by Crisis of Character- A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience
FAMS simply couldn’t retain anyone with their level of craftsmanship, not with FAMS’s slipshod character and too-often scrambled priorities. Just about anyone can learn to shoot and to teach others to shoot—at least, in ideal conditions—but the know-how to shoot and fight under the worst imaginable situations (gun jams, taking fire, injuries, dynamic positioning) is incredibly difficult. You can’t put a price tag on it. Those experts who departed FAMS in disgust taught from hard-knock, real-life experiences—and FAMS tried to nickel-and-dime them while wasting precious resources on free college tuition for anyone in FAMS who wanted it. Leadership frankly treated those expert outside contractors like shit, trying to insult them as much as possible. It was damned upsetting, to say the least, to see qualified people like that move on.
FAMS management’s “thrift” with outside instructors was exacerbated by its wastefully piling on the paperwork and make-work during marshals’ office days.
FAMS played catch-up for a long time. It wasn’t all FAMS’ fault. For too long Congress—and the nation itself—failed to recognize the terrorist threat facing us. It shouldn’t have taken a 9/11 to wake us up, but it did. But the appointment of Tom Quinn as the modernized FAMS’s first director only worsened matters. His misplaced priorities and featherbedding for old Secret Service cronies turned an essential program into an almost-instant national laughingstock. A hasty get-it-done mentality didn’t work for FAMS any better than it worked for Hillary Clinton.
Tom Quinn resigned in early 2006. His absurd dress code and preboarding policies caught up with him. In June 2015, acting TSA director Melvin Carraway resigned after reports that agency undercover “red teams” assigned to several airports had failed to detect bombs and guns in a frightening 67 out of 70 tests conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. I had to ask myself: So why were the people who failed at that rate getting paid to begin with? But the go-to congressional solution was to do two things: Dump more money into the problem and send a cosmetic message that the problem would be solved by a high-level resignation. I wish it were that simple, but the next director will be part of the same in crowd.
Healing in this case requires an enema, not a Band-Aid.
I joined FAMS to accomplish a vital mission. I joined to halt terrorism in its tracks—hopefully, even before a situation unfolds. I wanted to exceed the level of commitment displayed by four-person-plus teams of trained and committed hijackers. Anything short of that just wasn’t good enough. Why should Americans pay me—or anyone else—for anything less than that?
Let me tell you exactly what it would look like if a trained committed air marshal had to do their job on an airplane against a four-person-plus hijacking team.
The human body pumps blood incredibly fast, and 9/11’s hijacking team cut into a few people to make examples of them. They killed the pilots because the terrorist trained as a pilot could assume control of the flight deck. Imagine the smell, the blood-soaked carpets, the screams, the volume of noise in the airplane, the panic as nearly three hundred people were scared stiff and hopping over their seats and running as best they could in a crowded airplane to get away from people killing other people.
Now imagine that you’re an air marshal with an obese, asthmatic, sleep apnea–ridden partner. Now imagine that you’re an air marshal who’s been outed by agency dress code and preboarding policies and who, because of that, has had his or her firearm stolen. Imagine what it would take to be an air marshal who has to retake the flight deck. Imagine the marksmanship and brutality it would take to battle those four or more hijackers—fanatics all—and accidentally shoot one or more of the passengers or flight attendants or pilots fighting for their lives and trying to barricade themselves in the cockpit.
Imagine the concussive force of firing a weapon in a pressurized tube at an altitude of 30,000 feet at 530 mph—except that maybe you’re really not at 30,000 feet and 530 mph, you’re losing altitude rapidly while gaining immense speed as the copilot puts the plane into a dive and swerves to thwart the attackers as he or she tries to make an emergency landing anywhere—no matter how dangerous it is—possible.
