Listening outside ipfw / program interface to ipfw

[John Pettitt]

Hi,
    Two quick questions that I can't seem to find answers for using google.

1) is is possible to listen outside an ipfw firewall - that is have 
ethereal record the packets before ipfw starts dropping them? If so how?

2) Is there an api to ipfw that will let me manipulate rules, query 
stats etc?  I need something faster than running the command line binary?

Thanks

John