Terror futures market plan scrapped.

By - Reuters.

31 July 2003
The Hindu

WASHINGTON The Pentagon scrapped a planned online futures market that aimed 
to get information on West Asian events by letting investors bet on the 
probability of wars, terrorist attacks and assassinations.

One day after Democrats in Congress brought the Pentagon's Policy Analysis 
Market to light with withering criticism, a Defence Department spokesman 
said the programme had been terminated.

"The Director has determined that this is a programme that under further 
scrutiny probably doesn't deserve continued support," a spokesman told 
reporters yesterday.

Earlier, the Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, told Senators that 
while the Defence Department was supposed to be imaginative, "it sounds like 
maybe they got too imaginative".

U.S. Senators released a letter saying the programme's funding would be 
eliminated and Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican who chairs the 
powerful Armed Services Committee, called the plan "a very significant 
mistake".

The Policy Analysis Market, launched online at 
http://www.policyanalysismarket.org by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced 
Research Projects Agency, aimed to let anonymous traders wager money on when 
and whether such events as the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy might 
take place.

The market planned to focus at first on economic, civil and military futures 
of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, and 
the impact of the U.S. involvement with these countries, according to the 
Web site.