Imagine that the terrorist pilot is armed and firing down the aisles, using them as fatal funnels. Imagine the level of fitness, situational awareness, and yes, violence that you would need to hold the flight deck. Terrorists use women and children because sometimes they are women and children! By the time the threat reached the aircraft, we air marshals would have at best maybe seven seconds to identify the threat for what it was and to take action. I knew that I was going to want to vomit. I knew that my adrenaline was going to give me the highest dosage immediately, but the airplane was going to go from complete calm to complete hell in an instant.
That’s what each federal air marshal is hired to face.
FAMS was created to be an onboard shield against a terrorist spear. Terrorists know that they only have to get it right once for their mission to succeed. But the Federal Air Marshal Service leadership and middle management had so obviously lost sight of their agency’s mission. September 11 wasn’t the first attack on airplanes, not by a long shot, and it hasn’t been the last, not by a long shot, either. Any air marshal who falls short of matching that threat shouldn’t be an air marshal. It’s that simple.
Otherwise passengers would be better off knowing that it’s up to them, just as Todd Beamer knew when he retook United Flight 93 on 9/11 on the intel that he and his fellow passengers had received that their terrorist attackers had embarked on a suicide mission. Beamer, a regular American, an exceptional American hero, spoke up before retaking that airplane and taking it down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, saving thousands of lives at the terrorists’ still-unknown target.
“Are you ready? Okay. Let’s roll,” were Todd Beamer’s last words before storming the deck.
Are we ready to roll?
Think of Navy diver Robert Stethem, who stood up to terrorists when they hijacked TWA Flight 847 in June 1985. He took that risk because he knew his fellow military hostages were all married and he wasn’t. His captors pummeled him and shot him in his right temple before dumping his dead body from the plane and then shooting him again for good measure. Think of Flight 847’s German-American flight attendant Uli Derickson, who, after trying to protect Stethem, stood up to the terrorist who had just killed him. When the terrorists demanded she identify the several Jewish passengers on board, she refused and hid their passports. I thought of heroism like that when I was training or at work to focus my thoughts and recall just why I did what I did. We’ve been there before. We shouldn’t have to be there again.
Let’s also acknowledge this: Despite all the crap from our top-heavy, lead-from-behind management, the boots on the airplane floor, the air marshals, have succeeded since 9/11 in safeguarding American air travel. And because of that, terrorists have had to change their playbook. FAMS has made our domestic and international airplane travel a hard target. They have succeeded again and again in thwarting attacks.
Can another 9/11 happen?
It will happen, but because of air marshals dedicated to their mission—and your safety—the next catastrophic terrorist hijacking attempt won’t go without a major fight at thirty thousand feet.
But—and this is a big but—we know exactly what the terrorist threat has evolved into: Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, or even a crazy “lone wolf”—I hate that term; they’re not wolves, they’re jackals—or a four-person-plus coordinated assault.
The enemy selects a target based on two criteria: First, it’s soft; it can be attacked. It is attackable. Second, attacking that target will wreak the most psychological havoc on our population to influence its national leadership in an intended political direction.
It’s that simple.
They will absolutely select public places such as malls. We saw that in the September 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya, by Al-Shabaab, which killed sixty-three persons, injured over 175 more, cripple
d the Kenyan tourist economy, and locked down the city of Nairobi entirely. Attacks may resemble the six highly coordinated simultaneous attacks in November 2008 in Mumbai, India, most notably at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. One hundred and fifty seven innocent souls were murdered. More than six hundred people were injured by the series of gunfights and bombings.
Any country is vulnerable to mass murder from radical Islamic terrorism. That was proven once again in Paris in January 2015 as terrorists attacked the weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as well as a kosher deli. That November, terrorists coordinated six more attacks on the French capital, striking at a major concert hall, a stadium, bars, and restaurants. They massacred 146 innocent human beings. The attacks crippled French tourism.
Why did these attacks happen? Why were those targets chosen? Simply because they fit the two criteria I just listed: 1) they were soft targets and 2) they created a psychological impact followed by a policy impact.
Think of it as Murphy’s law—or Byrne’s Law on Security: Any attack that can happen will.
