The kill-me-first dress code is dead. It’s good news for air marshals who exposed this reckless bureaucratic idiocy last December. Via the Washington Post:

The dress code for federal air marshals has been modified, apparently relegating a fashion spat to the back of the Homeland Security closet.

The issue of what the marshals wear when flying on jetliners put a wrinkle in the public relations image of the Department of Homeland Security last year.

The 24,000-member Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association protested that the dress code could blow the cover of air marshals, making it easier for terrorists to identify them. Department officials said the concerns were overblown.

Accounts vary on what the air marshals were ordered to wear, but the department apparently wanted them to project a professional image, and some agents believed they were being forced into suit coats, ties and dress shoes. Officials said the policy did not require coats and ties.

Regardless, the association contended that the department’s dress code made it difficult for the marshals, known as FAMs, to look like regular travelers, who increasingly board jets in jeans, loose-fitting shirts and tennis shoes.

“This new adaptation to our present policy just fine-tunes it a little more on what clothing air marshals can wear to blend in,” Brian Doyle , a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said yesterday.

“The dress code policy has not been eliminated but broadens the scope of what the FAMs can wear,” he said.

Uh-huh.

You’ll recall that when rank-and-file whistleblowers at the Federal Air Marshals Service first went public with the story, management denied that the code even existed and smeared the employees and journalists who dared to discuss the story.

The FAMS brass has nothing to say about that now.

Meanwhile, some changes in airline security have been announced. The ACLU is already wheedling. Natch.

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Previous:

Shakeup at DHS, Pt. II
Special report: Shakeup at DHS
TSA: Blame the machines
The air marshal and the ACLU
Still flying blind
Aviation security gaps
The air marshals’ mess: code red
Another fine air marshals’ mess
Update on the air marshals
Another air marshal outrage
Dressed for failure
Air rage, Pt. II
Air rage
The “kill-me-first dress code”

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