Associated Press:

Efforts to train thousands of federal agents to protect commercial flights during heightened terror alerts were quietly abandoned more than a year ago because Congress objected to the cost, government investigators said Tuesday.

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported that the federal air marshal service suspended its efforts to develop such a “surge capacity” by training customs and immigration agents to protect passenger airliners.

The Homeland Security Department “indicated that it would continue to support the surge effort but had not determined whether and when it would resume cross-training to resume this initiative,” the report said…

By October 2004, Homeland Security had cross-trained some immigration and customs agents, but stopped because of congressional concerns that it was “an ineffective use of resources,” the report said.

The number of immigration and customs agents who were trained wasn’t disclosed for security reasons. The assistant secretary for the agency, though, testified in March that 800 agents would be trained by October, the report said. Some of those agents were assigned to augment air marshals on flights during heightened threat alerts.

The air marshals moved back to the Transportation Security Administration in October.