ary_poindexter_030731200155

Poindexter to resign: defense official
Thu Jul 31, 4:01 PM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (AFP) - Retired Admiral John Poindexter has decided to resign
his Pentagon (news - web sites) position following an outcry over a scheme
to create an online futures market designed to anticipate terrorist
attacks, assassinations and wars in the Middle East, a senior defense
official said.


AFP/File Photo



The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Poindexter

that controversy over his past involvement in the 1980s Iran-Contra

had made it too difficult to get a dispassionate hearing for his

concepts.


"He is kind of working through the details but expects to within a few
weeks offer his resignation," the official said.


Poindexter, who heads the Pentagon's Office of Terrorist Information
Awareness, drew fire this week over a scheme to set up an online futures
market in which traders would bet on the likelihood of future terrorist
action, assassinations and wars in the Middle East.


The Pentagon cancelled the program fewer than 24 hours after it was
disclosed by Democratic members of Congress, who called it immoral and
"unbelievably stupid." The Pentagon had requested eight million dollars

the program over the next two years.


Poindexter's office, initially named the Total Information Awareness
Office, came under attack earlier this year over plans to develop
information systems capable of detecting terrorist activity by

of electronic transactions on a massive scale.


That program's "Big Brother" overtones triggered a furor over the prospect
of government monitoring of private lives, as well as questions over what
Poindexter was doing back in government.


The senior defense official said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had
not asked for Poindexter's resignation, but it was discussed by other
officials who reached an "understanding" with the admiral.


But Rumsfeld, like Poindexter, recognized that admiral's past role in the
1980s Iran-Contra scandal would make it difficult for his often unorthodox
proposals to get a fair hearing, the official said.


"We've had a couple of programs of varying degrees of merit that have been
seen as, certainly, unorthodox, different in terms of the nature of the
research being done. It is cutting edge and beyond that in some cases,"

official said.


"Given the circumstances with which we are all familiar in the case of
Admiral Poindexter it became difficult to receive an objective reading of
that work," he said.


Poindexter, who served as national security adviser under president Ronald
Reagan (news - web sites), was convicted for lying to Congress about

sales of arms to Iran and the diversion of the profits to fund the contra
rebels in Nicaragua. The conviction was later overturned.


He was quietly hired by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to lead a program to come up with ways to
track terrorist activities electronically.

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Dr. Smartass
BAAWA Knight of Heckling -- a.a. #1939

"And the knowledge that they fear
Is a weapon to be used against them."
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