post,
Speaker 1: so we kind of beefed up the weapons that we had.
Speaker 1: So what was the jump for you from doing the
Speaker 1: detail for President Ford to Air Marshal Well, I had
Speaker 1: my twenty years on and that's the minimum amount to retire,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about retirement as a Secret Service,
Speaker 1: as a Secret Service agent, and uh, it just happened
Speaker 1: to be that Tom Quinn, who was who I knew
Speaker 1: from the Secret Service. He was fairly high up in
Speaker 1: the organization. He was going to be the first director
Speaker 1: to Federal Air Marshal Service, and he had called some
Speaker 1: of us that he knew. Yeah, so he he said, look,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna open up offices all over the country.
Speaker 1: We're looking for people. Of course, it are well equipped
Speaker 1: to handle security. I mean that's what we've done security.
Speaker 1: We do criminal investigations too, but half of half our
Speaker 1: job is protection. So it made sense. So he took
Speaker 1: he took a lot of the senior agents. I was
Speaker 1: one of them, and we were sent out to these
Speaker 1: different air marshall post. I took l A because it
Speaker 1: was the closest one to UH where Ford lived. He
Speaker 1: was in Colorado at the time, but his main home
Speaker 1: was in Palm Springs. So I said, just send me
Speaker 1: to the closest place. He said, well, it's actually not
Speaker 1: in l A. It's a It's at the Altra Marine
Speaker 1: Corps air station. And I had the thing for a second,
Speaker 1: and I remember leaving there in nineteen seventy two. It
Speaker 1: was my last station after I come back from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: And I remember leaving there in UH September seventy two,
Speaker 1: and as I'm leaving the gate, leaving the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: after four years, remember turning around looking at gate and
Speaker 1: I said, I'll never see this again. Twenty five years later,
Speaker 1: here I am going back in the air as an
Speaker 1: air marshal. I would have never guessed that. How quickly
Speaker 1: after nine eleven did this ramped up air marshall service happened?
Speaker 1: They were, They were ramped up in a couple of months.
Speaker 1: They had. They hired a Savene agency to hire air marshals.
Speaker 1: We had to through a lot of interviews to hire
Speaker 1: how many we needed to hire. It was thousands. The
Speaker 1: numbers confidential how many we hired, but you had to
Speaker 1: interview thousands and thousands of people. So this AGEC came
Speaker 1: in and started doing those interviews. Meanwhile, headquarters are starting
Speaker 1: to ramp up, starting to come up with their divisions,
Speaker 1: and they were starting to plan what's going to happen
Speaker 1: when these air marshals are go through the academy. Was
Speaker 1: I think it might have been ten weeks or something
Speaker 1: like that, depends on your background. Somewhere longer, somewhere shorter.
Speaker 1: After while, everybody went through the full academy, but the
Speaker 1: beginning we wanted to get people in those seats. It
Speaker 1: was paramounts. So actually before El Toro we were it
Speaker 1: wasn't me. I wasn't there yet. But those thirty three
Speaker 1: air Marshals two were sent to each field office to
Speaker 1: start things going. Initially during the only ones that had
Speaker 1: any experienced with with all that. So they were working
Speaker 1: out of hotel room to hotel rooms, and the air
Speaker 1: Marshans would come in, they pick up their schedule for
Speaker 1: two weeks, their flight schedule, and off they would go.
Speaker 1: When they were done to two weeks schedule, they would
Speaker 1: come back pick up another schedule for two weeks. So
Speaker 1: when you went through the training, had you talked to
Speaker 1: anyone on how how different it was? I mean, what
Speaker 1: were the new things you had to look out for?
Speaker 1: Now you had thig tanks going all over the country
Speaker 1: and people sat down and they had a chance to
Speaker 1: see what happened, how was how was the nine eleven
Speaker 1: hijackings pulled off? And so what they did was they
Speaker 1: came up with all these ideas. Number one is you
Speaker 1: want to prevent that from happening again. Of course, then
Speaker 1: you want to go beyond that. So the hardened cockpit
Speaker 1: door was one of them. Of course, it took months
Speaker 1: and months and maybe even years to get some of
Speaker 1: this stuff done for all the aircraft, especially the doors. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: what the flight attendants were doing until they could get
Speaker 1: that completed, The flight attendants were moving their drink cards
Speaker 1: when the when the party had to come out to
Speaker 1: go to bathroom. On certain you know air flights, they
Speaker 1: didn't have them a pick bathroom. They would come out
Speaker 1: with the flight attendants. If they didn't have some of
Speaker 1: those planes they had these metal screens that could come down.
