Federal Air Marshal Service

The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the supervision of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Because of the nature of their occupation, federal air marshals (FAMs) travel often. They must also train to be highly proficient marksmen. A FAM's job is to blend in with other passengers on board aircraft and rely heavily on their training, including investigative techniques, criminal terrorist behavior recognition, firearms proficiency, aircraft-specific tactics, and close quarters self-defense measures to protect the flying public.

In 1961, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., presented the idea of armed security forces on commercial flights. President John F. Kennedy ordered federal law enforcement officers to be deployed to act as security officers on certain high-risk flights. The Federal Air Marshal Service began on March 2, 1962, as the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) FAA Peace Officers Program. On this date, the first 18 volunteers from the FAA's Flight Standards Division graduated training. They received training from the U.S. Border Patrol at Port Isabel, Texas, and later went through recurrent yearly training in Brownsville, Texas. These initial FAA peace officers were named by FAA administrator Najeeb Halaby. Later, it became an integral part of the Civil Aviation Security Division of the FAA. As early as 1963, after an article in FAA Horizons Magazine, the FAA peace officers were referred to as sky marshals internally within the FAA, although the term would not be used by the media for nearly a decade.^{[citation needed]} Many years after their initial inception, personnel were given firearms and some close quarters combat training at the FBI Academy located on the U.S. Marine Corps training grounds at Quantico, Virginia.^{[citation needed]}

In October 1969, due to the increasing violence of hijacked aircraft in the Middle East, the U.S. Marshals Service started a Sky Marshal Division out of the Miami Field Office. The program was run by John Brophy and staffed with a handful of deputies. Since the majority of hijackings were occurring out of Florida in the late 1960s, the U.S. Marshals Service started their program to try and combat air piracy given their broad jurisdiction.

The "Sky Marshal Program" of the 1970s later became a joint effort between the then United States Customs Service and the FAA and was led by General Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a former Tuskegee Airman. On September 11, 1970, in response to increasing acts of air piracy by hijacking to Cuba and Islamic radicals, President Richard Nixon ordered the immediate deployment of armed federal agents on United States commercial aircraft. Initially, the deployed personnel were federal agents from the U.S. Department of Treasury. Subsequently, the United States Customs Service formed the Division of Air Security, and established the position of Customs Security Officer (CSO).^{[citation needed]} Approximately 1,700 personnel were hired for this position and were trained at the Treasury Air Security Officer (TASOS) training complex at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.^{[citation needed]} Customs security officers were deployed on U.S. flagged commercial aircraft, flying on both domestic and international routes in an undercover capacity in teams of two and three. Customs security officers also handled ground security screening on selected flights at domestic U.S. airports.^{[citation needed]}

Following the mandatory passenger screening enacted by the FAA at U.S. airports beginning in 1973, the customs security officer force was disbanded and its personnel were absorbed by the U.S. Customs Service. By 1974 armed sky marshals were a rarity on U.S. aircraft. The former customs security officers were reassigned as customs patrol officers, customs inspectors, and customs special agents.

A small force of Federal Air Marshals were retrained at the FAA starting in 1974.^{[citation needed]} The personnel trained under this program was limited to 10–12 people. For the next several years after customs security officer disbandment, the FAA air marshals rarely flew missions.^{[citation needed]}

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan requested the expansion of the program and Congress enacted the International Security and Development Cooperation Act, which expanded the statutes that supported the Federal Air Marshal Service.^{[citation needed]} The FAM program was begun in response to domestic hijackings and FAM operational flights were almost exclusively conducted on domestic U.S. flights until 1985. After the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985 and the enactment of the International Security and Development Cooperation Act, the number of FAMs was increased and their focus became international U.S. air carrier operations.^{[citation needed]} Due to resistance of several countries including the United Kingdom and Germany to having individuals carrying firearms entering their countries, the coverage of international flights was initially limited. Resistance to the entrance of armed personnel to their countries was overcome through negotiations and agreements about the terms and handling of weapons when they were brought in country. Hence, the FAMs could operate worldwide in carrying out their mission to protect U.S. aviation from hijackings.^{[citation needed]}