But an attack in the United States will so obviously include schools and public arenas because we still haven’t gotten our act together in protecting what matters most. It’s happened before, yet we still don’t learn. It will happen at the White House because we still haven’t learned. I know from the “We Hate You” book in my FAMS field office. It’s the latest intel, basically a list of the latest threats. I know it all too well.
Yes, I believe in the FAMS mission, and I believe it’s working, but the agency has to update its counterterrorism techniques to meet terrorism’s evolving tactics. We must harden our targets at home and take the fight to the enemy abroad. But when terrorists turn on our news, what do they see? A man lands a gyrocopter on Congress’s lawn without interference. A knife-wielding man runs unchecked into the White House, right past all its beefy security. In Atlanta a man carrying a gun is allowed onto an elevator carrying President Obama. Those last two incidents cost Secret Service director Julia Pierson her job in October 2014.
I have high hopes for her replacement, Joe Clancy, since I worked with Joe many times for many hours in USSS UD. Leadership doesn’t come from the bottom up or the top down; leadership with character comes from the top-down after someone has served from the bottom-up. I think Joe Clancy can turn the mentality around.
Terrorists can recognize the difference between actual security and its mere appearance. You think they can’t see past a gun-free zone sign? It might as well say: “Terrorists welcome! Ready access to undefended scores of innocent children!” Please, get over the gun control distraction. Ask yourself what stops four men from going into a school with knives or bombs. I know that by the time a threat reaches me on an airplane there’s no time for hesitation, talk, quarter. I want to win more than I can tolerate losing.
In 2016, federal agencies are training their law enforcement personnel to respond to active-shooter scenarios. Concealed-carry permits for civilians are going up—that’s great. But we need a more honest discussion. By the time a terrorist or criminal boards a plane with ill intentions we’re past the time for obfuscating their plans or negotiating them down. Either FAMS personnel is on the plane when it takes off, or its passengers and crew are marked for death, and they better know it.
The federal air marshal, the passengers, the flight crew, and the pilots are truly the last line of defense. American public spaces and schools need the same approach. Let’s cut the feel-good politics and recognize that by the time someone with dangerous plans reaches your doorstep, it’s too late to ponder root causes of antisocial behavior—it’s time to act! All of the thinking should have been done beforehand. And the level of commitment to stop grotesque violence in its tracks—stone cold dead—has to exceed theirs if protecting the principal is going to succeed.
Have no misconceptions: Any outcome at that point will be bloody, ugly, and lowdown. It’s like nothing you’ve seen in a Hollywood movie, and it’s going to be bad-breath and fingernail close. But it’s a fight that’s coming our way whether we get ready for it or not.
Let’s get ready.
My father passed away on December 21, 2007, and as I flew at thirty thousand feet I felt closer and closer to him. It wasn’t because of the altitude or the puffy clouds, but because I was keeping my promise to him that I would protect others. Our federal government and agencies have also made that promise to the American people.
It’s time they dug deep, took the harder, character-driven road, and protected what matters most—the Americans who can’t protect themselves.
18.
CYPRUS
Halfway across the world someone dug a tunnel under a tank guarding a border. For a moment, all remained still. Why would that day be any different from the last? Soldiers clad in their flat green-and-tan uniforms awoke each day and went to work just as they always had. Still, they knew what I knew: It may be rare for an attack to hit me, but it’s guaranteed to hit someone. They were Israeli tank personnel guarding the tinderbox Gaza–Israeli border.
BOOM!
It was June 26, 2006, and seven or eight Hamas operatives detonated an improvised explosive device—the beginning of a highly coordinated raid. They killed two twenty-year-old Israelis and claimed to have captured three more. For years Israel authorities had those captured men on their minds and wanted them back desperately. They didn’t know that two of the men who were taken that day were actually killed during the raid. Still, Hamas used them as bargaining chips in a prisoner exchange two years later. A third solder, Corporal Gilad Shalit, had actually been captured and was still alive.
The incident preceded a full-blown Israeli Defense Force incursion (Operation Summer Rains) into the always fractious Gaza Strip. New fighting erupted on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon as well. Israel called it the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. The Lebanese called it the July War. In the Middle East people can’t agree on anything.
