ANY BETS ON POINDEXTER'S FUTURE?

EDITORIAL

30 July 2003
Roanoke Times & World News
A14

FROM THE beginning, retired Adm. John Poindexter - he of the five felony 
convictions arising from his role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, 
spared by the skin of his teeth when a U.S. Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 
in 1991 to set aside the convictions on a technicality - was a weird choice 
by the Bush administration to head the Pentagon's Terrorism Information 
Awareness Office.

Why he remains there is unfathomable.

Poindexter's earlier "Total Information Awareness" proposal to use computer 
technology to delve into the personal finances of virtually every American 
had such sinister connotations that Congress felt compelled to curtail its 
reach.

The office's latest brainchild - establishing a futures market in terrorism 
- managed to combine a sense of the sinister with sheer wackiness.

Fortunately for the country, a wiser head, Senate Armed Services Chairman 
John Warner of Virginia, prevailed Tuesday. He put the kibosh on the idea, 
but not before Poindexter had made a laughingstock of what ought to be 
serious business indeed.

The idea sounded like a parody, a product of Monty Python in a moment of 
particularly bad taste. Traders would bet on contracts that, according to 
the "Policy Analysis Market" Website, would have predicted "the economic, 
civil and military futures" of eight Middle East countries "and the impact 
of U.S. involvement with each."

But it was no parody. The administration had sought $8 million through 2005 
to fund the program. Money for its extension was included in the House 
version of next year's defense bill, though not in the Senate version. 
Prospective traders, under the shroud of anonymity, were to have begun 
registering Friday.

The idea's theoretical justification, if such it can be called, was that the 
play of the market would tease out information of value to U.S. 
policymakers. But sovereign nations aren't pork bellies. A U.S. contract 
predicting the overthrow of a foreign leader would have been perilously 
close to a U.S. contract on a foreign leader - particularly if those betting 
on the prophecy's accuracy were in a position to fulfill it.

The Bush administration should separate Poindexter from his federal paycheck.