Monthly Archives: September 2021

The war on drugs may profess to be waged against narcotics, but it overwhelmingly targets people a view increasingly shared by experts on drug use. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, touched on this recently when she wrote about addiction stigma in STAT, noting that "societal norms surrounding drug use and addiction continue to be informed by myths and misconceptions."

Starting in the 1980s, a rowdy group of individuals began advocating for a different approach to drug policy called harm reduction. These activists, researchers, social workers, attorneys, and others, from a myriad of different backgrounds, have focused on the harms of drug use not the drugs alone.

Maia Szalavitz's new book "Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction" is an in-depth history of a powerful idea, exploring many angles of drug policy, including prescription drug use, supervised consumption, and legalizing cannabis. Throughout, she also details the racial inequities and social justice tensions that have defined the drug war.

Szalavitz, a science journalist, unwraps the many layers of harm reduction, a philosophy that has also been adopted in approaching sex work, restorative justice, Covid-19, and other areas. When it comes to illicit substances, harm reduction runs the gamut from sterile syringe access programs to supervised drug injection rooms to distributing the opioid-overdose antidote naloxone.

Depending on who you ask, harm reduction has many different definitions, including "radical empathy" which requires "meeting people where they're at." Szalavitz offers multiple interpretations, but writes that, simply: "Harm reduction applies the core of the Hippocratic oath first, do no harm to addiction treatment and drug policy. This takes the focus off of psychoactive drug use itself."

Tracing the roots of the movement, Szalavitz introduces us to characters like the "Goddess of Harm Reduction" and the "Johnny Appleseed of Needles," whose lives are dedicated to spreading evidence-based practices of harm reduction. Some advocates were arrested, ostracized by friends and family, or lost their lives to overdose.

For years, the U.S. government rejected harm reduction services, even going so far as to ban federal funding for needle exchange programs. But now there are jobs, conferences, and nonprofit organizations committed to harm reduction. And in President Joe Biden's budget for the 2022 fiscal year, $30 million has been earmarked for services like syringe access, the first time Congress has appropriated funds specifically for harm reduction, according to The New York Times.

Szalavitz follows the evolution of the movement, beginning with her own story in New York in the 1980s. Addicted to opioids during the height of the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic, the young writer had no clue that sharing syringes could spread the deadly new virus that was already killing so many. Yet between 55 and 60 percent of people who use intravenous drugs at the time were positive with the virus.

Ideally, of course, people who inject drugs should never share syringes. Doing so can spread bloodborne pathogens like HIV and hepatitis C. But ideal situations don't always exist in the world of street narcotics. So some public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, began recommending a middle ground: If you must reuse a syringe, properly disinfect it using bleach and clean water, which by some estimations can greatly reduce the chances of contracting HIV (though certain sources say otherwise).

Before that knowledge became more widely known, a friend's girlfriend taught Szalavitz this trick to lower her risk of infection, setting her life on a completely different course. She credits this fortuitous acquaintance with saving her life.

Szalavitz became enraged that no one had given her this simple advice. Why had she not encountered a public health campaign blasting this information to all who needed to hear it? But back then, Szalavitz says, few in government seemed to care about people who use drugs. "It didn't seem fair or right to see anyone as being that worthless," Szalavitz writes. "I needed to know," she adds, "how to keep others from suffering the fate I'd only narrowly avoided."

Thus began a three-decade reporting career on harm reduction, drug policy, and crucially, science, that has spanned, as she likes to put it, "from High Times to The New York Times" (and includes Undark). In this book, she interviewed hundreds of people to catalog the first- and second-hand accounts of people who have helped bring harm reduction into the public consciousness.

The book takes us from Vancouver, Canada and San Francisco, California, to Liverpool, England. Throughout are gossipy details about regular people: their broken relationships and personal dramas, their allegiances and falling outs. This isn't the book's main focus, but is a reminder that every movement involves a decent share of infighting and argument, tiny tests that demonstrate the resiliency of an idea.

To make harm reduction work, its progenitors needed to rely on strong research. In 1987 several drug activists in Liverpool started The Mersey Drugs Journal, where they documented local efforts and helped put the term "harm reduction" on the map. Because their ideas reached beyond the borders of Merseyside County, the publication was renamed The International Journal of Drug Policy. Currently issued by Dutch publishing monolith Elsevier, the peer-reviewed journal has an impact factor of 5.0 (meaning it is often cited by other researchers) and is indexed in 11 international databases.

