By Andrew DeMillo | Editor-in-Chief
Good morning, Advocate readers! Today marks 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. An Arkansan who had a front row seat to the nation’s response to 9/11 is former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who served as a top Homeland Security official. We talk today with Hutchinson about his memories from that time. You can find more Arkansas government and politics news on the Advocate site here.
And be sure to catch reporter Tess Vrbin’s conversation with 5News about her coverage of the midterm campaigns.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, accompanied by his wife Susan, speaks to reporters and friends and supporters at the state Capitol on Nov. 10, 2023, after filing papers with the Secretary of State to run for president in Arkansas.(Photo by John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
By Ainsley Platt
Asa Hutchinson, a former two-term Republican governor, had a front-row seat to the changes the U.S. went through in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. He went from leading the country’s drug enforcement efforts to becoming one of the first top officials at the Department of Homeland Security.
From left: Arkansas TV Commission Chairman Gary Newton, Commissioner Cynthia Nance, and Arkansas TV Education Director Sajni Kumpuris listen as Arkansas TV Foundation interim CEO Pamela Owen updates the commission on the public television station’s donor base at its Conway headquarters on Sept. 10, 2026. (Photo by Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
By Tess Vrbin
Arkansas’ public television station hopes to regain lost donors and shore up new sources of financial support following the backlash over an attempt to cut ties with PBS, the interim CEO of the Arkansas TV Foundation said Thursday.
People look out at Manhattan and beyond at One World Observatory at One World Trade Center in New York City. Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance systems built in its aftermath continue to shape how Americans are watched and policed. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
COMMENTARY
By Stateline
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance infrastructure built and expanded in its aftermath has become part of a far larger digital ecosystem — producing tools that can collect and analyze information on a scale unimaginable in 2001.
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