LITTLE ROCK—Asa Hutchinson, a former federal Homeland Security undersecretary, has been named to a three-person panel by Blackwater Worldwide to ensure the private security firm follows U.S. export laws.

Blackwater, based in Raleigh, N.C., is the target of a federal probe into whether the company smuggled weapons into Iraq. The company has strongly denied the allegations.

Export control laws limit how companies and individuals handle sensitive resources, including weapons and information. Hutchinson said his legal services on the committee will be provided through his partnership in the Asa Hutchinson Law Group.

Blackwater last week announced the creation of the compliance committee. The other members are: Robert C. Bonner, former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and a former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and Carol R. Marshall, a former Lockheed Martin Corp. ethics executive.

Hutchinson is a former director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, former congressman for northwest Arkansas, and former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.

He was a special prosecutor in the impeachment trial of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, when Clinton was president. A Republican, Hutchinson lost to Democrat Mike Beebe in the gubernatorial election in 2006.

Earlier this year, two former Blackwater employees were sentenced on gun-running charges after the company said they stole from Blackwater’s armory. And in June, federal agents seized 22 automatic rifles from a company vault.

A federal grand jury also has been investigating the fatal shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians who were killed in September 2007 when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square.