Team America: Regional Police

CNN investigates the Federal Air Marshal Service:

In more than a dozen interviews across the country, air marshals said the agency is rife with cronyism; age, gender and racial discrimination; and attempts by managers to make the agency appear more efficient than it is by padding numbers.

Air marshals describe an agency in chaos, where bored and frustrated marshals focus more on internal squabbles than watching for bad guys.

For example,

International flights are considered to have the highest risk.

However, air marshals from a half dozen FAMS field offices said the agency continues to assign marshals to short, regional routes on small jets. The marshals told CNN that lots of short-haul flights make the agency look more productive on paper.

The marshals said if someone dares criticize a manager, he or she can be banished to what they call "Team America," referring to the regional trips.

For more details, read the whole thing. And to understand the underlying philosophy behind the Federal Air Marshal Service, the rest of the Transportation Security Administration, and indeed the entire Department of Homeland Security, watch this: