Hank Asher is the most important man you've never heard of. He's a Florida man who moved to the Sunshine State in the '70s. His life would intersect with the drug trade, the 2000 presidential election and 9/11, largely because of his work in the field of data mining. McKenzie Funk's wrote the 2023 book "The Hank Show: How a House-Painting, Drug-Running, DEA Informant Built the Machine that Rules Our Lives."
Photo: flickrbox22/Wikipedia.
Craig Pittman is the award-winning author of Oh, Florida!: How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, The Scent of Scandal, Cat Tale, Manatee Insanity and The State You’re In, and co-author of Paving Paradise. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him “the most destructive force on campus.” Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature.
