Learn What Really Went On With Your Air Travel Safety

Interview with Robert MacLean, Federal Air Marshal Whistleblower

by Lindsay Bigda on September 15, 2010 ( The Whistleblogger / 2010 )

© Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2010, reprinted with permission. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Robert MacLean served as a Federal Air Marshall (FAM) with the Transportation Security Administration. In 2003, MacLean revealed a cost-cutting plan, via text message, to cancel FAM coverage from long distance flights on the eve of a confirmed al-Qaeda suicidal hijacking plan. The plan never went into effect after Congress protested – based solely on his whistleblowing disclosure.

However, MacLean was fired three years later, when the Transportation Security Administration retroactively labeled the information he reported with a “hybrid-secrecy” label – “sensitive security information.” MacLean fought back against the retaliation, but several years later he still awaits a decision on his appeal before the full Merit Systems Protection Board, which now has new members appointed by President Obama.


GAP: How did people try to stop you from divulging the information you had, and what barriers did you face going forward?


MacLean: At the time, even with my eight years of federal law enforcement experience, I had no clue what the U.S. Office of Special Counsel was. And if you asked me what that office was, I probably would have told you that was a special agency in the DOJ that prosecuted people for political corruption. So I had no idea that it was a place that whistleblowers could go outside of their agencies to make disclosures. I pretty much thought you could only go up your chain of command, eventually to the Inspector General (IG). Even making disclosures to Congress for me was illegal, because it’s going outside the executive branch.

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