to participate in this. the other aspect is the congressman made a comparison between the cost of a federal air marshal. i support the federal air marshal program 100%. as an aviator, as an airline pilot, i love it when they're onboard. i also want to see our pilots armed. for the price of an air marshal, $3,300 per flight, for the price of two in the front of an aircraft, you could fill up business and coach with federal flight deck officers on a 777. that's 440 flight deck officers peppered across the system. amount of flights covered would be enormous. the two forces combined, federal air marshals, flight deck officers, provide that last line of defense. they need to be preserved. currently, where the administration is headed is to say we don't want you to spend $10,000 of your own money, pilots, thank you very much. we believe the cockpit door

suffices, even though it opens and closed and at times has had problems. they are turning those folks away. we think that's a travesty. that puts us in jeopardy, puts the flying public in jeopardy. that is not only a misunderstanding of security in aviation, but clearly some of the comments i heard they are not front line people making these decisions. we are more vigilant than we have been in the past. we are not infallible. this current budget proves that this administration, the obama administration does not support this program. we have to go to the legislators for that support. we are asking for their support in this. federal flight deck officer program is the most cost-effective program for counterterrorism that we have at $15 a flight. it represents the third largest group of federal law enforcement officers in the nation and a group of people willing to spend incredible amounts of their own money to protect the public, protect their airlines and

protect themselves. any changes to this program right now would be done at the expense of all of us. >> thank you. again, questions from the floor, and again, if you would raise your hand and be recognized and state your affiliation and your name, that would be great. okay. >> brian darling, heritage foundation. my question is when you look back at the history of the creation of the program, this is not a partisan issue. the leadership of senator barbara boxer of california and many democrats in the house that stepped up in support of this, it shows that it is -- it had bipartisan support. as you mentioned the overwhelming bipartisan vote in favor in the house and senate creating the bill was part of what brought it into being. my question to you is, maybe you could give us a little history of maybe the meetings that you had and the fact that congress overwhelmingly supported this on

the record on numerous occasions, yet for whatever reason, this administration wants to end the program. >> it was favored by almost everyone in congress. of course it was early after 9/11 and we all had our emotions. we all knew what had happened. it was relatively easy to convince even those. we did not make this a gun rights issue because that's not what it is. it's the national security issue. that's what we ran it as. they understood that. so we had great support from folks who you would think would actually otherwise be against it in both the house and the senate. there were a few holdouts but i think our argument was convincing. so we did have, as brian said, solid bipartisan support for this. >> if i might add, also currently in our visits on the hill, life is a bipartisan issue. people all want to see it

preserved in terms of how we deal with terrorism. so we've seen a lot of support on both sides of the aisle. that's why this is such a disconnect. the context which we were approaching several members of the homeland security committee we had bipartisan conversations with counsel from both sides that we were looking at getting additional funding just for the additional pilots that are in the pipeline right now. over 700. they were in agreement and we were working towards that. that's why this budget that came out was such a surprise because it was a complete disconnect from what we've been seeing up on the hill from both sides of the aisle. >> winston packer. i wonder if you could enumerate the success of the program in terms of numbers of incidents that you have of potential attacks you thwarted because of this program. are there other countries that

have the ffdo program? >> is that directed at me? >> anybody. >> as far as armed pilots in other countries, no. there aren't other countries armed. we're unique in that. some of them we have to be careful talking about because they are covered by sensitive security information. i talked about one in general from an offduty was able to stop something. if you remember the shoe bomber and underwear bomber, interesting we have items of clothing, we are waiting for the next item of clothing. but there were people in the middle of the aircraft over the wing that stopped it that saw those things. while i can't point to specific incidents other than that general one i talked about, i can assure you they are out there. that they have happened and they are stopping things. it is effective. i hope that helps.

>> if i can take a shot of that, as well. i'm aware of my airline specifically, of a couple of cases where a federal flight deck officer was instrumental containing a threat to the cockpit. that's as far with that as i can go. i think the idea that we haven't had any cockpit breaches, we tried that. we did it from 1987 to shortly after 9/11. we had a really bad cockpit breach. we lost 4,000 americans. we learned that day this is a horrible, horrible experiment of disarming the cockpit of

commercial airliners that have been armed since the dawn of commercial ashiation with that one brief period. i don't think it's wise i don't think it makes any sense to go back to that failed experiment. >> i think once this has happened where you no longer have individuals that are going to com an dear aircraft and fly down to cuba and you're going to have extended negotiations where the aircraft will be returned that's gone. that doesn't exist. the one that we live in now is the aircraft will be used as a weapon of mass destruction. therefore, we have to assume that any assault on the cockpit is to take it over and harm people. >> could i add one extra comment. with regard to the numbers and i'm coming from the "inception" of the program. we ran a survey through the winston group who surveyed the american people.

