Robert Sterling, Paul Krassner, Greg Palast, Lydia Lunch, Sam Smith, Robbie 
Conal, Brian Paisley, Greg Palast, Lydia Lunch, Sam Smith, Robbie Conal, and 
Matt Taibbi,  

50 Reasons Not to Vote for Bush
Feral House (May 1, 2004) 
Pages 175,176:

44  Bet on Terrorism for Fun and Profit!

Granted Total Information Awareness would be hard project to out-creep.  
Still another proposed DARPA plan comes close enough to deserve honorable 
mention.  

In July 2003, the Pentagon revealed another brilliant idea from the geniuses 
at DARPA, this time an online futures-trading market in which anonymous 
speculators could bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations, 
coups, and other political calamities.  The DOD rationalized, "Research 
indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective, and timely 
aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information.  Futures markets have 
proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as election results; 
they are often better than expert opinions."  

Others weren't so thrilled.  Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota asked, 
"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people 
could go in - and is sponsored by the government itself - people could go in 
and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?"  Furthermore, 
the morbid aspect of profit from tragedy disturbed many observers.  As the 
Pentagon's own website boasted, "Involvement in this group prediction 
process should prove engaging and may prove profitable."  Even worse, it 
seemed likely that terrorists themselves could participate in the scheme, 
because the traders' identities would be unknown.  (Apparently, the Bush 
Team is more concerned with what the average American rents from Blockbuster 
than what wealthy insiders know about potential terrorist activity.)  In 
conclusion, a letter by Dorgan and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon stated, "The 
American people want the federal government to use its resources enhancing 
our security, not gambling on it."  

In the fact of the swift and widespread criticism, Paul Wolfowitz would soon 
annoucnce that the project would be terminated.  AS Wolfowitz would explain 
with understatement, "It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative in this 
area."

The head of the program, incidentally, was John Poindexter again.  After 
leading the two greatest flubs in DARPA's history in less than a year, 
Poindexter resigned from his post at the Pentagon, to which he was appointed 
by George W. Bush.