By "emphasizing conducting research on its efforts, harm reduction created an enormous intellectual obstacle for its opponents," Szalavitz writes. "After all, if studies show that a policy doesn't reduce harm, it can't be part of harm reduction. And how can you oppose a policy that works?"

Szalavitz has often been witness to harm reduction history, including an important 1991 court case that paved the way for legalizing syringe access in New York. It began in March of that year with the arrest of eight demonstrators from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, commonly known as ACT UP, a grassroots political group that fought to end the HIV/AIDS crisis through civil disobedience. They were about to hand out sterile syringes on a Lower East Side intersection when the police swarmed the crowd and handcuffed the activists, charging them with needle possession.

Reporting for local outlets, Szalavitz witnessed the arrests and much of the trial, with opposing sides offering evidence for and against syringe access. Testifying for the defense was the city's former health commissioner, Stephen Joseph, who had notably clashed with ACT UP on numerous occasions. But this time he agreed with them, describing their actions as "courageous," and drew a parallel to 19th-century British physician John Snow, who traced a cholera outbreak to a single London water pump, similar to how ACT UP activists traced HIV to unsterile injection needles and sought to eliminate the source of infection.

The defense also presented evidence that syringe access programs reduce the transmission of infectious disease and encourage people who use drugs to enter treatment. One witness "noted that the U.S. was nearly alone in the developed world in rejecting needle exchange," and pointed to supportive data from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Australia. As Szalavitz writes, there was "no scientific evidence that needle exchange caused harm all of the existing data showed the opposite."

Without refuting evidence, the prosecution lost their case and the door opened for needle exchange programs to be legalized in New York. Decades later, the data is even stronger for syringe access, a practice that has been championed by the CDC, the American Medical Association, and the World Health Organization.

Yet the fight for harm reduction is far from over. In mid-July, the Atlantic City Council voted to shut down New Jersey's largest needle exchange program, ignoring the objections of the city's health director and many other healthcare professionals. A similar scenario played out this year in Scott County, Indiana, which was the epicenter of a devastating HIV outbreak in 2015. Experts say a syringe program helped put a lid on the outbreak. Yet in June, Scott County commissioners voted to end the program.

And in July, President Biden tapped former West Virginia health commissioner Dr. Rahul Gupta to be director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But some have criticized Gupta's failure while commissioner to protect syringe access in West Virginia, which has consistently had the highest rate of overdose deaths in the U.S. in recent years, according to the CDC. The state severely restricted syringe exchange earlier this year, amid an HIV outbreak the CDC described as the "most concerning" in the country.

June 17, 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the War on Drugs, in which President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse "public enemy number one." Yet last year was by far the most deadly period in American history for drug overdoses. More than 92,000 people lost their lives, according to preliminary data from the CDC. This in spite of more than $1 trillion spent over four decades by the United States to enforce its drug policy.

The harm reduction movement offers a vastly different approach. It has also acknowledged, Szalavitz notes, that the drug war is historically documented to be deeply rooted in racism, not science, and has been disproportionately waged against people of color. "The essence of harm reduction," Szalavitz, writes, "is compassion and respect for the inherent dignity and value of human life."

"A philosophy and strategy developed by drug users and researchers for drug users, however improbably," she continues, has "gone global and proved to be a gift to public health."

* * *

Troy Farah is an independent journalist from Southwest California. His reporting on science, drug policy, and public health has appeared in Wired, The Guardian, Discover Magazine, Vice, and others. He co-hosts the drug policy podcast Narcotica. Follow him on Twitter @filth_filler.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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The rise of harm reduction in the war on drugs - Salon

Gian Cassinis Comala is one of at least two documentaries showing at major film festivals this yearanother being Karim Anouzs O marinheiro das montanhas, premiering in Cannesin which a filmmaker digs into the family history tying him to an absent father. Just like Anouz in his masterly film, Cassini is decidedly ambivalent about his father, having more than ample reason to be so: his father was a Mexican hitman, or sicario, who walked out on Cassini and his mother.

