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."