Poindexter quitting Pentagon job; Roundly criticized for his role in 
planning terror futures market

PAULINE JELINEK, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

01 August 2003
The Record
A10

WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON - Retired Adm. John Poindexter will resign his position at the 
Pentagon after a research project he was overseeing was condemned by 
Congress as an "egregious error of judgment."

A senior defense official said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 
Poindexter realized that "it would be difficult" for him to continue in his 
job after the flap over a plan to establish a futures market that would have 
allowed traders to profit by correctly predicting assassinations and 
terrorist strikes in the Middle East.

He said Rumsfeld did not ask for his resignation but that Poindexter was 
"working through the details" and "expects to offer" it within a few weeks.

The project was disclosed Monday by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and 
Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Criticism mounted Tuesday. Senate Armed 
Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., later announced he had an 
agreement from defense officials to end the project.

Warner had spoken by telephone with Tony Tether, head of the Pentagon's 
Defense Research Projects Agency, where Poindexter works. Warner called the 
program "a rather egregious error of judgment."

The agency and two private partners would have set up an Internet futures 
trading market on events in the Middle East. Traders could have bought and 
sold futures contracts based on their predictions about what would happen in 
the region. Examples given on the market's Web site included the 
assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and a biological weapons 
attack on Israel.

Senators had called for Poindexter's resignation.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., had said there was "something very sick about 
it."

"And if it's going to end, I think you ought to end the careers of whoever 
it was thought that up. Because terrorists knowing they were planning an 
attack could have bet on the attack and collected a lot of money. It's a 
sick idea," she said.

The Defense Research Projects Agency has been criticized by Congress for its 
Terrorism Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program 
that has raised privacy concerns. Poindexter also is the head of that program.

In the 1980s, Poindexter was national security adviser to President Ronald 
Reagan. He was a key figure in the 1980s Iran- Contra scandal.

Caption: ++++; PHOTO - POINDEXTER