85% said that they thought their airline pilots should be armed. we ran two other surveys. one apa did and one alpa did. between 80% and 85% of the pilots surveyed said they thought pilots should be armed. at the time of 9/11, we flew over 30,000 flights per day. we had a little over 100,000 commercial airline pilots. if you take that 80% number, for example, we expected that 80,000 pilots thought that pilots should be armed and something north of 50,000 or 60,000 pilots would probably actually volunteer to be armed. we don't have that many. we have a significant number, but not enough for the deterrent value we tried to create with this program. >> i'm from senator barbara boxer's office. my question, you mentioned that the air carriers expressed early opposition and concern.

i was hoping you could speak to their current position on the issue and whether or not it's changed? >> i'll have to defer the current position to my colleagues who are still flying actively. i'll tell you that at the time one of their major concerns, if you owned an airline and you wanted people to come fly with you would you display an attitude of we have a problem and we're addressing it, or would you display an attitude we don't have a problem? to draw more people to fly with you? that was the synopsis of their concerns in that ata letter. there are other specific concerns like how are we going to handle pilots when they are going from one place to another, and where are we going to store their weapons? and other concerns they didn't want to deal with. in the airline industry, everything you have to think of costs money. >> if i might add on to that,

first up as a californian, thank you to my senator. senator boxer has been a supporter of this program and i appreciate that. the change in the opinions of the airlines toward the federal flight deck officer program, our former ceo at american airlines had an article that mentioned it in the american way magazine put in all of the seats out thing the success of the program. there have been times when under certain security situations, it's been murmured, and i'm sure other folks from other airlines could probably repeat this, some management said, i wish we had an ffdo on that flight. so the view of it has changed for the positive. one of the greatest compliments to this is, to the program is, when we go out and talk about it, i hear people say i didn't know pilots were armed. they had forgotten about it. they are quiet professionals. they are doing their job, performing their duties. they are there as that last line

of defense if need to be activated. if not, they are vigilante. again, thank you to the senator. >> todd sperry with cnn. give me a brief history lesson on what happened on what you call the experiment and why the guns were removed and what exactly led up to that. i just want to understand it better from your perspective. >> several things. airline pilots were armed from the dawn of commercial aviation through 1987, through the mid-60s airline pilots were required to carry firearms when they had u.s. mail onboard which is a large number of flights. so it was actually a requirement that existed in place for airline pilots to carry the guns. in 1987, late 1986, there was a

cockpit takeover that people don't know and don't remember. where a guy broke into the cockpit of a pacific southwest airlines, bae-146, not that you care but it's an airline wer 100 people on it. he had a gun, he shot the pilots and killed them and crashed the airline and everyone died. so we had a situation here where we had an unarmed cockpit and the result was the loss of an airplane and all of the passengers. the response, the faa response to that, and by the way that guy was not a pilot. he weigh nas not -- this wasn't pilot. the pilots were trying to live. the faa response to that was to then require pilots to then begin going through screening. pilots were then effectively disarmed. prior to that point, pilots often carried hand guns in their

flight bags. some estimates up to 60% of pilots depending on the airline carried hand guns in their flight bags. as of 1987, there were no more armed pilots. they went away. it's really inexplicable why the faa chose that course of action. a rational course of action after that horrible accident, not accident, horrible murder would have been to say wait, we need to, if only those guys had had guns in their flight bags we might have saved these people. we need to get more armed pilots. we need to figure out a way to encourage more armed pilots. the faa's response was completely irrational. totally backwards. i'm not sure any one can explain the course of action they did. pilots predicted at that time there would be attempted cockpit takeovers, more and more. captain victor sarosini predicted to his wife, there

will be attempted cockpit takeovers because of this. he died on september 11, 2001, when his boeing 767 was flown into the south tower of the world trade center. the other important element of this thing to mention is up through august of 2001, the regulation in the federal aviation regulations under which we all operate, the regulation existed that allowed pilots to be armed. there was a provision that would allow an airline if they chose to go through a process to arm their pilots. no airline did. i think, frankly, it was kind of an anti-gun sentiment that existed. that is irrational as well in my view. that regulation kind of

disappeared in a horrible coincidence and irony and disappeared in august. not that it was being used, but it at least existed, then september 11, 2001, of course we had the attacks and shortly thereafter, we rearmed the pilots again. >> may i make a comment for this young lady at the moment. my name is mark weiss. i worked with these gentlemen with the allied pilots association. you asked about other countries. culturally, arming not just pilots, but often time population or even police officers is against the thinking in many other cultures. it was also not their airliners and their population that was attacked on 9/11.

