Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Florida)

                      July 30, 2003 Wednesday All Editions

SECTION A SECTION; Pg. A10

LENGTH 428 words

HEADLINE A market for terror;
Poindexter should be fired over Pentagon's outrageous scheme

BODY

   It is difficult to find the words to express how monumentally inappropriate,
stupid, harebrained, ludicrous and preposterous we found the latest scheme out
of the Pentagon.

   But we'll try.

   The folks at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, dreamed
up the ill-fated idea of a "Policy Analysis Market."

   The plan was to set up a market for speculators to trade in the possibilities
of various events occurring terrorist attacks, assasinations, nuclear missile
launches, etc.

   The market would reward those who make accurate predictions by giving them
money put up by those who guess wrong.

   "The rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few participants
may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise," said a Web site put up
to promote the program.

   Essentially, this was to be, as Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., put it, a
"futures market in death." Other senators called it "morally repugnant" and
"grotesque."

   The senators pointed out that, since the traders would be anonymous,
terrorists could make investments on attacks or assasinations, then be paid when
they make them happen. This program could inadvertently give all sorts of people
a financial incentive to commit mayhem.

   The senators' outrage and the public exposure of the program this week led
the Pentagon to quickly retreat.

   Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfo- witz said at a Senate hearing Tuesday
that he had only just learned of the plan. "I share your shock at this kind of
program" he said, assuring them "it is being terminated."

   Wolfowitz should also see about terminating the job of the program's would-be
supervisor, retired Adm. John Poindexter.

   Poindexter is also in charge of another DARPA dog, the Terror Information
Awareness project, formerly known as the Total Information Awareness project
before Congress jerked back the leash a bit.

   That "data mining" project would have collected masses of information on,
well, everyone in the hopes of sifting out a few terrorists. Credit-card
transactions, e-mails, phone bills, etc., would have gone into one big hopper,
which a computer program would have scrutinized for suspicious patterns.

   The Bush administration had no qualms about putting Poindexter in charge of
the operation, despite his track record in the Iran-contra scandal of playing
fast and loose with niceties like truth, laws and the Constitution.

   The Policy Analysis Market should put the final nail in the coffin of
Poindexter's public career. Firing him would be the only just reward for such a
horrendous idea.