The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan I. Koerner Page B
Authors: Brendan I. Koerner
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President Nixon made a somber national address in which he outlined his advisers’ seven-point plan. “Most countries, including the United States, found effective means of dealing with piracy on the high seas a century and a half ago,” he declared in his gruff baritone. “We can—and we will—deal effectively with piracy in the skies today.”
Most of the plan’s directives were fairly dull, such as a promise to study the best security practices of foreign carriers and a vague commitment to develop “new methods for detecting weapons and explosive devices.” But one of the president’s decrees was truly radical:
To protect United States citizens and others on U.S. flag carriers, we will place specially trained, armed United States government personnel on flights of U.S.commercial airliners. A substantial number of such personnel are already available and they will begin their duties immediately. To the extent necessary they will be supplemented by specially trained members of the armed forces who will serve until an adequate force of civilian guards has beenassembled and trained.
The details of this sky marshal program did not emerge until five days later, when FAA chief John Shaffer appeared on a one-hour ABC television special devoted to the hijacking epidemic. Shaffer revealed that the United States planned to have four thousand undercover agents in the air by early 1971, at an initial cost of$80 million per year. The marshals, armed with .38-caliber pistols, would be instructed to shoot to kill; no man was supposed to qualify for the job unless he could fire twelve bullets in twenty-five seconds with enough accuracy to kill a hijackerfrom forty-five feet away. The force would be overseen by Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., whom President Nixon had appointed to the newly created post of Director of Civil Aviation Security. Davis, a retired Air Force general who had recently resigned as supervisor of Cleveland’s troubled police department, was essentially the nation’sfirst skyjacking czar.
The airlines dreaded the prospect of sky marshals. They worried that planes could lose pressure and crash if their bulkheads were punctured during midair shoot-outs. And they feared the legal fallout should a passenger be slain by a marshal’s errant bullet; a civil court might be sympathetic to a lawsuit alleging that an airline’s ticket agents should have flagged askyjacker before boarding.
The airlines’ discontent turned to rage when they learned how the Nixon administration planned to pay for the armed guards: by increasing the tax on each domestic ticket by half a percent, and on each international ticket by two dollars. “The airlines see no justification for the imposition of these new taxes,” the head of the Air Transport Association of America, the industry’s primary trade group, told the Senate Finance Committee at an October hearing. “The taxes arediscriminatory in their application because they would be levied on many persons who could not benefit from the purpose for why they are proposed to be imposed.” In other words, because only a minuscule percentage of flights would actually have sky marshals aboard, the industry thought it grossly unfair that all travelers should be expected to pay for protection theyprobably wouldn’t enjoy.
Several senators were swayed by this selfish logic, though perhaps more by the airlines’ threats to slash service should the tax be imposed. The Senate Finance Committee’s deliberations became bogged down in acrimony, with senators touting pet amendments that would exempt Alaska-bound flights from the tax or prioritize the hiring of unemployed pilots as sky marshals. The powerful American Automobile Association, meanwhile, became a major proponent of the tax, hoping the surcharge would convince many travelers todrive instead of fly.
By early December the so-called skyjacking tax was dead in the water, the victim of too muchlobbyist meddling. Deprived of
Most of the plan’s directives were fairly dull, such as a promise to study the best security practices of foreign carriers and a vague commitment to develop “new methods for detecting weapons and explosive devices.” But one of the president’s decrees was truly radical:
To protect United States citizens and others on U.S. flag carriers, we will place specially trained, armed United States government personnel on flights of U.S.commercial airliners. A substantial number of such personnel are already available and they will begin their duties immediately. To the extent necessary they will be supplemented by specially trained members of the armed forces who will serve until an adequate force of civilian guards has beenassembled and trained.
The details of this sky marshal program did not emerge until five days later, when FAA chief John Shaffer appeared on a one-hour ABC television special devoted to the hijacking epidemic. Shaffer revealed that the United States planned to have four thousand undercover agents in the air by early 1971, at an initial cost of$80 million per year. The marshals, armed with .38-caliber pistols, would be instructed to shoot to kill; no man was supposed to qualify for the job unless he could fire twelve bullets in twenty-five seconds with enough accuracy to kill a hijackerfrom forty-five feet away. The force would be overseen by Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., whom President Nixon had appointed to the newly created post of Director of Civil Aviation Security. Davis, a retired Air Force general who had recently resigned as supervisor of Cleveland’s troubled police department, was essentially the nation’sfirst skyjacking czar.
The airlines dreaded the prospect of sky marshals. They worried that planes could lose pressure and crash if their bulkheads were punctured during midair shoot-outs. And they feared the legal fallout should a passenger be slain by a marshal’s errant bullet; a civil court might be sympathetic to a lawsuit alleging that an airline’s ticket agents should have flagged askyjacker before boarding.
The airlines’ discontent turned to rage when they learned how the Nixon administration planned to pay for the armed guards: by increasing the tax on each domestic ticket by half a percent, and on each international ticket by two dollars. “The airlines see no justification for the imposition of these new taxes,” the head of the Air Transport Association of America, the industry’s primary trade group, told the Senate Finance Committee at an October hearing. “The taxes arediscriminatory in their application because they would be levied on many persons who could not benefit from the purpose for why they are proposed to be imposed.” In other words, because only a minuscule percentage of flights would actually have sky marshals aboard, the industry thought it grossly unfair that all travelers should be expected to pay for protection theyprobably wouldn’t enjoy.
Several senators were swayed by this selfish logic, though perhaps more by the airlines’ threats to slash service should the tax be imposed. The Senate Finance Committee’s deliberations became bogged down in acrimony, with senators touting pet amendments that would exempt Alaska-bound flights from the tax or prioritize the hiring of unemployed pilots as sky marshals. The powerful American Automobile Association, meanwhile, became a major proponent of the tax, hoping the surcharge would convince many travelers todrive instead of fly.
By early December the so-called skyjacking tax was dead in the water, the victim of too muchlobbyist meddling. Deprived of
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