AS U.S.'S AIR MARSHAL PROGRAM GROWS, OTHER AGENCIES FACE DWINDLING RANKS

WASHINGTON -- When the federal government announced right after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that it would expand its corps of airplane
police, dozens of U.S. Border Patrol agents in San Diego quickly
decided it was time for a career change.

In a single day in October, 11 agents in San Diego quit their
lower-paying, more-demanding jobs at the U.S.-Mexico border for
higher-paying, ostensibly lower-stress jobs in the sky.

See full coverage of the Aftermath of Terror.

So far, 81 of the 231 agents who left the agency since Sept. 11 have
said they did so to join the Federal Air Marshal program, further
exacerbating a worker shortage at the perennially understaffed Border
Patrol. The actual total might be higher, because agents aren't
required to say why they are leaving -- and many don't.

"The Border Patrol may be being dealt its death blow," says Joseph
Dassaro, president of Local 1613 of the National Border Patrol Council
in San Diego, which represents about 1,800 agents in the San Diego
area and 7,000 nationwide.

Mr. Dassaro has long complained that the Immigration and
Naturalization Service isn't doing enough to keep agents, particularly
in San Diego where the cost of living is high. "Our Internet message
board is flooded with nothing but people talking about the Air
Marshals," he said.

The INS, which oversees the Border Patrol, recently began asking
agents why they are leaving, though administrators say they aren't
worried about the personnel drain. "For us, this is nothing new," INS
spokesman Russ Bergeron says. "Yes, we've lost some people, but we
haven't lost the number of people that would create a crisis for us."

The INS will receive additional federal funding to recruit and hire
more agents.

Other federal law-enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Customs
Service and the Coast Guard, are losing employees to the Air Marshal
program, even as they are scrambling to beef up their own ranks to
improve homeland security. With their pool of highly trained workers,
these agencies are practically job banks for the Air Marshal program.

At the U.S. Coast Guard, which lent several agents to the Air Marshal
program after the terrorist attacks, a half-dozen investigative-service
agents are considering joining the program permanently, and one
already has, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Rick Wester says. "The FAA
needs people quickly," he said of the Federal Aviation Administration,
which oversees hiring for the Air Marshal program. "Instead of taking
people they have to train, they can take people from our
investigative-services unit who have gone through the same kind of
training as Air Marshals and are used to handling weapons in confined
spaces on boats and airplanes. Our people also already have a lot of
the required background checks and clearances."

Once considered a marginal arm of federal law-enforcement agencies,
with a minuscule staff, the Air Marshal program has gained cachet
since the Sept. 11 hijackings. The combination of the extra funding
and a soft economy has propelled applications to be Air Marshals --
150,000 applicants so far and counting.

The sky-marshal jobs, however, are particularly well-suited for people
with law-enforcement experience, and that doesn't help the other
law-enforcement agencies trying to build their work forces. The other
agencies don't even know just how many workers the Air Marshal program
needs to ride on roughly 30,000 commercial flights a day. That
information is classified. "We have gone to them to ask 'Hey, look,
can you tell us how many of our people you are taking?' " says Sid
Waldstreicher, project manager for Immigration and Naturalization
Service hiring. "And they won't tell us."

The Air Marshal job pays between $35,100 and $80,800 a year, depending
on experience. Border agents' base pay is between $21,721 and $50,589,
and even with mandatory overtime that can boost the base by 25%, their
compensation is the lowest among federal law-enforcement agencies.
Legislation to increase border agents' pay passed the House in
December, but the Senate has yet to act.

Mr. Bergeron acknowledges that working conditions for border agents
are tough. Turnover is highest among new recruits, who are typically
assigned to the busy San Diego border to improve their Spanish skills
and gain experience interdicting illegal Mexican migrants. "The Air
Marshal and other federal law-enforcement jobs are not comparable to
the Border Patrol," Mr. Bergeron says. "The working conditions and job
demands are significantly different and greater. Once people get out
there on the border, in the middle of the desert, they may decide,
'This is not for me.' "

Job jumping is common in law enforcement, where local police
departments and the Border Patrol are widely treated as training camps
for jobs at the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Secret Service, among others.

"Some of the other agencies wait for our agents to finish the academy
and then sweep them up," Mr. Bergeron says.

With the federal government boosting the agencies' budgets to improve
homeland security, the competition for workers is expected to intensify.

Even before Sept. 11, the demand was strong for some law-enforcement
jobs. When the U.S. Customs Service put out its yearly job
announcement on the Internet in early September, the response was
overwhelming. "We expected to have it posted for 10 days to two weeks,
and we were looking to receive 2,000 to 2,500 applications," Customs
Service spokesman James Michie says. "Within 31/2 days of the posting,
we logged 5,500 applications, which, of course, puts us in a good position."

The newly created Transportation Security Administration, which
eventually will oversee the Air Marshal program, plans to hire 429
federal security directors to watch over baggage screening and other
airport security. It already has received 10,000 applications for
those executive-level positions. John Magaw, former chief of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was recently picked to head
the TSA, and two ATF employees are following him to the new agency, as
is the head of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and the
ATF's former acting chief counsel.

"The raiding has begun," one ATF official says.

The U.S. Capitol Police anticipated the competition in hiring. It
raised salaries across the board Oct. 7 and followed with a
cost-of-living increase, says Lt. Dan Nichols, a spokesman. "It's a
tool for us to attract qualified candidates in a very competitive
field and also retain the personnel we already have," he says. So far,
only a handful of Capitol Police officers have left, and few have
joined the Air Marshal program, Mr. Nichols said.

Around the country, mayors are concerned their police forces are prime
targets. "We own our airport, and we have 30 police officers in our
aviation department and 910 officers in our regular police
department," says Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, who discussed his
concerns at a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering.

He says one of his big worries is that the Air Marshals will snap up
Albuquerque police. "We have a number of officers who are champing at
the bit to see how this program plays out," Mr. Chavez says. "I don't
think I can pay them as much."