Pubdate: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Copyright: 2004 Sun-Sentinel Company Contact: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159 Author: Nicole Sterghos Brochu, Staff Writer FROM DRUGS TO DATABASES The counter-terrorism database is so efficient at analyzing billions of records, so comprehensive in finding links between people and events that some investigators believe it could prevent another attack like 9- 11. Although some intelligence experts are awed by the potential of the so-called Matrix network, others are uncomfortable with the man who built it. Hank Asher -- a Boca Raton multi-millionaire called a patriot by a former Watergate prosecutor, consulted and admired by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- once smuggled millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Asher avoided detection and was never charged with a crime during what he calls "the hazy period" of his life. The statute of limitations has long since elapsed on drug-running activities he admits spanned eight months in 1981 and 1982. Those reckless days, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, drove him to depression and drug and alcohol abuse. He didn't pay for his crimes in a jail cell, but a price was exacted by years of negative publicity and intense public suspicion. The climax came in August, when Asher walked away from the Matrix so it could proceed unencumbered by its designer's infamy. Asher, now 52, made peace with himself. "I go to sleep every night knowing that I've done much more good than harm," he said. Indeed, Asher's notoriety has done little to deflate his clout among some influential crime-fighters. Giuliani, now an international crime consultant, uses Asher in the hunt for terrorists. Brian Stafford, the former head of the U.S. Secret Service, is one of a handful of top law enforcement officers who work for Asher's database company. John Walsh, host of the TV show America's Most Wanted, sings Asher's praises. To understand the contradiction of the public pariah with quiet influence is to understand his road to redemption. It is a path lined with powerful innovations and financial benevolence that have aided the hunt for criminals and the safe return of missing children. "I have a great admiration for what he's doing, both in finding missing children and in coming up with creative solutions to terrorism, as well as owning up to his mistakes," Giuliani said. "People do a lot of things in life. It's a question of what you can do to make up for it, and Hank has done a lot." Why He Smuggled In his first interview on the drug allegations, Asher said he got into smuggling for the adrenaline rush. "It seemed like an adventure," he said, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights between bites of nicotine gum at his mansion next to the Royal Palm Polo fields. "I had no idea of the hideousness of drugs." He got mixed up in the business after "retiring" at age 30 to the Bahamas. Asher moved there after selling the paint contracting business he started at 18 and built into what a 1975 Sun-Sentinel article described as "apparently unmatched anywhere" in the South Florida high-rise market. In Great Harbour Cay, Asher said, he attracted attention with his plane and his speedboat. Drugs were rampant, he said, and so were offers for easy money flying the contraband into the United States. Asher said he resisted the offers -- until one came from a group of older men with expensive tastes who "ran in social circles that appealed to me." He said he agreed to do them a favor after, having recklessly spent his paint company proceeds, he borrowed money from them. An FDLE investigation details how far that favor went. The probe, launched in August and completed in September, was meant to resolve the longstanding rumors of Asher's past, particularly at a time when several states interested in the Matrix were threatening to pull out over the smuggling questions. The report concluded that Asher piloted up to seven planeloads of cocaine from Colombia into the United States in 1981 and 1982, the largest involving 700 kilos flown to an Okeechobee County ranch. It also detailed Asher's reported involvement in an alleged U.S.- sanctioned plot to assassinate Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in the mid-1980s -- a scheme that went nowhere. Asher now says he always thought the Nicaraguan plot was just a bunch of talk. And he describes his drug smuggling as seven inconsecutive days he will always regret. 'I Feel Remorse' "I feel great remorse for my contribution" to drugs, he said. "I think it caused a steady depression." Asher woke up to what he was involved in, he said, when he watched one of his cohorts shoot a cat in the head for sport and later learned the man had raped a woman. In the time since, he added, he has not been involved with illegal activity -- an assertion supported by his clean criminal record and the lack of evidence uncovered by the FDLE report, which calls Asher "a legitimate businessman." In the months after he quit smuggling, Asher began down his road to redemption, his supporters say, helping the U.S. government deter drug trafficking in the Caribbean. The effort, documented in the FDLE report, began when famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who also owned a home on Great Harbour Cay, approached Asher. Bailey told FDLE investigators that he and Asher had concocted a plan that had Asher misleading traffickers into believing their arrests were imminent and Bailey negotiating plea deals that took the smugglers out of the business. But it wasn't until 1993, with