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U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database

...The Matrix project began soon after the 2001 attacks. Seisint founder Hank Asher, a wealthy data entrepreneur, called Florida police and claimed he could pinpoint the hijackers and others who might pose a risk of terrorist activity. "Asher says, 'I'll develop this for free,' " Ramer said.

Working without a contract or pay, Asher set about creating the system in Florida, Ramer said. "We showed it to the other states, and the other states went nuts." They came up with an idea of a search engine called "Who" that would be at the core of the "concept as a national intelligence project," he said.

Ramer added that he's never seen so powerful a system in his many years in law enforcement. To replicate it "we'd have to go to 10,000 systems," he said. "It would just take you forever."

In 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI suspended information service contracts with an earlier Asher-run company because of concerns about his past, according to law enforcement sources. The Chicago Tribune reported in 1987 that court documents in a federal drug case said defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who identified Asher as a pilot and onetime smuggler, offered him as an informant.

Jennie Khoen, a spokeswoman for the Florida department, said yesterday that the agency knew about Asher's "history with drug smuggling," including his work as an informant. Moore said his department "knew about Mr. Asher's past."

"We were aware of his informant activity," Moore said. "But we were also aware he had never been arrested or charged."...