Poindexter's Follies
The New York Times
Editorial
July 30, 2003
The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing
and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The
latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop - an online futures trading market
where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist
attacks, assassinations and coups - was canceled yesterday
by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.
In testimony before Congress yesterday, Paul Wolfowitz,
the deputy secretary of defense, disowned the futures project.
The insensitivity of the idea boggles the mind. Quite apart from the
tone-deafness of equating terrorist attacks with, say, corn futures,
the plan would allow speculators - even
terrorists - to profit from anonymous bets on future attacks.
The project's theoretical underpinnings are equally absurd. Markets do not always
operate perfectly in the larger world of stocks and bonds.
The idea that they can reliably forecast the behavior of isolated terrorists is ridiculous.
The "Policy Analysis Market" would actually have opened for
business on Oct. 1 had Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan not blown the whistle.
Despite Mr. Wolfowitz's pledge to kill it, however, the problem
of Mr. Poindexter remains. He is a man of dubious background and dubious ideas. A
retired rear admiral, he served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser
and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the
proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua. He was sentenced to six months
in jail for lying to Congress, a conviction overturned on appeal.
He resurfaced under the Bush administration at the Pentagon.
His first big brainstorm post-9/11 was a program known as
Total Information Awareness, designed
to identify potential terrorists by compiling
a detailed electronic dossier on millions of Americans.
Congress agreed earlier this year to subject that program to strict
oversight and prohibit it from being used against Americans. In light of the
revelations about the latest Poindexter scheme, Congress obviously
did not go far enough. It should close his operation for good. The Senate
recently agreed to do just that, adding an amendment
to a Defense Department appropriations bill that would terminate funds for the program. The
House must now follow suit.
nytimes.com
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