Hank Asher is the Seisint guy.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004833.php
...The two met when Asher demonstrated his Matrix database software for Giuliani in 2002. The ex-mayor has said that he immediately became an enthusiast: “this was a technology that would have been very helpful to us even when I was the mayor and putting together programs for reducing crime to help us find serial killers, abductors of children, and of course terrorists.” Something else might have explained his enthusiasm: Asher and Giuliani inked a deal in December 2002 for Giuliani Partners to represent Asher’s company, Seisint.
The deal, first reported by The Washington Post this spring, was remarkably sweet: $2 million per year, a commission on sales of Seisint products, and 800,000 warrants to buy company stock. How much that added up to is unclear. The Post reported that Giuliani Partners got “most” of the promised compensation and that the stock warrants proved most valuable, since Seisint was sold to LexisNexis in 2004 for $775 million.
In return for all that, Asher got . . . well, it’s not clear. In fact, the Post reported, a Seisint shareholder sued the company in 2004 over the contract, arguing that it was a “waste of corporation assets” to enter into a contract for which the company received “no benefit.” The lawsuit was later settled.
There was at least a rationale for the deal.
Federal, state, and local agencies were interested in his product, particularly after the 9/11 attacks. But there was the problem of Asher’s drug-running past potentially coming back to bite him. So apparently Giuliani’s job was to help Asher land the biggest of those fish: contracts with the federal government. As the shareholder put it in his suit, Giuliani was hired to use his “influence with the federal government to enable Mr. Asher to take an active role in Seisint as a chief executive officer despite the allegations about his drug dealing.” (For the record, Asher smuggled drugs on his plane and didn’t deal drugs directly.) The Bush administration eventually made $12 million in grants for the software program.
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