Speaker 1: But the ones that didn't have that, they would push
Speaker 1: the cart in between the passengers and the cockpit and laboratory,
Speaker 1: so at least someone who have to jump over and
Speaker 1: a flight attendant would stand would stand there. And that's
Speaker 1: that's what they had at the time. How many flights
Speaker 1: did you go on as an air marshal I started
Speaker 1: as the air I started the air marshal in charge.
Speaker 1: I took about twelve flights just to see what it
Speaker 1: was like. I took out European trip, I took an
Speaker 1: Asian trip, and I took some domestic trips just to
Speaker 1: get a feel for his like to sit in that
Speaker 1: seat and and observe what they were supposed to observe
Speaker 1: and see the reaction of the the flight crew, the
Speaker 1: pilot because some of these, you know, you go to
Speaker 1: foreign countries, you're met by customs in these foreign countries
Speaker 1: or by other law enforcement. We're trying to smooth it
Speaker 1: out the whole process. Meanwhile, we had foreign air marshals
Speaker 1: coming into our country and we would assist them in
Speaker 1: coming through our customs and things like that, hotel rooms
Speaker 1: and and things like. They're coming to a country in
Speaker 1: a city they've never been to before, so we would
Speaker 1: smooth and things out for them. And they assist us
Speaker 1: on the other end. So I guess I never really
Speaker 1: thought about that our countries having their own air marshals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, and we some countries couldn't afford it, and
Speaker 1: we told them that we would be their air marshals.
Speaker 1: That never came to fruition, but we've had. We had
Speaker 1: the Japanese, the Germans, the Canadians, the Mexicans, French, all
Speaker 1: the major countries that have airlines. Uh, they would come
Speaker 1: into our country, you know, on on their on their
Speaker 1: flagged airlines, and we only went on our flag airlines,
Speaker 1: United American Delta, all of them. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: how we went. And we sat in discussions with them.
Speaker 1: Everybody has their own idea kind of weapons you're gonna use,
Speaker 1: whether you use weapons, you don't use weapons, with kind
Speaker 1: of tactics, where your CD is going to be. We
Speaker 1: sat with a lot of these other agencies, different countries,
Speaker 1: and we pulled our thoughts together and that's what we did.
Speaker 1: It was truly global effort. Oh yeah, absolutely, And and
Speaker 1: even I even worked at the airport for a while,
Speaker 1: and we also went out to other airports, not the
Speaker 1: air marshals, but the fsd S and t s A
Speaker 1: went out to other airports that didn't have the the
Speaker 1: wherewithal the United States has, and we help with their
Speaker 1: security at the airport because if they're going to be
Speaker 1: the one screening our passengers were coming into New York
Speaker 1: and all, we want to make sure they're doing it properly.
Speaker 1: December twenty nine, two thousand three, Homeland Security Secretary Tom
Speaker 1: Ridge talks about the first time the newly created Color
Speaker 1: Threat System changed colors and how the air marshals would help.
Speaker 1: Just over a week ago, the United States government raised
Speaker 1: the national threat level from an elevated to a high
Speaker 1: risk of terrorist attack and as we know, we're commonly
Speaker 1: known referred to us from code yellow to code orange. First,
Speaker 1: let me say that Homeland Security officials at all levels
Speaker 1: of government, federal, state, and local, continue to work around
Speaker 1: the clock to protect our country. We know we know
Speaker 1: from experience that the increased security we implement when we
Speaker 1: raise the threat level, along with the increased vigilance that occurs,
Speaker 1: can help disrupt or deter terrorist attacks, and it continues
Speaker 1: to be the case. I wish that all Americans could
Speaker 1: have the benefit of seeing firsthand what I have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see, and that is the scope of the
Speaker 1: response undertaken by all segments of law enforcement, public safety,
Speaker 1: and government at all levels, as they have quickly and
Speaker 1: effectively ramped up comprehensive protective measures around the entire country.
