Air Marshal Monthly Quota System Denied

A spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service denies allegations that officers in the agency's Las Vegas field office are required to fill a monthly quota of reports labeling particular travelers as suspicious.

"There is no Air Marshal Service policy that air marshals must do a specific number of reports," spokesman Conan Bruce said last week.

Bruce also denies allegations that people named in such reports, known as surveillance detection reports, could be placed on a watch list or wind up in databases that identify them as potential terrorists.

"No person is going to end up on a watch list based solely on a surveillance detection report," the spokesman said. "It's not going to happen."

Bruce made the comments in response to publicity surrounding claims made by federal air marshals based in Las Vegas.

In a report aired recently by Denver's KMGH-TV, Channel 7, the marshals said they are required to submit at least one surveillance detection report, or SDR, a month. If they fail to do so, they said, they are denied raises, bonuses and special assignments.

"There is no connection between quantity of reports filed and evaluations," Bruce said. "However, there is a connection between quality of reporting and evaluations, and that's appropriate."

The Denver station's anonymous sources said the quota system is causing some air marshals to make up information or stretch the truth in their reports, which are designed to identify terrorist surveillance activity.

Last month the American Civil Liberties Union asked for an immediate investigation of the allegations to "determine if any innocent Americans have been implicated or suffered any harm due to misguided surveillance reports."

The controversy goes back to at least July 2004. The Review-Journal has obtained a memo written that month by Gregory Korniloff, an assistant special agent in charge at the Las Vegas office.

In the memo, distributed to supervisors in the office, Korniloff wrote, "As discussed during today's staff conference, please remind your squad members that each FAM is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month."

Last month, Korniloff referred questions on the matter to Bruce.

Bruce said Korniloff's "erroneous memo" came to the attention of officials at headquarters, and David Knowlton, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office at the time, was asked to rescind it.

"Nobody asked me to rescind it," Knowlton said last week. "I realized there was an interpretation issue, so I sent an e-mail clarifying what my expectations were."

In August 2004, Knowlton sent an e-mail to everyone in the Las Vegas office that stated, "There is not a quota for submitting SDRs. There is an expectation that all FAMs will provide timely and accurate SDRs to accomplish our mission."

Knowlton retired in January. During an interview Friday at his home, he said he was disappointed by the air marshals who have taken their concerns to the news media. He said the negative publicity overshadows the good work done every day by thousands of air marshals throughout the country.

"It all started with the surveillance detection reports," Knowlton said. "I've tried to fix it, and that was two years ago."

He said he never intended to suggest that air marshals in Las Vegas should submit a minimum number of reports each month. Rather, he stressed his expectation that all marshals participate in the agency's mission of detecting, deterring and defeating hostile acts targeting U.S. aircraft, airports, passengers and crews.

"I expected everybody to participate," Knowlton said. "Sooner or later, if you're out there, you're probably going to see something that's worth reporting."

He said some marshals in the Las Vegas office chose not to submit surveillance detection reports.

"I made it very clear: There's no quotas, but I do expect participation," Knowlton said.

He said air marshals "are in a unique position to provide intelligence to the rest of the intelligence community because of where they are every day."

"If you're in a domain every day, you can choose to be observant or not," he said.

Bruce said the same premise holds true for police officers on the street. If an officer went two years without making a drunken driving arrest, he said, a supervisor might ask the officer, "Does that mean there were no drunk drivers or you weren't being vigilant?"

Likewise, Bruce said, if an air marshal worked for two years without submitting a surveillance detection report, a supervisor should ask him why. However, he said, the lack of reports would not necessarily result in a bad evaluation.

Knowlton said his supervisors constantly monitored reports for quality and were asked to evaluate air marshals based on their total performance. "When I was there, air marshals got raises who had not done SDRs," he said.

Frank Magoch is currently the acting special agent in charge of the marshal service's Las Vegas office. Bruce said officials in the Las Vegas office did not have permission to give interviews for this article.

The surveillance detection reports may only be one factor in determining raises and promotions, Knowlton said, "but they are absolutely critical to the air marshals' mission to fight terrorism. They are absolutely critical, and for someone to submit frivolous ones is not professional."

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Air Marshal Service grew from an agency with fewer than 50 employees to one with several thousand. Knowlton said the number of air marshals is classified, but the agency's presence in Nevada made it the largest federal law enforcement agency in the state during his 3½-year tenure.

Bruce said air marshals are trained in techniques to observe and report suspicious activity. He said an air marshal, like any alert law enforcement officer, "is looking for activity that is outside of the norm."

Knowlton, who spent 32 years with the FBI, said the terrorists who took over aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, "had to do homework; they didn't just pick those flights randomly."

His wife, Ellen, who retired in February from her position as special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas field office, said, "It is more than conceivable that, given what we know today about terrorist organizations and their M.O., that suspicious activities could be detected and should be reported to the intelligence community."

David Knowlton said something as simple as a person counting the number of passengers on an aircraft could raise the suspicions of an air marshal.

Bruce said surveillance detection reports are sent to the agency's headquarters in Virginia, where officials look for patterns of suspicious activity.

He said the agency does not maintain its own terrorist watch list, and air marshals do not have the authority to nominate an individual for such a list.

In addition, both Bruce and David Knowlton said the surveillance detection reports seldom identify a person by name.

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