if you go back to the idea of what happened in london with the liquid bombers, that was not an attack in the uk, that was an attack on a number of u.s. and canadian-based carriers. the so the whole thinking has changed as to why u.s. arms their crew members. the other thing is if you look at how pilots are trained, trained in layers of safety, layers of security. it's been happening that way because it's a learned experience to prevent accidents, to mitigate negative experiences, and what you've done is you added another layer of security into this equation. it's hard to prove a negative. you wouldn't take out a layer of security or layer of safety training that you've done with your pilots. by doing what they are doing here is that they say it's abhorrent to take that away.

>> i think one of the things to point out, mark, is when we talk about these incidents, remember, we have to be right every single time. the terrorists have to be right only once. >> i asked the question for my own purposes. from 2003 to january 2007 was the aviation policy advisor for the house homeland committee and worked with several of you in that capacity. i think my question was a rational one in terms of trying to get a grasp of the value added of this program and how you have advanced over the years. i think it's a perfectly rational question and was for my own knowledge. thank you. >> i agree. >> did we help you answer the question good enough? >> let me ask a question. i was looking at tsa data. apparently last month they

reportedly confiscated 200 guns. help me understand, what do i make of that and how does that fit in with the discussion we had here today? >> you want to take a crack at it? >> when you look at probably the vast majority of those confiscations, and i get the reports on those, too, where somebody inadvertently leaves it in their bag, i don't know the difference between somebody accidentally doing or testing the system, but the fact those are caught doesn't mean things aren't getting through. that's just what's been caught. we have issues in the airline industry also with the dea examining how many drugs are being brought onboard an aircraft. if something can be smuggled on an aircraft fill in the blank what you want it to be. it could be narcotics, a firearm, it would be an edged weapon. it could be a lot of things. to assume we're catching 100%,

we're not infallible in this case. a lot of the case what is you're seeing are probably people, there is a large number of them, that simply have a concealed carry and forget to take themselves out of that mind-set when they come to the airport. then again, we've seen it in security briefings, there are people out there testing the system. there are people that are always actively testing the system. to think that we have a static defense, a wall up that cannot be penetrated is a fallacy. >> so in other words, you could interpret that data f they are confiscating 200 guns, there's potential something to worry about because people are trying to get guns on planes. >> yes, sir. >> absolutely. the other argument that i think is important to remember is we're trying to -- the theory under which we're operating is we're going to make the cabin of a commercial airliner a completely weapon-free zone. that we're going to -- there's going to be nothing there one person could use to harm another

person. we try to do the same thing in completely locked down federal penitentiaries and we control extremely carefully who gets in, out, everybody gets a strip search, but every time that we do a shake-down on a federal pen we find all kinds of weapons. so, it's just unrealistic to think that we can ever produce a security system ever that will make a public venue like airline travel, weapon-free. it's just an unrealistic thing to do. and in fact, the record of failure or success, how ever you want to look at it that the tsa security screening has amassed, is virtually identical to the one that existed before 9/11. it's an incredibly difficult thing we're asking these people to do to find everything that one person could use to hurt another and make sure it never

finds its way to the airliner. it's a silly thing to think that we'll ever get there. we won't. >> this might sound counter intuitive to some but probably the most successful security system is one that assumes failure. with multiple layers. you have to assume that certain layers will fail, that you might fail on the background check when you buy a ticket or at the screening of the passenger or the cargo, having all of those multiple layers mean that somewhere along the line you catch. it's a lesson learned in aviation, that's why on aircraft there is redundant hydraulic systems, in fuel, redundant electrical systems, things that back up. when you're up there, in an aircraft, you can't open the window and ask for help. what you have is what you have. i think the best security systems assume a level of failure and have backups in there to attempt to catch it at the end. that's a lesson we learned over a lifetime in aviation and how