Speaker 1: It is because of their good efforts that we are
Speaker 1: without doubt better prepared to deter or to respond to
Speaker 1: a terrorist threat than ever before. Now, with all the
Speaker 1: recent talk okay about air travel, it is understandable that
Speaker 1: some still question the safety of flying. Let me reassure
Speaker 1: you that in the two and a half years since
Speaker 1: September eleven, our aviation system has risen to new heights
Speaker 1: of security and will continue to take additional steps to
Speaker 1: increase protection. Today, I am announcing the Department of Homeland
Speaker 1: Security has issued aviation emergency amendments to further enhance security
Speaker 1: relating to both passenger and cargo aircraft flying too flying
Speaker 1: from and over the United States. Specifically, we have requested
Speaker 1: that international air carriers, where necessary, place trained armed government
Speaker 1: law enforcement officers on designated flights as an added protective measure.
Speaker 1: These directives, of effective immediately are part of our ongoing
Speaker 1: effort to make air travel safe for Americans and visitors alike.
Speaker 1: All Americans should know now that we are at a
Speaker 1: Code orange state of alert. Additional meaningful security measures have
Speaker 1: been put in place all across the country. I've been
Speaker 1: talking with retired Federal Air Marshal Frank don Zanti, who
Speaker 1: was the Special Agent in charge for the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Field Office. Wasn't there an issue about the fact that
Speaker 1: you look like air marshals and that you look like
Speaker 1: cops or agents, and that you had to start really
Speaker 1: working on blending in more. That's true, and it was
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. One is, we hired people young,
Speaker 1: young people, mostly physically fit, so they kind of stood
Speaker 1: out as a typical businessman. We tried to we wore
Speaker 1: suits some flights, like you got flights from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: To New York, or some flights from l A to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Businessmen would dress up in suits. Times they
Speaker 1: would take their tie off, but they'd have suit on.
Speaker 1: They fly up, go to a meeting, and fly back
Speaker 1: there in suits. So we tried to put air marshals
Speaker 1: in suits on those flights. We had flights in l
Speaker 1: A A lot. A lot of my flights went to Hawaii.
Speaker 1: We had ha wine shirts on. So we tried to
Speaker 1: blend in, but you had fairly young guys and girls
Speaker 1: physically fit looking around instead of reading books and on.
Speaker 1: We tell them, okay, you can read a book, but
Speaker 1: don't get too involved in a book. You can read,
Speaker 1: you can watch a movie, don't get too involved in
Speaker 1: a movie. And because your job is to be circumspect
Speaker 1: and see what's going on, So what people would do
Speaker 1: is they would look at people that were that were
Speaker 1: looking at them. And so you know, we we learned
Speaker 1: over time how to blend in, and it took and
Speaker 1: it took a while. As the program itself has it stayed.
Speaker 1: This robust isn't a federal air marshal program, but it's
Speaker 1: part of the t S A right, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we we left t s A for a while and
Speaker 1: went went to Customs. But because we wanted to be
Speaker 1: an air marshal being for tection all the time for
Speaker 1: twenty years, that's tough to do to be an airplane
Speaker 1: up and down. So we're trying to think of a
Speaker 1: way to get him involved in something else, like the
Speaker 1: Secret Service. We did fifty percent protection, fifty percent investigations.
Speaker 1: So we thought if we if we got involving customs.
Speaker 1: They could do maybe six months or a year or
Speaker 1: two years of flying, then a couple of years doing investigations. Well,
Speaker 1: we never were quite accepted by customs. They didn't want
Speaker 1: people coming in for two years of leaving for two years,
Speaker 1: so it never quite panned out that way. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we did some other things. We got them involved in
Speaker 1: airport security. So we had liaison people, which I actually
Speaker 1: did for ten years at Long Beach and john Wyn Airport. Uh.
