"What sort of security is sensible depends, in part, on the types of attackers you're defending against ... by taking rational steps to predict your most likely attackers you'll be less likely to waste time and money on unnecessary or inappropriate security."

Bruce Schneier
Security Expert, Cryptologist and Author


John Marcello is an airport and cargo operations security specialist residing in Manhattan Beach, California, with a distinguished 27-year career in aviation law enforcement in the Los Angeles area. He is experienced in security planning and in the definition and coordination of the efforts, both general and threat-specific, required from all participants in airport security in support of an airport's master security plan (airport, city, county and state police, airport managers, air carrier managers, FAA/TSA, FBI, USSS, DOJ/INS and the U.S. Customs Service). 

John is a results-oriented manager and is adept at coordinating airport inter-agency tasks and operations. He can effectively assemble airport data from a wide variety of sources (including DOT/TSA/FAA requirements) and distill it into a complete and coherent picture, from which realistic risk and threat assessments can be made. These assessments form the basis of sound airport security planning that takes into account airport operations, facility design and security technology. 

Sky Marshal

John began his aviation security career as a "Sky Marshal" for the U.S. Customs Service (1971- 1972), where he worked in an undercover capacity aboard 747 aircraft as a "team leader" for the purpose of preventing hijackings.

U.S. Customs Special Agent

John was recruited from his position as an Air Security Officer (1973) to the U.S. Customs Office of Investigation, where he became a Special Agent in enforcement activities including cargo security and narcotics interdiction. John finished #1 in his Treasury Enforcement Special Agents class, which consisted of U.S. Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and U.S. Customs special agents. 

DEA Special Agent and Supervisory Special Agent

John was a U.S. Customs Special Agent and then a Supervisory Special Agent with DEA, who worked all phases of narcotics investigations with over 17 years in an airport enforcement environment. He developed profiles, utilized them successfully, and trained hundreds of others throughout the United States in the art of successful profile use. 

As the DEA Supervisor in Los Angeles, the largest and longest running Airport Task Force, John coordinated enforcement strategies with the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. 

While working at LAX John helped develop case law permitting police to "profile" suspected couriers, a technique he learned while serving as a "sky marshal" on board U.S. Flag, 747's in the Nixon Administration's "anti-hijacking" program. 

John met regularly with all Airport entities to coordinate and be part of the security plan at LAX. These meetings were with LAX Airport Managers, Airline Company Managers, the FBI, Airport Police, LAPD, USSS, FAA, and the U.S. Customs Service. 

Awards

John retired from the DEA in December 1998 as Group Supervisor of the Los Angeles Field Division's Electronic Intercept Group after serving 27 years in Los Angeles. He is a recipient of numerous DEA Awards including the prestigious DEA Administrator's Award for his work in significant Airport and Marine cases. In 1988 he co-founded the International Narcotics Interdiction Association (INIA), an eleven hundred-member group of narcotics officers who work transportation cases. 

Airport Security Accomplishments

Development of Successful and Now-Standard Profiling Techniques

While a DEA Special Agent, based on his knowledge and expertise John developed highly effective profiles of traffickers and could approach them with no prior intelligence or information to conduct a "domestic stop" without probable cause as it had been previously strictly defined. 

John's DEA and Justice Department attorney's forbade stops without probable cause as strictly defined. Due to the effectiveness of John's profiling technique, he was able to turn to the then local District Attorney in the Santa Monica branch of the Los Angeles DA's office, Stephen Trout, a current 9th Circuit Court of Appeal's Judge. 

DA Trout and his staff helped John and a handful of other investigators carve out new case law that permitted this novel approach to law enforcement. This work resulted in the identification and disruption of significant cocaine smuggling organizations. 

Using his profiling techniques and now supported by case law, John was able to personally arrest Gilberto Orejuela, the cousin of the head of the Cali Cocaine Cartel, Gilbert Rodriquez Orejuela, before U.S. Intelligence had even known there was a Cali Cartel. 

The techniques and procedures developed by John are now used in every major airport in America today. Before long the DEA adapted and expanded the John "walk and talk" airport approaches for use at bus and train facilities. It is now commonly used in "Operation Pipeline" stops on most Interstate Highways. 

Year in and year out, this single technique exceeds all others in the seizure of drugs and money. 

Cargo Scam at LAX Defeated

Working at LAX in 1979 John identified a "cargo switch" scam then in operation at the airport. Boxes of hashish and marijuana would be shipped to Los Angeles from a foreign destination and identical boxes filled with non-contraband would be shipped from a domestic location. The adhesive shipping labels would be switched making the foreign shipment of drugs a domestic shipment thereby allowing it to be removed from the warehouse without Customs inspection. Corrupt airline cargo handlers would make the switch for $500,000 per shipment. 

Major New Cartel Uncovered

In 1985 John and his Airport Crew suspected the development of a new association between the Medellin Cartel in Colombia and the Guadalajara Cartel in Mexico. A Honduran name Juan Matta Ballesteros was the person who brought these two powerful cartels together. 

Based upon surveillance at and near the LAX airport, John and agents executed a series of arrests that resulted in the location of a "stash apartment" in Van Nuys, and the seizure of 500 kilograms of cocaine, $2.4 million in cash, and a critical cartel ledger. The ledger showed that 5,000 kilograms of cocaine had sold for $100,000 million and had passed through this location in a 6-month period. When "Intelligence" broke the coded ledgers it was revealed that Matta Ballesteros controlled these shipments for the Medellin Cartel and that it was smuggled via Mexico by the Guadalajara Cartel. 

Reach John on email at .