Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota "Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," says one federal Air Marshal. Why? Because a memo from management requires marshals to file one Surveillance Detection Report (SDR) per month, and failure to do so will negatively impact upon their annual raises, bonuses, awards and special assignments. Marshals deny fabricating stories wholesale, but claim to have resorted to creatively stretching the truth to turn benign acts into potential threats and the harm this may cause to people who have done nothing wrong seems irrelevant to the marshals and the TSA officials who created the rules.
posted by Dreama on Jul 24, 2006 - 44 comments

Air Marshals Say Passenger Overreacted. "The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned (Annie) Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves." (Second story down, via atrios)
posted by solistrato on Jul 23, 2004 - 37 comments

"The Transportation Security Administration is conducting a 'witch hunt' to ferret out and discipline employees in the federal air marshal program who have talked to the media", according to MSNBC. See previous thread on air marshals being pulled from high risk flights. The "Patriot Act" is involved, too. Via the hole.
posted by Eloquence on Aug 15, 2003 - 0 comments

Amidst new warnings of Al Qaeda hijacking plots, Bush Administration pulls air marshals from duty The argument for this? - hotel rooms for the marshals are too expensive. OK, then.
posted by troutfishing on Jul 30, 2003 - 35 comments