Speaker 1: We're involved with the local police, state police, and airport
Speaker 1: police and we helped them do assessments, security assessments. When
Speaker 1: the air marshalls had come through, we would handle them
Speaker 1: and and issues like that v I p s would
Speaker 1: come through, would help them through security. So we did
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of things like that. The
Speaker 1: other thing we had people in all fifty Joint Terms
Speaker 1: and Tests Force by the FBI, so we had people
Speaker 1: embedded air marshals and that are doing FBI investigations that
Speaker 1: were related to airline safety and airport safety. So we
Speaker 1: had fifty people doing that and we also had a
Speaker 1: person in headquarters JTTF in Washington, d C. So we
Speaker 1: wrote it did through these positions and I would get
Speaker 1: him off off the airplanes. Of course, they could always
Speaker 1: go to the academy teach the academy. There was administrative
Speaker 1: jobs and headquarters. We had administrative jobs at the l
Speaker 1: a X office, scheduling and things like that. We had
Speaker 1: our own training program so they could do that. So
Speaker 1: that went on. We did a sleep study because we
Speaker 1: found out that they were having some problems, medical problems,
Speaker 1: up and down three or four times a day, just
Speaker 1: like the flighted tendants and the polis, but their job
Speaker 1: was a little different. Unlike flighted tendants, they had to
Speaker 1: sit down most of the time, more like a pilot
Speaker 1: and it's not really healthy for you. So and then
Speaker 1: they couldn't sleep. He had the six hours sometimes three
Speaker 1: hours change in time. So they did a six month
Speaker 1: sleep study and they came up with a way to
Speaker 1: do change scheduling a little bit and do something. So
Speaker 1: I mean it has changed. It's it's gotten a little
Speaker 1: better in that respect, but the training is just as robust.
Speaker 1: If anything, it's it's probably better. We've we've learned things.
Speaker 1: They have a fairly long academy and we have we
Speaker 1: have good quarterly training that we still do every office
Speaker 1: has an airplane mock up where you could induce smoke
Speaker 1: into it. You can, you can rock and roll it,
Speaker 1: you can, you can get you have a p A
Speaker 1: system and we have airline seats in air and we
Speaker 1: run scenarios and they come in their quarterly and they
Speaker 1: run scenarios with with blank guns, and we run different
Speaker 1: scenarios over and over and over again. So the program
Speaker 1: itself is still very much alive and well from the
Speaker 1: time you started to the time you retired. During your
Speaker 1: tenure there, how many risks were averted or how many
Speaker 1: attacks might have been averted, It's hard to say. I
Speaker 1: would say, just just by m your presence, you probably
Speaker 1: have heard a lot of attacks. You know, the rowers,
Speaker 1: they're always going to hit the weakest link, and aviation
Speaker 1: at the time was the weakest link, and no one,
Speaker 1: no one had your as your nation. I think that
Speaker 1: could be done like that, so once you know, I
Speaker 1: mean everything that we've been doing, the air marshals and
Speaker 1: the doors you had mentioned, and of course the screening
Speaker 1: was a big part of it. All the screen that
Speaker 1: we're doing now at the airports. When the tear US
Speaker 1: knew that we're putting money and effort into that there
Speaker 1: they were kind of sidetracked into something else. I mean,
Speaker 1: we always thought it could happen again, but as the
Speaker 1: years went by, they thought their softer targets. And so
Speaker 1: we had the shoe bomber, if you remember, we had
Speaker 1: the underwear bomber, and then we had um We had
Speaker 1: some bombs that were going to be placed in the
Speaker 1: in the luggage compartment. So as we harden everything up,
Speaker 1: they just found other places, other venues to go. And
Speaker 1: so as far as the air marsh is actually stopping
Speaker 1: something on board, it's it's almost nil. But it's like
Speaker 1: anything else in security, you never know what you stopped.
Speaker 1: In the Secret Service, we never knew how many assassination
Speaker 1: attempts we stopped. We we know of like one maybe,
Speaker 1: and it was Hinckley. Hinckley when he was interviewed by
Speaker 1: the Secret Service after his shot Reagan, they said, you know,
Speaker 1: they talked him for quite a while and they said,
Speaker 1: did you was he the first president you were an assassinated?
