News - International - Admiral behind terrorist futures market `to quit'.

By David Rennie, Washington.

01 August 2003
The Daily Telegraph
20

Admiral John Poindexter, whose Pentagon research unit sparked outrage this 
week with a plan to set up a futures market in terrorist strikes, is to 
resign, a senior defence official said yesterday.

"It's my understanding that he ... expects to, within a few weeks, offer his 
resignation," the official said.

The downfall of the admiral, whose conviction for criminal conspiracy after 
the Iran-Contra affair was overturned on a technicality, follows fury at the 
plan promoted by his team at the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The market was intended to tap into insider opinion in the Middle East but 
was scrapped before it got off the ground after it was denounced by 
Democrats as a "market in death".