Another weird idea from Adm. Poindexter

Opinion

30 July 2003
The Seattle Times
Fourth
B6

THE Pentagon wisely has backed off a plan to set up a futures trading market 
where traders speculated on disaster as a means of predicting terrorism 
attacks.

Still, some damage was done with newspapers from Paris to Sydney trotting 
out the details of the disgusting plan in which traders could profit from 
betting on such things as military coups and assassinations.

What better way to affirm the most cynical world citizens' view of the 
United States as arrogant and indifferent to the plight of Middle Eastern 
people than to consider setting up a gambling ring that profits from their 
despair.

Adm. John M. Poindexter, the Pentagon's CEO of Creepy Ideas to Prevent 
Terrorism, is in charge of the Policy Analysis Market. The rationale is that 
such markets have a way of eliciting hidden information and have been 
successful at predicting such things as elections and commodity prices.

Poindexter was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser and was 
convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran- contra scandal. He now is in 
charge of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota exposed plans 
for the terrorism futures market Monday, denouncing it as morally repugnant. 
The Democrats are also foes of Poindexter's previous bombshell, the Total 
Information Awareness Program to tap into databases to capture financial and 
medical information about people civil liberties and privacy rights be damned.

Last year, Congress limited that plan so it could not be used against 
Americans, changing the name to Terrorist Information Awareness Program. The 
Senate recently blocked all funding for the program, although the Republican 
House has not.

On Tuesday, responding to criticism of the planned terrorism futures market, 
Bush administration officials said it would be canceled.

That's a relief; it shouldn't have gone this far.

This is a concept for a sinister Hollywood movie, not responsible U.S. 
public policy. Lawmakers should think twice about funding for an agency that 
spawns such wrong-headed ideas, and the Bush administration should carefully 
consider the agency's future role.