That word, sicario, crops up more than once in clippings examined by Cassini to describe his father, James El Jimmy Oleg Cassini Monarrez: seen here, the word is a needling throwback to the American action-thriller Sicario, whose perspective on Mexican drug wars was hardly a lesson in empathy. Comala takes a richer, more humane route, embedding its elliptical portrait of a wayward father in a sensitive understanding of the drug wars and patriarchal culture that shaped him. Although Cassini, as a director, is too gentle in his approach to force the point, his film adds up to a bitter broadside against a poisonous, and poisoned, type of masculinity.

The context in which Comala must be understood, is the Mexican chapter of the so-called War on Drugs as practiced by the United States: the U.S. is the worlds biggest consumer of cocaine, demand for which has ensured that Mexico, placed between the U.S. and Latin America, is the most common route for illegal drug imports into the country. Since 2006, American efforts have ramped up to tackle this situation, but violence within the industry, mostly between cartels vying for supremacy, has been rife for decades. This is the world that Comala looks at with a delicate, sorrowful eye.

Cassini shows the attraction of the gangster life, looking at several men in his family, from father to uncle to half-brother, whose taste for womanizing and violence led them to embrace that existence, before, in the case of his uncle and brother, dying before their time. The directors sympathies lie, clearly, with the betrayed wives, single mothers, abandoned daughters and scorned mistresses swept into these mens livesand it may be that his perspective as a gay man, referred to somewhat obliquely here, gives him the requisite distance from that world to critique it in full.

As the film begins, Cassini sets out to uncover the father whom he knew so patchilya man he barely saw throughout his childhood before reconnecting with him as a teenager and then again dropping out of touch. Placing himself in the frame as both filmmaker and subject, the director stumbles occasionally in scenes that enact documentary clichs, such as poring over old letters and photographs, or contemplating the seas steady churn during moments of reflection. Nevertheless, Cassini has an eye, and seizes a few startling images on the fly as he sets about his investigation, like a curbside stall of childrens toys featuring a clutter of gaudy pink toys (for girls), and just one black machine gun (for boys).

Cassinis deceptively probing style as an interlocutor, meanwhile, yields some moving testimonials from his mother and grandmother, and gives his male interviewees enough rope with which to hang themselves. One scene in particular, of an aged relative showing off his weaponry with barely concealed pride and bloodlust, feels quite acidic in its depiction of vain, pig-headed masculinity undimmed by years. At another point, Cassini captures an uncle talking with astonishing candor about his first murder, at the age of fourteen: this is the desperate, pain-ridden world that he has managed to escape.

One scene in particular, of an aged relative showing off his weaponry with barely concealed pride and bloodlust, feels quite acidic in its depiction of vain, pig-headed masculinity undimmed by years.

Comala has a story to tellone of abandonment and murderand in true modern documentary style it withholds a few twists and turns until the later stages, albeit without becoming manipulative. This is the story of Jimmys involvement with several women, and of Gians mother protecting him from his fathers world as best she could. The manner of Jimmys death, and Cassinis reasons for ceasing contact with him, are also alluded to, in ways that make narrative sense, while not feeling especially suspenseful. That want of a driving force can mean that the movie loses its pace and rhythm, dawdling a little over various letters and recollectionsand if Comala has a clear perspective, it still lacks a bit of power. A more forceful, stylized brand of filmmakingComala, with its naturalistic camerawork and palette, is rather polite in visual terms, with an unobtrusive scorecould doubtless have conjured something more piercing.

Still, Comala collects enough riches to make it a sobering experience, and many of its lines or asides may stay with the viewer for some time after watchingsuch as the observation from Cassinis uncle, Daker, that Mexicos drug lords put their children through college with their illegal gains, and with the building works required to build their showy homes, created more jobs than any federal schemes ever did. Another line, Your father was like me, he loved to fuck, will doubtless ring in this reviewers ears for some time. Ultimately, Comala returns us, as it should, to the mother, and her hopes for her son, which lie in understated counterpoint to the crimes and schemes of the men weve met. The films final dedication, to Cassinis young nephew, a man of the future whom we have glimpsed in tender embrace with his uncle, is hopeful and heartrending.

Originally posted here:

The Terror and Agony of Being a Mexican Hitman's Son - The Daily Beast

U.S. Army soldiers from the 101st Airborne division off load during a combat mission from a Chinook 47 helicopter March 5, 2002 in Eastern Afghanistan.

