CNN's Drew Griffin has been taking the TSA to task. In a report last month, CNN revealed that air marshals are leaving the agency in droves and not being replaced. The result is that 1% of America's flights are protected. This morning, Griffin's follow up piece for CNN is more bad news for the secretive Federal Air Marshal Service. In "Ex-marshal: Air marshal training 'a national disgrace,'" CNN reports that TSA is fast-tracking screeners to become air marshals so as to fill the empty spots. 

Drew Griffen interviewed air marshals who said screeners with "no college, no law-enforcement no military background" are becoming air marshals. "It's an embarrassment. I know I wouldn't want them on my flight, I wouldn't want them as my partner," one air marshal said. Watch the CNN video here.

TSA now admits TSOs are indeed becoming screeners air marshals.

Ex-marshal: Air marshal training 'a national disgrace' Their mission is to protect airline passengers from acts of terror on U.S. flights. But in a special investigation, former and current air marshals told CNN that the number of marshals assigned to police flights is so low that the federal agency overseeing them has drastically lowered its firearms and psychological testing standards just so it can qualify new hires.

More than a dozen current and former marshals told CNN that so many federal air marshals have resigned and are not being replaced that airport screeners are being employed to fill the dwindling ranks.

But the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, says that's not true and the rate of those leaving has remained at 6.5 percent a year since 2001.

Sources tell me that air marshals and FFDO pilots are meeting behind closed-door with lawmakers today on Capitol Hill. It's time for full-fledged hearings on TSA and the Federal Air Marshal Service, they say. 

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