Speaker 1: Says no, I I tried to assassinate Jimmy Carter and
Speaker 1: he goes wine and he goes when and we went
Speaker 1: we reviewed film that the media took at the at
Speaker 1: the sites that he was outdoor sights, and there he was,
Speaker 1: he was about five rows back at a speech Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter gave and he had that same far away look
Speaker 1: at his face, and he said, I never got close
Speaker 1: enough that I felt I could take a shot at
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Carter. And so you just don't know when
Speaker 1: you when you think about that, you really don't know
Speaker 1: what you stopped. We just we found that out after
Speaker 1: he was successful the second time, but he he had tried.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that only that one time, but as other
Speaker 1: times he said he had tried, he just could never
Speaker 1: get close enough. What were some of the biggest challenges
Speaker 1: about making this in an effective program? First of all,
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. I told you we started out the hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: Then we moved to El Toro and we moved into
Speaker 1: the tower at El Toro, the aircraft tower there, and
Speaker 1: there was some there was some rooms there, and there
Speaker 1: was no furniture there in any office equipment. We borrowed
Speaker 1: a lot of that from that was in storage because
Speaker 1: the El Toro was under that brack program based realignment
Speaker 1: program that was back then, so they had all this
Speaker 1: equipment there. So we needed all this equipment. We brought
Speaker 1: a lot of that in. There was a problem with
Speaker 1: drinking water at El Toro. You couldn't drink the water.
Speaker 1: If you remember that we had super super funds back then.
Speaker 1: A lot of the military bases were drunk, were dumping
Speaker 1: toxic chemicals that leads through leached into the groundwater. So
Speaker 1: we had to bring in water, bottled water. We had
Speaker 1: to bring in porta potties. So it was it was
Speaker 1: all of that and then and then getting people out
Speaker 1: the right flights, determining what flight say should be on.
Speaker 1: That was that part was done in headquarters, trying to
Speaker 1: look at the trying assess the and the intel we
Speaker 1: had and where this threat was. There's twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: flight legs a day in the United States, twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand we had to cover, so you could imagine you
Speaker 1: can't cover them all, so someone we had to decide
Speaker 1: which ones we were going to cover, and and scheduling
Speaker 1: was was a monstrosity trying to schedule that any people.
Speaker 1: Then you had flight delays for a mechanical flight delays,
Speaker 1: weather flight delays. Yet fans that were sick, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you how do you operate all this
Speaker 1: as all these moving parts, and then the intel was
Speaker 1: was NonStop, especially the beginning. I was getting calls too
Speaker 1: and three o'clock in the morning about incidents that occurred overseas.
Speaker 1: They were just waking us up and get us the intel.
Speaker 1: And I remember one time I got some information on
Speaker 1: Remember when some molty pirates were out there taking over ships.
Speaker 1: They've made a movie about it. So I get a call.
Speaker 1: It wasn't two o'clock in the morning, but I got it.
Speaker 1: I got a rather rather long email on Somali pirates
Speaker 1: hijacking ships. I said, well, what does that have to
Speaker 1: do with L A X Airport? And hey, go, this
Speaker 1: is our intel people. We were told to give you
Speaker 1: everything because remember connecting the dots, and they were afraid
Speaker 1: that they weren't going to tell something we needed to know.
Speaker 1: So okay, I guess there's there's a lead from from
Speaker 1: hijacking ships the hijacking air plane. So we got everything,
Speaker 1: and it was just we were inundated with intelligence. In
Speaker 1: the beginning. It slowed down a little bit, I think
Speaker 1: because the intel slowed down, and you know, over the years,
Speaker 1: but it was incredible just dealing with the intelligence. Did
Speaker 1: you like the work. Oh, of course I did, because
Speaker 1: I you were busy that first year a year and
Speaker 1: a half. We're working twelve hour days. Like I said,
Speaker 1: we're getting phone calls, we're getting woken up. You really
Speaker 1: felt like you were doing something useful. And we always
Speaker 1: saw another attack was imminent in the beginning. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I did enjoy it. I enjoyed The Air marshals were
Speaker 1: very dedicated. They they had signed up for this because
Speaker 1: they figured they were gonna they're gonna have to deal
Speaker 1: with somebody fifty thousand feet. So these are motivated people.
Speaker 1: And it was great working with motivated people because then
Speaker 1: when they went in it went into training, they were
Speaker 1: paid attention. They always did their best in training. It
Speaker 1: was it was nice being around them. I heard that
Speaker 1: pilots can opt to carry a weapon. Yes, do you
Speaker 1: know about that? And I'm not sure exactly when that
Speaker 1: came into being, but that was that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that that Blue Panel came out with, is
Speaker 1: is the arm the potots? Because remember they broke down
Speaker 1: the door into the cockpit, So either some would happen
Speaker 1: to the Air marshals were they become neutralized, or most
Speaker 1: likely they would be the hijackers will be on a flight.
