IN WASHINGTON

01 August 2003
The Commercial Appeal
A13

Poindexter on way out for terror futures plan

The official who oversaw a plan for the Pentagon to run a terrorism 
futures-trading market is resigning under pressure, a senior defense 
official said on Thursday.

John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was President Reagan's national 
security adviser, will step down soon, the official said, after the 
disclosure of a proposal that outraged lawmakers and embarrassed senior 
Pentagon officials.

The plan was to create an online betting parlor that would have rewarded 
investors who forecast terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not personally dismiss Poindexter, but 
the defense official said Rumsfeld agreed that the admiral's credibility was 
damaged and that he should leave. The defense official briefed several 
reporters in Washington.

A spokesman for Poindexter and his agency, the Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency, a research arm of the Pentagon known as DARPA, said he and 
the office would have no comment on the resignation, first reported 
Wednesday night by The Wall Street Journal.

But Poindexter said in an electronic message to a friend on Wednesday night 
that he had been contemplating resigning for several months, to get out from 
under a steady stream of criticism and spend more time sailing on the 
Chesapeake Bay.

According to DARPA, the futures market project was designed to cull wisdom 
about the likelihood of terrorist attacks from the markets, which can be 
highly sensitive to such possibilities.

But critics said it was perverse to profit on such information, especially 
since terrorists could use the anonymous market to make money on their own 
actions.