Rumsfeld says nixed terror futures plan after flap.

30 July 2003
23:14 GMT
Reuters News

WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said 
on Wednesday he killed a proposed terrorism futures market because it was 
doomed to failure after an uproar in Congress, but he did not have enough 
information to judge whether it was a bad idea.

Rumsfeld said he scrapped the Pentagon's scheme to let investors bet on the 
probability of wars, terrorist attacks and assassinations as a policy 
analysis tool "an hour after I read about it."

On Capitol Hill after a closed briefing with senators, he said it was clear 
"that even if it happened to have been a brilliant idea, which I doubt, it 
would not have been able to function in the environment that was created."

He said he hoped to have time this weekend "to learn more about it and see 
what I think of it, and how it happened and whether it made sense or didn't 
make sense."

Rumsfeld canceled the program on Tuesday, a day after Senate Democrats 
brought the Pentagon's Policy Analysis Market to light, condemning it as a 
sick scheme to let investors profit from political turmoil and death.

The Policy Analysis Market would let anonymous traders wager money on when 
and whether such events as the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy might 
take place, with the idea that would help the Pentagon forecast terrorism 
trends based on the predictive abilities of the markets.

Some senators said the plan showed retired Adm. John Poindexter, who oversaw 
it, was unsuitable for his Pentagon post where he is spearheading the Total 
Information Awareness Program to collect information about potential terror 
threats from private databases.

Poindexter was convicted of deceiving Congress in the 1980s Iran-Contra 
scandal - a conviction that was later set aside.