PENTAGON DE-LISTS ITS 'TERROR MARKET'

Niles Lathem

30 July 2003
New York Post
5

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon scrapped its bizarre plan to create a
"terror futures market" yesterday after critics denounced it as
"sick."

A sheepish Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz announced the
Pentagon's decision to abandon the program at a hearing of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee after lawmakers slammed the idea.

"I share your shock at this kind of program. My understanding is it's
going to be terminated," Wolfowitz told senators the day after his own
agency released a statement defending it.

Wolfowitz said the Pentagon's Defense Research Projects Agency - which
came up with the idea to set up a Web site in which traders could
place bets on whether PLO chief Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or
whether King Abdullah of Jordan would be overthrown - is "brilliantly
imaginative in places we want them to be imaginative."

"It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative," Wolfowitz added.

The uproar over what was called the "Policy Analysis Market" spread
into the confirmation hearing of Army chief of staff nominee Gen.
Peter Shoomaker.

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the committee, said he had
spoken by phone with DRPA head Tony Tether "and we mutually agreed
this thing should be stopped."

Earlier this week, the Pentagon defended the program, saying it was a
way of predicting possible future events and part of its ongoing
search for the "broadest set of new ways to prevent terrorist
attacks."