Speaker 1: There were no air marshals, although I think the passengers
Speaker 1: would have intervened. But let's say all that went went
Speaker 1: to the side. If they broke down the door of
Speaker 1: the cockpit, they still had the the potots armed. So
Speaker 1: we trained then we gave him a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: training and uh, there was limitations on what they could do,
Speaker 1: what they should do, and all they had they had
Speaker 1: standard operating procedures. I'm not going to go into those,
Speaker 1: but you know they were given ther s ops. They
Speaker 1: had training by us and then and then have recurrent training.
Speaker 1: And we thought that worked great because these were a
Speaker 1: lot of former military people. They're very adept at what
Speaker 1: they do. These are these are thinkers of course, and
Speaker 1: so you know, you give them should and they could
Speaker 1: handle the mission. So that with that worked out good
Speaker 1: for us. And we worked with them along the way
Speaker 1: and and I thought it a good program. Is still
Speaker 1: going on? Was this voluntary? Were they totally voluntary? But
Speaker 1: they didn't they didn't get pay They actually went on
Speaker 1: their own time to our training. But the airlines they
Speaker 1: wanted them to do it, but they weren't willing to
Speaker 1: pay them. To do it, So we gave the weapons.
Speaker 1: There are weapons belong to the federal government. We game credentials.
Speaker 1: Are they peace officers? They kind of our peace officers
Speaker 1: in when they're in that cockpit, they have that status,
Speaker 1: but not outside the cockpit, not outside that plane. Their
Speaker 1: authority leads when they leave that plane. So in theory,
Speaker 1: there's this federal police program that's in the sky, right,
Speaker 1: that's separate of the marshall program. So you probably have
Speaker 1: the largest civilian police department. It's very large, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's classified to it's it's large, larger than what
Speaker 1: do you think. And they had their credentials and all
Speaker 1: because they carry that weapon. It is concealed and it's
Speaker 1: it's done the right way and it's there, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't have any authority off that plane like the
Speaker 1: federal air marks. Of course, they're federal officers to have
Speaker 1: authority all the time twenty four by seven. And they carrey.
Speaker 1: They can carry their weapons off duty. The potits can't.
Speaker 1: What is the threshold of intervening for for an air marshal.
Speaker 1: Is it only when there's an imminent threat to the
Speaker 1: plane as in a hijack, or is it an unruly passenger.
Speaker 1: You know, we're trying not to get involved into small
Speaker 1: stuff if they and if it has to do with
Speaker 1: flight safety, if they're assaulting often you know, flight attendants
Speaker 1: and things like that. We're actually comes to the point
Speaker 1: because now I'll tell you a lot of times passengers
Speaker 1: are going to intervene before the air marshals do anything,
Speaker 1: because we're not gonna jump in any situation half cocked.
Speaker 1: We're always going to look at things and see what's
Speaker 1: going on. We don't want to be roused into something,
Speaker 1: so we're not we're not jumping out of that seat
Speaker 1: doing anything in a hurry. We're looking around, We're communicating
Speaker 1: with each other. We may even communicate with the flight
Speaker 1: attendants and the and the and the captain and say,
Speaker 1: here's what's going on. What do you have. We want
Speaker 1: to know everything that's happening, not just one small incident.
Speaker 1: So we'll hesitate to get involved in small stuff. But
Speaker 1: anything has to do with the air worthiness of that airplane,
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to get involved in it. But
Speaker 1: like I said, after some thoughtful thoughtfulness, before we get
Speaker 1: involved in anything like that, do you want to share
Speaker 1: any close calls whether it was you or someone on
Speaker 1: your team. We've we've always had an early pastor of
Speaker 1: things like that. But to be honest with you, we've
Speaker 1: had people We've had We did have an incident in
Speaker 1: Miami was the Miami Office. It was fairly early on.
Speaker 1: There was a passenger traveling from South America to Miami.
