Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)

July 31, 2003 Thursday, METRO EDITION

SECTION: A; Editorial; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 525 words

HEADLINE: A BAD BET

BODY:
The Pentagon's scheme for a terrorism futures market has, mercifully, died,
unable to survive the light of publicity. Now questions remain about how such a
bad idea came within days of becoming a reality, and about what else John
Poindexter and his colleagues might be cooking up in a branch of the Defense
Department that obviously needs to be more closely watched.

Once two Democratic senators made public the scheme to allow participants to
place Internet bets on the likelihood of acts of terrorism, assassination and
attacks of various sorts, senators of both parties reacted with outrage. Before
another day passed, the plan, which had been on the verge of registering its
first participants, was scuttled and its Web site had vanished.

But as the story unfolded, it became obvious that some of the most outspoken
senators should have known what Poindexter was concocting at the Terrorism
Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
(DARPA). Senators said that the Pentagon already had spent $600,000 on the
program and had requested $3 million for it next year and $5 million for the
year after that. In May, Poindexter's office had sent a report to Congress,
including an example of the sort of question investors might wager on: "Will
terrorists attack Israel with bioweapons in the next year?" Yet even senators on
committees with responsibility for overseeing Defense Department spending
expressed complete surprise and indignation. Similarly, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, at the Senate for a hearing on other matters, expressed "shock."

Considering the record of Poindexter, a retired admiral and former national
security adviser to President Reagan, senators and senior Defense Department
officials should have kept a closer eye on what he was doing. The kindest
interpretation of some of his actions is that his zeal for his job blinds him to
considerations of propriety, constitutionality and even morality. He was
convicted on five felony counts for his role in the Iran-Contra
guns-for-hostages trade; the convictions were overturned on a technicality.

Also under Reagan, Poindexter advocated a national security directive that would
have let the administration control even unclassified information by such
tactics as subjecting federal employees to lie-detector tests. He created a stir
last year with his plan to pry into private databases to gather information on
anyone. After that controversy, the name of his office was changed from Total
Information Awareness to Terrorism Information Awareness and Congress said that
it should not target citizens.

This latest scheme raises questions about Poindexter's fitness for sensitive
government positions. Futures markets may be quite the thing for business and
elections predictions, but human lives are not oil or votes. The United States
should not be enabling bettors to profit from death and mayhem, or providing
incentives for terrorists to strike or to spread misinformation.

Even after the current embarrassment fades, senators should remember the vows
they made to keep a more vigilant eye on DARPA.