Governor Asa Hutchinson's Weekly Address

Thirty-seven years ago this week, I put on a bulletproof vest and entered a white-supremacist compound to try to convince the group they were outmanned and outgunned and should surrender.As I have reflected on that moment as well as the racial tension and civil unrest that have roiled our nation over the past two years, I have thought about the lessons we learn from our history.The people I confronted on April 21, 1985, were members of the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, known as the CSA, and one of their missions was to take down the United States government. Members of the CSA had sent out teams to assassinate several government officials, including me.On April 21, 1985, I was the United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, appointed three years earlier by President Ronald Reagan. For two years, my office had monitored the CSA in cooperation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Missouri, as well as the FBI and the ATF.As we developed our strategy to flush