The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.)

                      July 30, 2003 Wednesday 1ST EDITION

SECTION OPED PAGE; Pg. 7A

LENGTH 492 words

HEADLINE Who dreamed up this plan?

BYLINE The Herald

BODY

   There's a difference between an idea that is before its time and an idea that
should never see the light of day. The Pentagon apparently has trouble
distinguishing between the two.

   Consider, for example, the Policy Analysis Market, a commodity-market trading
system that allows investors to bet on political and economic happenings in the
Middle East - including the possibility of terrorist attacks, assassinations,
war and other dreaded events. No, this is not something out of an Austin Powers
movie; it comes to us from the Pentagon and it actually existed, at least for a
while.

   Officials with the Pentagon's Defense Research Projects Agency, or DARPA,
where the idea was dreamed up, explained that it was part of a research effort
"to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist
attacks." The idea was that serious investors, like those who play the
commodities market, would ferret out insider information to enhance their
portfolios in Middle Eastern misfortune.

   If hundreds of investors suddenly decided to take the plunge on a coup in
Syria or the assassination of the Saudi oil minister, U.S. agents could check to
see if they were on to something. The Pentagon would simply heed the age-old
advice when trying to unravel intrigue Follow the money.

   But right from the start, it was apparent that this plan had been hatched by
people who don't get out much, deep thinkers who apparently drink too much
coffee and spend too much time in windowless Pentagon offices. The practically
unanimous response to the plan was Are you nuts?

   Critics in Congress were quick to point out that terrorists could manipulate
the market to throw intelligence agents off track. Senate Democratic leader Tom
Daschle of South Dakota said the plan might encourage terrorist attacks. Think
about it - a big investor has a lot of money riding on the assassination of a
certain sheik. What's to prevent the investor from hiring the assassin to make
that prediction come true?

     Ultimately, however, the undoing of the Policy Analysis Market probably was
its tastelessness. Do we really want to encourage investment in doom and gloom?
It gives a whole new meaning to the "misery index."

   In the end, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, made a call to the Pentagon Tuesday and had officials pull the plug
on this harebrained idea. Warner said he was assured that the people overseeing
the program would "stop all engines on this matter today."

   Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that DARPA "is brilliantly
imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative. It sounds like maybe
they got too imaginative."

   But Pentagon officials can't just leave it at that. The whole idea was more
than a little perverse, indicative of the kind of thinking that isn't needed in
the so-called war on terrorism.

   The Pentagon needs to find out who was behind this program and clean house.