Hank Asher — high school dropout, cyber pioneer, friend to law enforcers, enemy to child predators, nemesis of privacy advocates, ex-cocaine smuggler — is back in the business of finding almost everything that’s known about anyone in the U.S.
Law enforcement applauds Asher for his help in catching child-predators. Defenders of privacy may regard the latest version of his system to search databases and collate the results as a menace, as they did his anti-terror Matrix system developed during the Bush administration.
He said that in 1982 he was living in an area in the Bahamas where American “rascals” who weren’t otherwise criminals were flying and boating cocaine into the U.S. for Colombians, making more money in a night than they would otherwise in a year. Asher said he had refused such offers countless times until “I met these older guys who were very socially acceptable.” Asher said he wanted to “socially get in with this group” and didn’t believe cocaine was dangerous, as he does now.
Smuggling Scare
The Colombians began to scare him, he said. After seven weeks as a cocaine pilot and with the help of a neighbor in the Bahamas, famed lawyer F. Lee Bailey, Asher presented himself to U.S. drug agents, who knew nothing about his activities, he said. Asher said he persuaded U.S. pilots to get out of the business. He was never charged and said he regrets smuggling drugs.