to make aircraft safer. >> so i'm going to go back and ask our panel, give you a heads up, your last thoughts to sum up. let me see if there are last questions or commentses. one in the back and down front. >> one more question. i heard the facility in new mexico mentioned as far as training goes. is that the only training facility, if not how many training facilities are there across the country? >> that's a primary facility for initial training. there is also two other recurrent facilities, remember i taubed about a three to five-year deptization process. there are two of those. the reduction in the budget is going to condense those and possibly bring it down to just two. which i know that they are currently considering. the problem that we have there is the pilots that are being armed are from hawaii towards the east. people from all over. remember, these pilots are doing

this on their own money, traveling to these destinations. it's becoming more and more difficult to get to these locations, to pay for the participati participation. counter that to the administration budget that says well, we actually don't want all of these people that are willing to pay $10,000 to participate in the program. so we have two big issues, shrinking facilities and then a desire not to accept these people that want to spend their own money to participate. >> the question up front. >> heritage foundation. i'm going to ask why is it only the federal government's responsibility to provide on flight security? why can't we create a partnership with the airline industry itself to provide its own security? >> if it's all right i'll address that. conservative limited government folks would like to see private property protected by the owner of that property.

that's fine. i probably personally tend to think that way myself. however, among the -- in the realm of what is realistic, of what can be done and what will bring -- there are all different kinds of people who think in all different kinds of ways onboard and get this thing accomplished. that's just not going to happen. there's one way for a pilot to carry a firearm and protect his passengers, his crew and the people on the ground. that is if he gets a background check, psychological evaluation, attends training at a training center, becomes deputized. then and only then can that pilot carry firearm and protect his passenger and crew. that's the only way it's going to happen.

if we do away with this program and hope in some panacea some think is the best way to go about doing it, there will be no more armed pilots. >> also to the point is when you cross multiple state lines, when you're operating out of several different cities it's going to require a federal jurisdiction to allow you to operate with a weapon through that. the other element, too, we've seen something similar with paeft. airline margins very dependent on how the airline operates and uses their airline. but to ask one airline to do something and another one they are going to say well, it's costing me too much here, i need to cut it back here and we've seen that with safety items. with traffic collision avoidance systems having to be mandated, so i think with the federal involvement what you have is a standardization. plus you have the jurisdictional issues that are solved by having the federal government operate

this. >> we'll take one and then go to our panel for a last response. >> is there any way for the airline industry to have to pay for this instead of the taxpayer since we're providing security for the airline industry? >> i guess i would -- >> the taxpayer is going to pay for it one way or another. >> the ultimately what the taxpayers are paying for is the security of this nation. a legitimate function of the -- i think everyone would agree, i hope a legitimate function of the federal government is to defend the nation from attack. we were attacked on 9/11. the weapon of choice was a commercial airliner. and it is the federal government's responsible to protect us and keep us safe from attack. that's the reason we created the federal government in what year, 1787. was the primary impetus was to protect the nation, so i think

it's a legitimate responsibility of the federal government to make sure the cockpits are defended so airplanes cannot be used as weapons against our country again. >> i would also add one other element. based upon the current federal budget for this program, 22 and $25 million and the amount of money that each pilot is paying to participate in the program, i would suggest to you as i have done on the hill, that the pilots are paying for the program right now. way far and above whatever the federal government is paying. so i would say that if you look at over $400 million by pilots, $22-25 million by the federal government, pilots are paying for it. >> let me go down the panel and see if there are last thoughts or comments before we close. >> i'll remind you that this has been an uphill battle for ten years. a little over ten years. it was an uphill battle to get the program initiated.

there's great resistance to that. there has been great resistance during this last ten years. in the procedures that have been outlined by the tsa. that has discouraged pilot participation. we like to see the funding retained if not increased, to attract more into the program, to achieve the deterrent effect that we had intended for it in the beginning. >> i think the greatest compliment to this program is when somebody said that they didn't know that the pilots were armed. they are quiet professionals. the fact that they are spending a lot of their own money to participate in the program, tells you that they are concerned with not only their safety but the safety of the passengers behind hem. i get asked in the cockpit are we going to get there okay? you know, if i'm there okay, you're going to be there right behind me. this program is the most cost

effective deterrent, period. this program has the potential to expand incredibly and still be very, very cheap. as you add more and more pilots to the program the cost per flight drops. if we had a few couple thousand more individuals we would be down to maybe $7 a flight. it's very cost effective. it's an incredible program. i think at this juncture right now considering that our security systems are porous and to assume that we're going to start dismantling our security systems saying we don't need this, is a big problem. it puts us in harm's way. >> i guess i'll just summarize my remarks and thoughts by saying that we -- airline travel is something that virtually nearly every american enjoys at some point in his life. most americans or lots of americans travel all the time.