Speaker 1: They they were gonna move on. I think they stayed
Speaker 1: on that flight and they were moving on to another
Speaker 1: another city stop, and apparently one of the passengers had
Speaker 1: a backpack on and he was mentally ill you might
Speaker 1: say he had mental condition, and he was off his meds,
Speaker 1: and he started pacing around the air raft. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he started to unraveled. The plane was still on the ground.
Speaker 1: Pastor was still coming on board, embarking debarking, and he
Speaker 1: the air marshall saw this was going on. He stood up.
Speaker 1: They told him to sit down. He started walking around,
Speaker 1: like I said, and then finally he started walking. He
Speaker 1: started leaving the plane. If I if I remember, well,
Speaker 1: he had his backpack on the front and he kept
Speaker 1: going inside his backpack almost like it looked like he
Speaker 1: may have been a suicide bomber. And he was acting insane.
Speaker 1: You might want to say, just acting very unusual, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't obey any orders, so you are marshals. This
Speaker 1: I think went on for a couple of minutes. Finally
Speaker 1: said take your hands out of your backpack. Take your
Speaker 1: hands out of your backpack because there's an airplane. They're
Speaker 1: refueling that airplane. So you can imagine what that would
Speaker 1: have been like if he had an explosive there. And
Speaker 1: he refused to do that, and he started walking back
Speaker 1: to the aircraft and the air marshals interposed himself between
Speaker 1: him and the aircraft and he said, you're not coming
Speaker 1: back on, and he started coming on and they shot
Speaker 1: him and they killed him. So that that was an incident.
Speaker 1: And of course he didn't have anything in a backpack.
Speaker 1: He was mentally ill and he's off his medication. The
Speaker 1: air marshall looked cleared. It was a big investigation by
Speaker 1: I think it was Dade County, Macho, Dade County, uh,
Speaker 1: and they were cleared, but he just wouldn't he wouldn't stop,
Speaker 1: and he was he was getting ready to get back
Speaker 1: on that airplane and they just couldn't do it. Unfortunate incident.
Speaker 1: So that was the biggest incident we had coming off
Speaker 1: of your tenure as a Secret Service agent and then
Speaker 1: your ten year as a federal air marshal at least
Speaker 1: as a sack. Are we safer today than we were
Speaker 1: twenty years ago in the air? I could. I could
Speaker 1: speak to that sure. And a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: we covered already with T s A. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have a whole organization, that's what they're dedicated to air safety,
Speaker 1: but not only air safety. It gets to the the
Speaker 1: airports themselves, the screening, all the assessments that are done
Speaker 1: at the airports. We worked together very closely over here.
Speaker 1: I worked together with the Orange County shrif's department, had
Speaker 1: a great relationship with them and Long Beach Police Department
Speaker 1: at Long Beach now l a X It's LAWA is
Speaker 1: the main law enforcement agency there and we have a
Speaker 1: great relationship with them, and of course with the FBI
Speaker 1: and the A t F comes through there quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and Customs we have relationships with them. So we build
Speaker 1: relationships over the year. We're in the j T t F.
Speaker 1: Like I told you is we get all the intel
Speaker 1: that they get. We're pulling together. So yeah, we have
Speaker 1: the air marshal program. We have all the other programs
Speaker 1: up and running. We have the connectivity, the Intel and
Speaker 1: all the upgrade they did to the aircraft themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're safer. Can I predict what's gonna happen now? I
Speaker 1: can't predict. I can just say we're doing a better
Speaker 1: job and we're safer than when were then. Absolutely. What
Speaker 1: about is a country? Well, I'll go back and this
Speaker 1: this isn't new with with some of these um bad
Speaker 1: actors in our own country, U s. Citizens. This goes
Speaker 1: way back. I mean, it goes back to the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War and all that. If you want to do you
Speaker 1: remember all those groups that were back then. That has
Speaker 1: slowed down for a little bit. But then even in
Speaker 1: the nineties, you know, Timothy McVeigh and you had the
Speaker 1: different religious groups, we call them quasi religious groups. You
Speaker 1: had all kinds of issues like that. So we always
Speaker 1: we always looked at the internal threat. It was long
Speaker 1: before things started unraveling. Now, these people have always been around,
Speaker 1: you know, a different locations. So we always thought that
Speaker 1: was because they're Americans, they have jobs, they know our culture,
Speaker 1: they're they're here and I think that's starting to come
Speaker 1: back again, you know. They so they say we decimated
Speaker 1: al Qaeda to some extent in some of these groups,
Speaker 1: all these different factions, the Red Brigade and all that.
