Poindexter forced to resign over terror bet plan. 

By Julian Borger in Washington. 

2 August 2003
The Guardian
17 

One of the most politically accident-prone officials in recent American 
history has been forced to resign over his scheme to establish a futures 
market to allow speculators to bet on assassinations, coups and acts of 
terrorism, it emerged yesterday. 

Admiral John Poindexter was already controversial when he was hired by the 
Bush administration. While he was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser 
he played a central role in illegally channelling funds from Iranian arms 
sales to Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. 

He was convicted of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice after he 
admitted destroying incriminating documents, but the conviction was later 
overturned on technical grounds. 

Admiral Poindexter caused uproar almost immediately in his new Pentagon job 
as the head of an electronic surveillance scheme aimed at monitoring the 
personal records of US citizens in the search for signs of terrorist activity. 

The scheme was known as the Total Information Awareness system, with an 
all-seeing eye as a symbol, and Knowledge is Power as its motto. 

After a congressional and public outcry, it's name was changed to Terrorist 
Information Awareness, the motto removed, and the eye replaced by a more 
anodyne logo. 

But Congress still cut the scheme's funds and banned it from focusing on 
American citizens without congressional permission. 

The latest row erupted over the admiral's project at the Pentagon's 
"outside-the-box" thinktank, the defence advanced research projects agency. 

The futures market, thought up by one of the agency's computer programmers 
and backed by Admiral Poindexter, would allow punters to lay anonymous bets 
on future events in the Middle East, such as the assassination of Yasser 
Arafat or the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy. 

The theory was that, just as bookies' odds can be a better predictor of 
political events than professional pundits, so this "policy analysis market" 
would tap into hidden information about the Middle East, and help to foresee 
threats. 

The plan was dropped by the Pentagon as soon as it came to light this week, 
and neither the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, nor his deputy, Paul 
Wolfowitz, came to Ad miral Poindexter's defence. Instead, an unnamed 
defence official briefed Pentagon reporters, praising Admiral Poindexter's 
"very creative intellect", but announcing his imminent departure. 

However, some are arguing that the policy analysis market could have been a 
useful tool. David Ignatius, a liberal commentator at the Washington Post, 
said: "For all its defects, ... it was an interesting, unconventional idea 
for capturing information that's 'on the street' - subtle tips and clues 
that ordinary people know, but that are often lost to our intelligence 
agencies."