Keith D. McGrew | U.S. Army | Getty Images News

Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that took 2,977 lives and changed the world forever. It permanently altered the security landscape in the United States and elsewhere, forcing governments to completely overhaul their defense strategies, policies and counterterrorism tactics.

Twenty years on, events in the very country that harbored the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks Afghanistan have seen the War on Terror come eerily full circle.

The collapse of Afghanistan following the U.S. troop withdrawal, and its takeover by the Taliban the group that hosted al-Qaeda as it plotted its attacks on the West for many represents a symbolic and devastating failure.

In the last two decades of the war against terrorism, millions of lives have been lost and trillions of dollars spent. CNBC spoke to CIA, military and diplomatic veterans of the ongoing War on Terror, asking what they feel America has learned and failed to learn since Sept. 11, 2001.

Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst

"Honestly, I don't think we've learned that much; I think we're probably destined to be making some of those mistakes again. But hopefully we're done with giant occupations of other countries.

"I hope that we have gotten to the point now where we understand that we can't spread our democracy and rebuild other countries in our model, in a way that we were naive enough to think would work at that time."

Jay, former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran

"We've learned that 20 years of war has made us the best in the world at small unit tactics, but continuing to fight insurgencies is none of our business.

I think the consequence (of Afghanistan) is nobody's going to be rushing to intervene. Anywhere. Until the trauma of this has all disappeared.

William Patey

Former U.K. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq

"I think many Americans have learned not to trust their government. 'Leadership' lied to the American public for 20 years, while the actual situation on the ground in Afghanistan was no mystery to the people who served there. This has gone on for two decades as senior 'leadership' moves from the military or government into high-paying defense contractor jobs."

The One World Trade Center is reflected on a nearby building ahead of the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 10, 2021.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

"Here's the scary thing though: I don't think the general public has learned anything. They haven't been invested in the GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] on a large scale. If they had been, they would be demanding accountability for the entire thing, with the debacle in Kabul as the catalyst."

Jay requested his last name be withheld due to professional restrictions on speaking to the press.

Merging terrorism with religion was the biggest mistake I think that was made. We created enemies which were not there.

Sayed Jalal Karim

Former Afghan ambassador to Saudi Arabia

William Patey, former U.K. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq

"We certainly learned the limitations on the use of force in dealing with a problem such as global terrorism we've learned it's more complicated, and that liberal democracies are not very good at devoting the necessary time and resources to doing the work. They are impatient, and their political horizons are very short.

"What we've also learned since 9/11 is that the radical Islamist threat remains as potent as ever, it hasn't gone away. And importantly, we've learned that radical Islamist ideology is not Islam. It's different."

"We continue to have things like war on terrorism, war on drugs. These are wars that fail. These are ongoing societal and ideological questions that need complex, difficult policies that are not easily dealt with by something as simple as war."

Bruce Riedel, former CIA analyst and National Security Council member

"It's what we have not learned in 20 years that stands out. We can not effectively control the terror threat without addressing its root cause: the Palestinian conflict and the occupation.

Listen to our enemies, Usama bin Laden, and listen to our friends, King Abdallah II: they both say the same truth which is the Palestinian issue is the core of the conflict."

Sayed Jalal Karim, Afghan diplomat and former ambassador to Saudi Arabia

"I think the intention that the U.S. had was a good intention, because the 9/11 attack was a horror to all. I believe that the overall war against terrorism is a justified cause.

"But merging terrorism with religion was the biggest mistake I think that was made. We created enemies which were not there."

The rubble of the World Trade Center smoulders following a terrorist attack September 11, 2001 in New York.

Porter Gifford | Getty Images

Cole T. Lyle, former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran and former Senate military advisor

"In the past twenty years, we've re-learned that the U.S. military cannot be defeated at the tactical or, with rare exceptions, the operational level of warfare. But the United States can be defeated at the strategic one."

Fragile or failed states are hotbeds for terrorism, and I do think that we have created new hotbeds.

Tracy Walder

Former officer, CIA counterterrorism center

"Foreign and defense policymakers in DC need to start thinking longer-term about America's strategic interests globally instead of choosing what is in their best interests short-term. The American people need to demand that their elected representatives have a firm grasp on strategic end-states in any major conflict going forward."