computer innovations credited with making criminal investigations faster and more efficient, that Asher became a respected ally to law enforcement. "Hank Asher has done more to facilitate intelligence and information- sharing for police in the country than anyone I've ever known," FDLE director James T. "Tim" Moore said at his 2003 retirement party. "He's a patriot, a true friend." Asher, a high school dropout who said he largely taught himself computers, started Data Base Technologies Inc. in Boca Raton in 1992. There, he devised AutoTrack, a database that coalesced billions of commercially and publicly available documents onto one network so they could be instantly accessed. Searches that had taken weeks and involved dozens of databases were condensed into a single query completed in seconds. The tool proved invaluable to police investigations. "Every investigation we have ever had since the early '90s has used his program," said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Office of Statewide Intelligence. "He transformed law enforcement, no question about it." Even then, rumors were swirling about Asher's drug smuggling. Federal, state and local agencies interested in AutoTrack researched Asher's background and came up with a 1987 Chicago Tribune story. The article, citing court records in a drug case, quoted Bailey as saying he was working with a pilot and former drug smuggler named Hank Asher to reduce trafficking in the Bahamas. "We looked into" the allegations, John Walsh said. "Clearly, everybody did." No one could find any signs Asher had been involved in anything untoward since, Walsh said. Still many public officials were bothered by the perception of associating with a former drug smuggler. "But the question was," Ramer said, "do we want to use this technology we'd never had before, or do we close our eyes and say we're not going to use it" because of old allegations? Most agencies went ahead with AutoTrack, but several officials and agencies distanced themselves from the entrepreneur with the ugly history. Though Moore gushed praise for Asher at his retirement party last summer, for example, in the FDLE report, Moore called Asher's smuggling activities "despicable" and denied reports that he and Asher were friends. And in 1999, amid more media reports of the smuggling stories, the FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency dropped their AutoTrack contracts. But Asher continued to impress a host of credible crime fighters. In addition to Giuliani's and Walsh's association with Asher, former FDLE special agent Bill Shrewsbury, former DEA Deputy Administrator James Milford and the Secret Service's Stafford left law enforcement to serve in high-level positions at Asher's database companies. Walsh was impressed by the genius of Asher's innovations, but also by his generosity. For 10 years, Asher has given Walsh's non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children free, unlimited access to his database systems. "He did it because he deeply cared," said the center's executive director, Ernie Allen. "I can tell you on a very personal level that people in American law enforcement have a great trust and confidence in Hank Asher." That confidence grew after the Sept. 11 attacks, when out of what Asher called sheer horror, he created the Matrix. The information-sharing database melds commercially and publicly available records with sensitive investigative data. Only law enforcement officers with security clearance are allowed to use it. Queries result in names, phone numbers, addresses and histories on possible terrorists, pedophiles and criminals, as well as photos and comprehensive backgrounds on a suspect's network of family and friends. The federal government has committed $12 million to make the Matrix available across the country. But in the 18 months before government money was available, Asher used $20 million of his own and gave the government free, unlimited access to the technology. "What was done at Hank's insistence after 9-11 is as patriotic as anything I've seen in my life," said Miami attorney Jon Sale, a former federal Watergate prosecutor. "Without being melodramatic, I have no doubt that in some ways his system has something to do with the fact that there hasn't been another terrorist attack." But once again, Asher's past intruded. As 13 states stood poised to join the Matrix last summer, the smuggling stories resurfaced, prompting several agencies to reconsider. Rather than stay and jeopardize the project, Asher quit the board of his company, Seisint Inc., put his stock in a blind trust and announced he would have no decision-making ties to the Matrix. "I did it for the good of the country," Asher said. Others may argue that he did it for the money. If Matrix is successful, Seisint -- and as a major stockholder, Asher -- stands to make millions. Giuliani, among others, thinks Asher's motivation is altruistic. "Maybe it's the guilt he feels for what he did when he was young, but he's deeply dedicated to trying to help people," the former mayor said. "He's a man of extreme talent, and he's used that talent for good." These days, Asher is using his talents to help just one person, his sister, Sari Zalcberg, who has bone marrow cancer. Asher has assembled a team of scientists and doctors in a quest for a cure, infusing the effort with $5 million in cash. If nothing else, Zalcberg said, her big brother's knack for doing the impossible gives her faith. "Hank has put hope in big, bold capital letters for me," she said. "He makes things happen." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake