ABC News 

SHOW: WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS (06:30 PM ET) - ABC

July 29, 2003 Tuesday

HEADLINE: SECRET SPENDING BETTING ON TERROR

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) Washington again. The Pentagon has decided to drop its 
plans for a web-site where people could wager on the likelihood of 
terrorist attacks. The reaction to reports about it on this broadcast 
last night and other places was overwhelmingly negative, particularly 
in the Congress. And it is drawing a lot of attention to an agency 
that operates with a pretty high level of secrecy. Here's ABC's Linda 
Douglass. 

LINDA DOUGLASS, ABC NEWS

(Voice Over) Throughout the Congress, there was wall-to-wall outrage 
about the web-site, which invites people to bet on what the next 
terrorist attack will be.

SENATOR TOM DASCHLE, MINORITY LEADER

For the life of me, I can't believe that anybody would seriously 
propose that we trade in death.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, MALE

This defies common sense. It's absurd.

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Voice Over) The majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist, put out a 
letter saying, "I cannot conceive of any reason why the United States 
government should be involved in a project of this nature."

graphics: "i cannot conceive of any reason why the united states 
government should be involved in a project of this nature..."

frist

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Voice Over) He asked the Senate committees not to fund it.

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Off Camera) Funding for the $8 million web-site is as mysterious as 
the agency that oversees it, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency, otherwise known as DARPA.

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Voice Over) DARPA oversees $3 billion worth of unusual research, 
ideas that led to the Internet, the Stealth bomber and projects such 
as this one, using bees to find land mines. Some of its futuristic 
programs has sparked furious criticism, a project to make computers 
more human, and a now-defunct plan to compile a computer dossier on everyone.

DICK CLARKE, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL

The DARPA does really great stuff on engineering and physics. But it 
needs some political adult guidance when it starts talking about 
things that aren't hard science.

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Voice Over) Today, the number-two man in the Defense Department told 
angry Senators that some imaginative people may have just gotten 
carried away when they created the new web-site.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative in this area.

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER,

DEMOCRAT, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE

I don't think we can laugh off that DARPA program. There is something 
very sick about it.

LINDA DOUGLASS

(Voice Over) Senators stumbled on the web-site just yesterday. Warned 
one, "there are probably ten more projects like it and we just haven't 
found them yet." Linda Douglass, ABC News, Capitol Hill.