Poindexter to Leave Pentagon In Wake of Terror-Futures Plan
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
WASHINGTON -- The head of a Pentagon research agency is stepping down following an uproar over his efforts to help set up a futures-trading market for predicting assassinations, terrorist strikes and other upheavals in the Middle East.
John Poindexter, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, is expected to resign in a matter of weeks, a senior Defense Department official said. The office sought $8 million from Congress to help a private group set up a Policy Analysis Market as a way to provide the Defense Department with "market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events."
Lawmakers of both parties blasted the idea as ghoulish and a waste of tax money.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quickly canceled government support for it, saying "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." The Net Exchange, the San Diego group that would have operated the market, announced that without government support, its prospects are unclear.
The flap follows another Darpa firestorm. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency proposed setting up a "Total Information Awareness" program that would have tried to identify terrorists by compiling dossiers on millions of U.S. citizens. The program since has been renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness," and its developers have pledged it won't be used to snoop on citizens.
Mr. Poindexter, a retired Navy rear admiral, served as national-security adviser during the Reagan administration and was sentenced to prison stemming from the Iran-Contra affair. His conviction was reversed on appeal. Mr. Poindexter couldn't be reached Wednesday night.
Updated July 31, 2003 |