The raids and the rockets threatened to ignite even wider fighting in the world’s powder keg. Word went out from our State Department: Get our people out now! From Lebanon, Hezbollah rocketed Ben Gurion Airport, locking down all air traffic in and out of Israel. The State Department contacted the Defense Department. U.S. military forces shipped out to Israel and Cyprus. American citizens and numerous refugees also raced to Cyprus. Two years previously the Republic of Cyprus had joined the European Union, and its three airports were suddenly the only routes for refugees fleeing the Mideast’s fast-growing turmoil. Americans, Europeans, and people from all over the world, finding themselves trapped in Israel and Lebanon, used any method they could to get to Cyprus. Boats of every kind were suddenly and haphazardly commissioned to ferry desperate refugees across the Mediterranean from Israel to Cyprus.
The call came in, but it didn’t surprise us. We had been following the story closely. Even before FAMS requested volunteers, a good many air marshals had already stepped up to the plate. “I want in,” I emailed my superiors.
I was formally on board almost immediately. It felt good to be back in the action. I felt as if I’d returned to the old helter-skelter days of last-minute Secret Service details covering Clinton campaign events or protecting NATO summits—when events came down to the wire, and we had to trust our own instincts. But this was 2006. Yes, the road had given me some weather, but I was just as eager as ever.
Whenever a war erupts, no matter in what part of the globe, Americans somehow get caught in its figurative or literal crossfire. All flying FAMS (the guys who fly and don’t sit behind a desk) went on alert. FAMS was the perfect agency to safely transport Americans out of a hot zone and to ensure that terrorists couldn’t take advantage of whatever panic and chaos festered to seize control of a plane or even to sneak operatives or intel past our country’s borders.
The plan was simple—it usually was. Our Philadelphia-based team—Mark, who was our team leader (TL), Jim, Bill, and I—would board a rent-a-plane flown by three pilots and an engineer and head f
rom Philly to Haan, Germany. A sixteen-woman flight crew awaited us. We’d refuel before landing at Larnaca International Airport on Cyprus’s southeastern coast. We were ordered to remain at Larnaca for no longer than four hours—it was even printed on our mission orders. Customs and TSA personnel would screen everyone thoroughly before anyone boarded. The Americans would be ready to board when we got there. Our task was to behaviorally profile everyone as they boarded. Then it was back to Haan for refueling and then on to Philadelphia, where Customs and FAMS security would process our refugees.
After that, it wasn’t my business.
Both this war-created refugee crisis and Cyprus itself were hotbeds for terrorist activity. I knew that well enough. When four Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 in October 1977, they demanded the plane be diverted to Larnaca International before heading for Bahrain, Dubai, Aden, and then Mogadishu. Commandos from German Special Forces executed a daring rescue (Operation Feuerzauber—“Fire Magic”) and rescued all eighty-six passengers. But the operation bore the earmarks of every antiterrorism operation, even the successful ones: It teetered a hair trigger away from complete catastrophe.
We departed late that night. When it’s a red-eye I either try to sleep beforehand or hang with Genny and the kids after school, but in an anxious situation like this, I simply couldn’t settle. My brain wouldn’t switch to off-duty mode. I departed around 10 p.m., driving through the empty suburban streets and sparsely trafficked Philly highways before reaching the airport.
When we saw our mode of transport, the four members of our team groaned, “Oh, great!”
Our charter plane was an old DC-10, a McDonnell Douglas jetliner largely phased out of commercial fleets. Our particular plane was just fresh from flying the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. Delta Air Lines was aware that our last-minute chartering of this aircraft was for our nation’s emergency humanitarian airlift and graciously volunteered a space for it on Philly’s runways and hangars—but the plane was a mess, and that held us up. Cleaners struggled to get it in shape. We didn’t have a minute to spare and pitched in to help. It was a 260-seater, so it was a big job—and an unwelcome holdup.