WASHINGTON - Travelers checking into budget hotels near major airports might be surprised to find themselves standing next to undercover federal air marshals. They'll be the guests asking for "the air marshal's discount."

Rooms are very austere and can be quiet noisy

So much for working undercover.

Under a new policy, when air marshals travel away from their home bases - as they do continually - they will have to stay at a short list of selected hotels. They will also be required to identify themselves as air marshals to receive a special rate their agency has negotiated with the innkeepers - below the regular government discount they now get.

That, as many air marshals see it, is the latest bureaucratic blow to their effort to maintain security and keep potential terrorists from identifying them.

The hotel policy "has caused great anxiety . . . as (marshals) worry about the various security risks involved in having a set, observable and discernible pattern of activity regarding their hotel accommodations," a lawyer for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association wrote the Homeland Security Department earlier this month.

The dispute is the latest turn in an increasingly rancorous relationship between the marshals and their federal bosses. The marshals already were upset by rigid dress codes and grooming rules they say make them so conspicuous among today's

Recurrency Training can Disturb other Hotel Patrons

"dress down" air travelers that passengers sometimes point them out publicly.

The labor-management feud is surprising because, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the air marshals received an enhanced role as front-line warriors in the battle against terrorism. More recently, however, officials at the Department of Homeland Security appear to see them as ordinary federal employees - subjected to rules and procedures handed down from above, sometimes with little apparent regard for the potential effect on their mission.

The issue of identifying themselves to hotel clerks, and being required to stay together in a small number of hotels may not seem like a big deal, but in the present climate of heightened concern about terrorist attacks - along with recent revelations about the extent of al-Qaida's surveillance operations in the United States - marshals say the problem is significant and unnecessary.

"If terrorists . . . were to ascertain that a predetermined list of hotels was being used . . . these sites would be high value targets in and of themselves," attorney Mark L. Cohen wrote in the Aug. 5 letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The association is a professional group representing investigators and officers from some 50 federal agencies, including about 1,300 air marshals.

A spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service defended the new policy, saying its chief aim is rapid access to marshals in an emergency. Budgetary savings would only be "a byproduct," said David M. Adams.

"This policy is designed for the safety of our personnel, and so that during enhanced emergencies we can recall the

Hotels tend to be one-star and in seedy neighbourhoods

 marshals quickly while they are on mission deployment," Adams said.

But several marshals interviewed for this article said the agency already has the ability to muster its troops at a moment's notice. Marshals are required to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they said. And they usually stay in lodgings near the airport.

"They have more than enough ways to get hold of us," said a marshal based on the East Coast. "We all have government cell phones and we all have PDAs that do e-mail."

The marshal asked not to be identified, as did others who were interviewed, because they can be fired for talking to reporters without authorization.

Several air marshal field offices already require their agents to stay at the so-called "preferred hotels," and the policy is expected to become mandatory around the United States, officials said.

Marshals have been circulating e-mails from supervisors in Miami and Orlando, Fla., strongly implying that a push for cost savings was the central motivation for the changes.

The AirMarshall Dress Code has at last been sorted out

"Hotels are added based on the cost savings to the government," said the Orlando memo. "You can complain all you want, but it isn't going away."

"This has been done, in part, to try to realize a cost savings for the Service," said the Miami memo, which did not offer any other rationale.

Some worry that preferred hotels could become targets for surveillance - or worse, for an attack. By staking out a handful of hotels in major cities, a foe could conceivably track the comings and goings of hundreds of marshals.

Another vulnerability: a careless hotel employee might talk.

In the meantime, some marshals are edgy.

"It would be easy for people to say that I'm acting too much like a CIA type," said the East Coast marshal. "I'm ready to give up my life, but I'm not trying to be cannon fodder for al-Qaida. This is one step in that direction."

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