NEW DEA CHIEF SHARES HIS GOALS, REFLECTS ON PAST

The new director of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration says he's
never tried illegal drugs. But "when I was in high school, I did make beer
runs to Oklahoma, and that was illegal."

He was a student at Springdale High School in those days, says Asa
Hutchinson, a Republican who recently resigned as 3rd District congressman
to take the DEA post for President Bush.

On those beer runs, did he only deliver, or did he also consume? "Statute
of limitations," he laughed, holding up his hands defensively and declining
to answer.

For his disinclination to do drugs, he credits his parents. He said they
"probably bent me so far this way that, despite [the fact] that I had
enormous lapses in high school, I didn't bend far enough back."

After high school, he went to college at highly conservative Bob Jones
University. "I was in an environment that had me going down the right
path," and that probably helped keep him off drugs, too, Hutchinson said.

He talked about this and many other things in a wide-ranging interview Friday.

'NOBLE' AGENCY

Calling the mission of the DEA a "noble crusade," Hutchinson sketched his
plans and said, "What America does not need would be sloganeering and easy
fixes to this. I'm really convinced that what America needs is an honest
discussion [of drug issues and consequences]. Anybody that has easy answers
is not being honest with the American people."

He still alludes to the "war" on drugs because "many of these agents and
law enforcement officers are putting their lives on the line."

He brought up the movie Traffic and said "DEA agents love it because it's
an honest portrayal to the American public as to the dangers, and perhaps a
little bit of their own frustration, a little bit on the cynical side,
perhaps, but I think it has been a great boon ... because it opened a
debate in America.

"I had a journalist come to me, and he said that he and his son went to
that movie, and after they went to it was the first time they had a real,
open, heartfelt discussion on the issue of drugs. And if that movie can
generate that discussion between parents and teens, that's great."

His DEA leadership won't mean a lot more personnel will be working in
Arkansas, although he may squeeze a few more out of its $1.5 billion budget.

At present, he's working on the fiscal 2003 budget.

"You can't spend your way out of this," Hutchinson said. "You've got to use
the money smartly. I'm not advocating doubling the budget of DEA by any
means." But he has aims: * Put more agents in Mexico. * Do more work with
the DEA's Colombian counterparts to arrest people. * Increase the DEA's
drug-enforcement activities. * Develop and apply "drug-reduction
initiatives," plans to not only get drug dealers off the streets of
communities that seek help but also get the communities committed to
educating students to the dangers of drugs, encourage drug testing in the
workplace, encourage the development of drug courts for nonviolent
offenders to obtain help apart from imprisonment and the like.

The last item reflects his belief that law enforcement and drug treatment
must be allies, not adversaries, in dealing with the nation's drug problems.

DEA'S PRESENCE IN ARKANSAS

The DEA now has 12 employees in Little Rock, four in Fayetteville and two
in Fort Smith.

"From those numbers you can see that we're a strong back-up team for local
law enforcement and we're dependent upon state police, the sheriffs and the
chiefs of police to get the job done out there. But we are an extraordinary
resource for them. We're the only agency that's got the investigative
capability to tie Texas or Colorado or multistate investigations together.
We can bring some sophisticated investigative techniques that they don't
have available to them."

He met with the new state police director, Don Melton, "and I think they
would candidly acknowledge that they have not kept up with the times in
reference to our drug problems. And I say that gently, but that's the
reality of it.

"In the '80s, when I was U.S. attorney [at Fort Smith], the state police
was the lead agency and really did such a great job in terms of our drug
enforcement efforts, and it has not kept up in terms of resource
commitment. I hope that he can re-infuse that agency with it because that
would help us to get the job done."

As a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, Hutchinson has been remembered in some
quarters as the prosecutor who put Bill Clinton's brother, Roger, in
federal prison on a cocaine charge.

"I like the president's characterization of it a little bit better,"
Hutchinson said. "He said this prosecution saved his brother's life. The
president has conveyed that to me a couple of times, and that's the way I
like to look at it."