Speaker 1: It was an international operation. When all that that started
Speaker 1: to wane and then some of these local groups now
Speaker 1: were starting to come back again. And so to me,
Speaker 1: that's a little frightening. I know, the FBI is concerned
Speaker 1: about it, and it's there's a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: it that that kind of bothers me. Homegrown terrorists that
Speaker 1: we've been looking at that though, you know for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Like I said, it goes way back, but
Speaker 1: it's been stepped up quite a bit, even even the
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in Vail, Colorado with President Ford,
Speaker 1: they had a group that it didn't want development of
Speaker 1: natural lands, so they burned down a ski resort outside
Speaker 1: of Ail, Colorado and things like that. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: anarchisted and all that. So it's always been there. I
Speaker 1: remember when nine eleven happened, everybody said, uh, we we
Speaker 1: never anticipated anything like that. Well it's not quite true
Speaker 1: because in nineteen seventy four Robert Preston wasn't it. He's
Speaker 1: an army Uh he went to helicopter pot at school
Speaker 1: seventy four, and in February seventy four, he didn't make
Speaker 1: the program, so he didn't get his wings. They made
Speaker 1: him a U A helicopter technician. So he decided he's
Speaker 1: going to steal a helicopter. He's still a helicopter. He
Speaker 1: flew it around. They couldn't catch him. They were flying
Speaker 1: out the helicopters to catch him, and he won to
Speaker 1: show him how how good he could fly to helicopter,
Speaker 1: and he flew around for quite a while. They couldn't
Speaker 1: They couldn't make him ground the helicopter. So he decided
Speaker 1: to ground to the south grounds of the White House,
Speaker 1: and as he was doing that, the Secret Service shot
Speaker 1: him and the arrested him after he landed his plane
Speaker 1: on the south ground. So we always we always knew
Speaker 1: there was an aviation s fret to the White House.
Speaker 1: And then in UH ninety four, and this is really strange.
Speaker 1: Nine eleven nine September eleven nine four, Frank Quarter, who
Speaker 1: was mentally ill, flewis Sesna one fifty into the White House.
Speaker 1: He the only reason he didn't hit the White House
Speaker 1: is because he hit a big oak tree that had
Speaker 1: been there for a hundred years. He hit an oak tree,
Speaker 1: and the plane crashed and blew up and it was killed.
Speaker 1: I think he was twenty or thirty feet from the
Speaker 1: White House. He was mentally ill, so going back to them.
Speaker 1: And then in ninety four when I was in a
Speaker 1: Secret Service, I was in a meeting with a lot
Speaker 1: of the higher ups in the Secret Service, and it
Speaker 1: came to Lady again. We worried about airplanes crashing into
Speaker 1: the White House, and so we we had a representative
Speaker 1: from a a local contractor come in defense contractor, and
Speaker 1: he talked about what kind of weapons we could put
Speaker 1: at the White House, any aircraft weapons, this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And we had a big key to discussion over that,
Speaker 1: putting in any aircraft weapon, that kind of those kind
Speaker 1: of weapons you know at the White House and Washington
Speaker 1: d C. With with the flight line only a couple
Speaker 1: of miles away, with the airplanes coming and going out
Speaker 1: of Washington d C Airport Reagan National and you know,
Speaker 1: those those rockets go several miles. So we had I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you what happened at the end
Speaker 1: of that now, I'm not gonna tell you what I'd
Speaker 1: up doing at the time. And I and I and
Speaker 1: I and I'll be honest with you, I don't know
Speaker 1: what they did now. That was, that was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Coming up in episode six, the government failed to protect
Speaker 1: the American people. The United States government was simply not
Speaker 1: active enough in combating the terrorist threat before nine eleven.
Speaker 1: The Final Analysis nine eleven, two decades Later, is produced
Speaker 1: by Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez and is a production
Speaker 1: of the CAFI News department for I Heartmedia Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and the iHeart Podcast network. The views expressed are strictly
Speaker 1: those of the guests and not necessarily the hosts or
Speaker 1: employees of iHeartMedia.