URL: http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20011019.html

   <h>Ask Yahoo! 
   <h>Friday October 19, 2001 
   <p>Dear Yahoo!:
   What exactly is a U.S. Marshal?
   Mack
   New Orleans, Louisiana 
   <p>Dear Mack:
   <p>The Web is teeming with information covering every governmental topic,
   issue, and agency. (As a matter of fact, we recently featured an
   incredibly useful government resource, FirstGov, in Yahoo! Picks of
   the Week.) To find the answer to your question, we searched on the
   term "U.S. Marshal" and quickly found the answer at the U.S.
   Department of Justice web site.

   <p>The United States Marshals Service section provided all the
   information we needed. The first thing we spotted was the U.S.
   Marshals Service mission statement:

     <p>The mission of the United States Marshals Service is to protect
     theFederal courts and ensure the effective operation of the
     judicial system.

   <p>That statement provided a good start, but we wanted to know more about
   a U.S. Marshal's day-to-day activities. Fortunately, all we had to do
   was continue reading.

   <p>The role of the U.S. Marshal is constantly changing depending on the
   state of the union. In the past, they were responsible for such duties
   as taking the census and protecting the president. In recent years,
   the U.S. Marshals have been responsible for "providing protection for
   the federal judiciary, transporting federal prisoners, protecting
   endangered federal witnesses and managing assets seized from criminal
   enterprises." We also learned that U.S. Marshals arrest more federal
   fugitives than all other federal agencies combined, makingaround 55
   percent of all federal arrests.

   <p>In the wake of the recent attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.,
   there has been a great deal of discussion about the implementation of
   a Federal Air Marshal program. We weren't sure whether the two
   programs were related, so we searched on the term "air marshal" and
   discovered that they are indeed different governmental programs.

   <p>The Federal Air Marshal program provides "an anti-hijacking capability
   for U.S. civil aviation" and is part of the Federal Aviation
   Administration. Visit the FAA's Career Opportunities section for
   information on becoming a Civil Aviation SecuritySpecialist, otherwise
   known as a Federal Air Marshal.

  