Tracy Walder, former officer, CIA Counterterrorism Center

"9/11 forced us to deal with a war of ideas rather than war of people or conquering territory and land. I think we are safer in that we have a better understanding of that.

"However, we have created some instability in countries because of things that we have done there since September 11. Fragile or failed states are hotbeds for terrorism, and I do think that we have created new hotbeds as a result of that."

Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst

"I think we've ebbed and flowed as far as safety. The U.S. government has caught people planning attacks and stopped them before they're able to take action, since 9/11.

"I do think in some ways we are safer, I think in other ways our actions have created obviously a lot more chaos and harm and ISIS. I mean, let's be realistic, we would not have ISIS had we not invaded Iraq. We wouldn't have al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Sayed Jalal Karim, Afghan diplomat and former ambassador to Saudi Arabia

"I do not believe that we are more unsafe now, but we could have been in a much better position, if we had balanced the fight against terrorism from all different aspects education, economy, mentality, instead of only military and not merged terrorism with religion."

William Patey, former U.K. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq

"It manifestly has been safer for the United States where they have not had a serious terrorist attack in the mainland United States for 20 years. But Europe and the Middle East have seen more terrorist attacks ... The threat has now dispersed across the world.

Taliban take control of Hamid Karzai International Airport after the completion of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 31, 2021.

Wali Sabawoon | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

"We've got better intelligence defenses; it's much more difficult for terrorists to mount complex attacks of the sort that 9/11 was ... but this ideology is still able to produce homegrown people willing to do unspeakable things. And indeed, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will probably have encouraged these people.

"The nature of the threat has changed - it's less concentrated and more dispersed all over the world. The radical Islamist franchise is alive and well."

Ahmad Wardak, Afghanistan expert and former Kabul-based journalist

"I think the United States is much weaker than it was 20 years ago, primarily because of the two wars it fought unsuccessfully. And if we go to pre-9/11, the Middle East was relatively peaceful.

"If you look at failed states, as a result of the U.S. invasions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, so many of these failed states are prone to terrorist organizations. That is a fear for national security."

My heart hurts. It hurts for the people of Afghanistan who haven't known real peace in decades... it hurts for my country, whose national honor has suffered.

Cole T. Lyle

former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran

"I think the world is not in a better place than before 2001. Now the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East are in a much more vulnerable position with Iran being a regional hegemon in the absence of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan."

Tracy Walder, former officer of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center

"Those last two weeks of August, just speaking for myself, were incredibly difficult for me. I felt like everything I did didn't matter. Like all of the good that I was trying to do was just sort of erased.

"I feel very frustrated. I feel very much like we literally left people hanging there, to die. I don't place blame on Biden, Trump, Obama - I don't place blame on one person. The whole thing is frustrating. We failed to culturally understand Afghanistan.

William Patey, former U.K. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq

"I think the biggest one is frustration, combined with sadness, because it didn't have to be this way.I think for quite a smallish investment compared to what we put in before, we didn't have to suffer a total defeat.

A man mourns at the 9/11 Memorial on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 11, 2021.

Mike Segar | Reuters

"We built up an Afghan army that was totally dependent on day-to-day air support and logistics, then when we pulled the rug from under them and were a bit surprised when they collapsed. So the manner of our leaving was very frustrating."

Jay, former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran

"I truly hope more people inside and outside the government have been taking notes and are ready to overhaul the entire national security apparatus because our adversaries around the globe have definitely been paying attention."

Cole T. Lyle, former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran and former Senate military advisor

"The War in Afghanistan was the most morally justified war American has entered since World War II. But policymakers went in without thought for the end game, and now we're seeing the results.

"How do I feel about the war overall? My heart hurts. It hurts for the people of Afghanistan who haven't known real peace in decades and will now live under the evil rule of the Taliban again.

An artist paints a tribute to victims of the bomb blasts at the Hamid Kazrai International airport in Kabul, outside an art school in Mumbai, India, August 27, 2021.

Francis Mascarenhas | Reuters

"It hurts for the Gold Star families who lost everything. It hurts for my brothers and sisters in the U.S. and U.K. armed forces who lost their friends. It hurts for my country, whose national honor has suffered as we leave behind American citizens and the people who fought with us."

