USA - PENTAGON SHUTS DOWN TERROR FUTURES MARKET (JUL 30/CBS).

30 July 2003
Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules
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CBS NEWS -- The Defense Dept. has scrapped a plan to create a financial 
market that would allow futures traders to bet on terrorist attacks and 
other geopolitical developments in the Middle East, reports CBS News.

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee, said the head of the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 
Tony Tethers, agreed to pull the plug on the controversial program to sell 
futures contracts.

The Policy Analysis Market, which drew particular fire from two Democratic 
senators, was a joint collaboration among DARPA, the Economist Intelligence 
Unit and Net Exchange.

"Spending taxpayer dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as 
wasteful as it is repugnant," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan 
(D-N.D.) wrote in a letter to John Poindexter, the head of DARPA's 
Information Awareness Office.

Wyden and Dorgan said the Pentagon requested $8 million for the program and 
had already spent $650,000.