CNN news 2010-02-17 加文本

2010-02-17 cnn

GRIFFIN: Then there is the story of this woman, a girlfriend now wife of an Air Marshal who complained to the Department of Homeland Security she was followed, photographed, and investigated by the Air Marshals, all because she says her then-boyfriend had a workman's comp claim.

MEGAN, WIFE OF FEDERAL AIR MARSHAL: The American safety is being put, you know, on the back burner, because we are 40 miles away from the airport investigating private citizens.

GRIFFIN: Despite repeated requests, the Federal Air Marshal service and TSA declined to give cnn an interview. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee believes the Air Marshals program put together hastily after 9/11 now needs to be reinvented.

REP. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE (D), TEXAS: If we got those kinds of problems, we need to get a ready broom and sweep it out. The only way we're going to insure the security and safety of the American people is that we have staff PAR excellence, and I know they're out there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: The Air Marshals, themselves, do say their agency is dysfunctional. It is not performing the security job that it should, and along with this growing chorus demanding a change in management of the Federal Air Marshal Service, Kyra, quite frankly there's a growing chorus asking whether this agency needs to exist at all.