William Patey, former U.K. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq

"The limitations on overwhelming military power that Iraq and Afghanistan have shown will make countries in the West very reluctant to get involved.

"I think the consequence is nobody's going to be rushing to intervene. Anywhere. Until the trauma of this has all disappeared."

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We were naive: Ex-CIA, military and diplomatic veterans reflect on lessons learned, 20 years after 9/11 - CNBC

For Immediate Release 09.10.2021 Governor Hutchinsons Weekly Address | A Thousand Deep: Reflections of 9/11

Governor Hutchinson'sweeklyradioaddresscan be found in MP3 format and downloadedHERE.

LITTLE ROCKOn September 11, 2001, I had just taken charge as administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. For todays weekly address, we are offering a shortened version ofA ThousandDeep: Asa Hutchinson Remembers 9.11which is a video with my reflections about the day of the9/11 attacks and the valor of America'sresponse.

***

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was strapped into a National Guard plane that lifted off into an empty sky from the Albuquerque airport. The scene was the same around the nation. Within hours after a 33-year-old Egyptian terrorist crashed a Boeing 767 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the FAA had stopped all air travel over the United States.

At 7 that morning, I was preparing to leave my hotel in Albuquerque when I heard the first report that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Only a month earlier, on the nomination of President George W. Bush, I had taken the job as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. I had traveled to New Mexico for a public debate with Governor Gary Johnson about drug policy.

My staff and members of my security team understood quickly that we wouldnt be returning to Washington on a commercial flight. We went to the Albuquerque DEA office. We sent out word to all of the field divisions to work their informants for any hint of a further attack.

By the time we had secured a National Guard plane and pilot to take us to Washington, 29-year-old Arkansan Sara Low was already among the victims. Sara, a native of Batesville, was an attendant on Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. Malissa White-Higgins, born and raised in Bald Knob, Arkansas, worked in human resources for Marsh & McLennanon the 99thfloor of the North Tower. She died after the plane struck.

***

We evacuated the DEA offices in Washington, which were directly across the street from the Pentagon. Several DEA employees had seen American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., nearly an hour after the first crash.

Navy Operations Specialist Second Class Nehamon Lyons, the third Arkansan to die on 9/11, was killed in the assault on the Pentagon. He was born in Pine Bluff in March 1971. He was 30.

***

As our plane entered Washington airspace that evening, a fighter jet accompanied us to a military facility. At the smoke-filled DEA headquarters, I gathered with my executive staff. I had been on the job for a little over a month, and my job was changing dramatically. The DEA was pivoting from the war on drugs to the war on terrorism. Our agents across the country were watching for any tip about another attack.

I went home about midnight.

***

A week or so after the attack, Attorney General John Ashcroft called a meeting of the Justice Department in the Justice Department Command Center. Attorney General Ashcroft said: Ive just been told by the President of the United States, Dont let this happen again. Ive got to expect more from each of you. Youve got to expect more from all of your people. Youve got to work longer hours. Youve got to work harder. Weve got to do everything we can to make sure there is not another attack. Weve got to change from prosecution to prevention. If you are not willing to carry out that responsibility, say so now, and get up and walk out.

***

The terrorists and their sponsors hoped to destroy the United States. Although they killed nearly 3,000 people, our enemies learned that they had mistaken Americas kindness, generosity, and compassion for weakness. In the same way that many of our enemies before them have underestimated our strength, the attackers mistakenly believed that they could deliver a sharp blow, and America would falter.

The terrorists did, indeed, strike a grievous blow. But as the world knows, their mission failed. Utterly and completely.

***

The 9/11 attack brought out the best in Americans, from our next-door neighbors, first responders, elected officials, and law enforcement at all levels. Twenty years later, I am still amazed, but not surprised, at the dedication of DEA employees.

As the administration and the FAA talked about how to get our planes flying again, we knew we needed to enlarge our Air Marshal Program. I sent out a directive to DEA employees asking for volunteers to work as a sky marshal. We needed a hundred.

We got four hundred.

DEA employees lined up a thousand deep. Thats a powerful message and a forceful discouragement to our enemies. When America is called to stand against evil, we will line up on the front lines a thousand deep.

CONTACT:Press Shop (press@governor.arkansas.gov)

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Governor Hutchinson's Weekly Address | A Thousand Deep: Reflections of 9/11 - Governor Asa Hutchinson