Aviation security is an ever-evolving quest, top official says

If all the new technology protecting the nation's airliners fails to stop a terrorist, the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) is the last line of defense. In response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration ordered a drastic increase in the number of marshals -- from fewer than three dozen to several thousand in a matter of months.

In his first interview since being promoted to FAMS director in June, Robert Bray recently sat down with NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder at the agency's headquarters in Reston, Va., to discuss the changes and challenges his organization has faced during the past seven years. Edited excerpts follow.

Q. What role does the FAMS fill in making sure America's airlines are safe?

Bray: The FAMS has a very unique role in airline security. We are charged with the mission of providing security on the airliner and to the cockpit, so they are trained specifically for that. There is no one else that does that exact role.

Q. How did the service go about increasing the number of marshals so quickly?

Bray: Logistically, it was very challenging. We had a mandate from Congress to stand up this program very rapidly. We hired hundreds of people a month after 9/11, after we got the authorization to start that. We had a very robust training program in our partnership with the federal law enforcement training center and our training center in Atlantic City. We ran double-shifts every day to get the training done. We didn't decrease any training requirements, didn't degrade any qualification scores. We made everybody meet the high standards that we traditionally have had, that we have held to since then.

Q. Critics say that despite the dramatic rise in marshals since 9/11, in recent years the number of marshals on planes has begun to shrink again, to the extent that airlines aren't adequately secured. What is your response to that criticism?

Bray: Our response is, that has been an issue that has arisen in the media. It's not correct. The FAMS has an attrition rate equivalent to other longstanding federal law enforcement agencies. Our attrition is around 6 percent, which we think an adequate -- not too high of an attrition rate. As far as the number of FAMS on flights, we have a robust capability to be on flights. We cover much more than what's been reported, and we think we get good coverage on the international and domestic flights.

Q. This is a statement from the FAMS Web site: "Federal Air Marshals have an ever-expanding role in homeland security." What do you mean by this?

Bray: We have another mission that's ancillary to [the core mission of aviation security]. One example of that is our VIPERs -- our visible intermodal prevention and response teams -- where Congress gave us the money to stand up in 10 large cities across the country some teams that are multi-modal, so we don't focus just on aviation. We also have a concern about the transportation infrastructure, as far as metro systems, subways, bus systems and water ferry systems. These teams are deployable, they're random. And we work with the local law enforcement and our other federal partners to have what you'd call a strike team.

I was up in New York City two or three weeks ago, where we had a VIPER team up at a metro stop on 125th Street in Harlem. They're overt, dressed in somewhat of a uniform.... You never know when [the VIPER teams] are going to show up, you can't get any pattern on it. So it gives [potential terrorists] a certain amount of doubt in their minds if they might be planning anything against our transportation system....

We have a MANPADS [man-portable air defense systems] awareness program. MANPADS are shoulder-launched missiles, which are a threat to aviation -- more so hopefully right now in the international theater versus the continental United States theater. But we raise awareness with our program for the local law enforcement to have responsibility at the airports in the United States and also work with our foreign partners to raise awareness overseas.

Q. Government Accountability Office reports stress that the various agencies involved in aviation security can create problems in communication and effectiveness. Have you experienced this at all?

Bray: I have not. We have something we call the Freedom Center -- it used to be called the Transportation Security Operations Center -- where it is a model, I think, for effective communications amongst all the agencies and industry stakeholders involved in airline security. It's here in Northern Virginia, and it's a large communication center where we have representatives from various government agencies -- the FAA, Secret Service, FBI on occasion, Department of Defense, Customs and Border Patrol, and others.

Q. Another GAO criticism is that the reports marshals submit about possible suspicious activity on planes are often ignored. What is your response to this?

Bray: I think what you're referring to is when [marshals] have a suspicion of an incident that may have occurred -- so that's what we call a tactical information surveillance system, and that's where they submit a report.

A lot of times there's been discussion before about people who are maybe identified as being unusual, and they have a behavior pattern where they go to the bathroom and spend what is deemed an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, and make several trips. When the federal air marshal sees something like that, they can submit what's called a tactical information surveillance report, and they do that on a PDA -- it's Web-based now -- and that report is analyzed.

We have people that track that and monitor those reports -- we have a very small group of employees out at the Freedom Center that monitor that, analyze that and look for patterns of behavior on certain flights. And also, it's open to other law enforcement agencies; everybody can submit reports to that.

So we have a good accumulation of data that we can analyze, look for patterns of behavior -- or something that occurred in Atlanta, where a similar incident may have occurred in Denver -- we can hook those up now. That didn't occur when GAO wrote that report. We have a good system for monitoring that now.

Q. What are some top challenges facing the FAMS right now?

Bray: It's about stabilizing the organization. I think we have good support from the administration and Congress to get this done, but it's something we need to keep our focus on -- stabilizing our organization and growing the organization in a sound way to continue to meet our mission, [as compared to] the cyclical pattern we used to have of hiring and losing people as the threat allegedly decreased. I think now we're in the process of overcoming that....

Law enforcement used to train to have their officers respond to an incident after an incident occurred and solve that incident, say a murder or a hijacking. Now our role is to focus on stopping that from happening to begin with. We have to focus our training on that, and have our air marshals be able to detect, deter and defeat before something happens, not after something happens. So we're working with the federal law enforcement training center to change our training methods to make them more proactive and less reactive.

Q. There have been concerns raised about marshals and airline crews carrying guns on flights. One notable incident in Miami occurred in 2005, when a marshal shot and killed an unarmed passenger since it was believed he had a bomb. What is the FAMS' reasoning behind employing marshals with guns?

Bray: They're the last line of defense on an airplane. There are many things that can happen on an airplane, where because we screen for metal objects doesn't mean that's the only thing that can be used as a weapon on an airplane. There are many other things that are capable of being used on airplanes. The terrorists -- they study us, we study them. They're always evolving, as we've seen with Bojinka in 1995, where they altered that method of attack, to a different but similarly related method in 2006. So, 11 years -- we saw they went after the World Trade Center once, they changed. They're always changing. They're smart.

So the reason why the Federal Air Marshal Service has guns is because they're the human element and they're the last line of defense on an airliner, not only to protect the passengers on the airliner but in case that airliner was used as a weapon like it was on 9/11, to the billions of dollars of damage that was caused to our infrastructure -- not only to the thousands that died. So we think that's an appropriate use of law enforcement and deadly force.

[The Miami shooting] was fully investigated by the Dade County state's attorney's office, and they cleared it as a justifiable shooting. And while regrettable -- we regret all loss of life -- but it was an incident that, while unfortunate, we think we did the right thing there.

To further add on that, that's why we also support the federal flight deck officer program, which also carries weapons. We're a strong supporter of that program.

Q. What is the FAMS' stake in the presidential election?

Bray: We've been preparing for the transition since the springtime, when the Department of Homeland Security gathered many of their career senior executives at an off-site to prepare for the transition. Because we see, as we call it, a period of heightened alert during the transition time between now through several months after the new president takes office where we think we could be vulnerable to attack by terrorists.

We've prepared for that by having table-top exercises and looking at various scenarios that we could see how we could be attacked; what the various agencies could bring to the table to help respond to that attack and get everybody in the same room. So we know all of our counterparts at CBP, DHS, FEMA, Coast Guard -- everybody was in the same room talking, so when we talk to each other on the phone or on a teleconference, there is some personal line of communication there.

TSA is well prepared; we have a career executive -- Gale Rossides is our deputy assistant secretary. She's not a political appointee, she'll be here to help with the transition and to manage the agency overall through the transition, so we think we're well prepared for that.