Roger Clinton was snared in a state-federal task force for drug activities
in Garland County, which fell under Hutchinson's U.S. attorney jurisdiction.

"They brought it to my office because they knew I would handle it."

THE SPECTER OF MENA

Part of his history as U.S. attorney can be summed up in one word: Mena.

That term has been used as the label for a spate of drug and
money-laundering activities that involved airplane loads of drugs and
perhaps other contraband, such as military weapons, flown in and out of an
airport in Mena.

Some have suggested that Hutchinson covered up whatever was doing on, an
allegation he finds wearying in its persistence.

"I knew there was a problem there," he said.

He said he started a federal grand jury investigation of what appeared at
the time to be money-laundering. That was August 1985, he said, and in
November, he resigned as U.S. attorney to pursue other interests.

"My successor picked it up and made all of the prosecutorial decisions on
that," Hutchinson said. "Ultimately, no prosecution resulted, [and] people
are frustrated by that. That was a decision of my successor. There were
allegations that people turned the other way.

"My response to that was, 'Well, if there are allegations like that, let's
have investigations of it, reviews of it.' So I asked congressional
committees, which were controlled by the Democrats at that time, to open up
the investigations, and I submitted to depositions before the congressional
committee on those."

He said it was "like 20 reviews" by congressional bodies. "They reached a
conclusion, by and large, and I'm simplifying, that there was no cover-up,"
he said. "Obviously there was Barry Seal," a known drug dealer who was
involved in the Mena operations, but the congressional bodies did "not
reach any conclusion that there was any wrongdoing by any official that
reviewed that.

"So, like I said, the legends go on. It is one of those things in life that
just sort of grow. All I can say is those are pretty much the facts of it."

RISING TO THE OCCASION

Hutchinson said he didn't ask for the DEA job, "never even thought about
it, never crossed my mind."

"The White House called. And I said, 'You want me to leave Congress and be
head of the DEA? If you've got two or three people out there that you're
considering, I'm not interested...,'" Hutchinson recalled.

"They said, 'No, you're the only one that we have identified for this
position.' I then said, 'Well, if the president wants me, he can call me.'
And a few days later the president called me. And I think you ought to
respond to the president."

He said he doesn't know what he'll do when his turn as DEA chief is over.
He gave up a safe congressional seat to be the head of federal drug
enforcement. Would he try again for a seat in Congress? "I do not rule out
anything, but I would not anticipate that."

As a congressman, he was one of the U.S. House managers in the impeachment
proceeding in the U.S. Senate against President Clinton. They get along
"well, respectfully well," Hutchinson said. Then he repeated, "Respectfully
well."

Since the impeachment trial, in which Clinton was not found guilty, the two
men have seen each other three or four times.

"At first it was a little bit tense, but when you're both from Arkansas,
you always have things to talk about," Hutchinson said. "I don't know what
his innermost feelings are. My view is that I stood for my convictions, and
we'd disagreed before on a number of issues, but I'd always respected him
for his commitments and for his talents, and we go on."

Does he have any regrets about being one of the presenters of the
impeachment case?

"None whatsoever," Hutchinson said. "And I don't say that in the sense that
this was a vendetta. I say that because America needed help, and they
needed people with common sense and the right approach to this, a
professional approach to this, and that was my goal. I think I accomplished
that goal. I think I did something good for America, not because we made it
to the Senate, not because we got out of committee, but because I hopefully
conducted myself in a way that gave people confidence in what we were doing
and the process and the integrity of it."

He has relatives still deeply involved in Arkansas politics: His brother,
U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., seeks re-election next year, and his
nephew, former state Rep. Jim Hendren of Sulphur Springs, seeks the
Republican nomination to replace Asa in the U.S. House.

Tim divorced his wife, Donna, and more than a year later married a former
member of his staff, Randi Fredholm. Jim recently acknowledged having had
an affair in 1999, which he said is over.

What does Asa think about those things? Nothing he wanted to share, except,
"I love my brother, and I love my nephew, and I have great respect for them."

This article was published on Sunday, September 2, 2001