Homeland Security key players: Asa Hutchinson--Undersecretary for Border and Transportation...

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Asa Hutchinson

As the Homeland Security Department takes shape, one of its first visible achievements may be to present one face to people and goods arriving at America's

borders. It is no secret that border protection has been fragmented because the responsible agencies-the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Transportation Security Administration, and many more-have belonged to different Cabinet agencies, used different computer systems, and sometimes competed with each other.

Asa Hutchinson told senators at his confirmation hearing that he wanted to establish a unified chain of command at the border. A week later, Secretary Tom Ridge announced a reorganization of many of the border agencies, effective on March 1 when they became part of the Homeland Security Department. They are organized into two bureaus, one focusing on inspections and the other on enforcement.

No one expects a seamless transition to a new, unified organization at the nation's borders, but it's likely that the agencies working under Hutchinson will be among the first in the department to pull together and become an integrated organization.

Hutchinson was the administrator ofthe Drug Enforcement Administration for 16 months before being nominated to the top border protection job. At his confirmation hearing, Hutchinson referred often to the parallels between the two jobs. He said the DEA job had taught him about the importance of gathering "human intelligence," and in his new job he planned to emphasize both collecting and sharing this kind of information.

A lawyer by profession, Hutchinson was in his third term as a congressman from Arkansas when President Bush chose him for the DEA job. In 1982, when President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. attorney for Western Arkansas, he became, at age 31, the youngest U.S. attorney in the country.