posted 07-29-2003 06:37 PM            

Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks
By CARL HULSE

ASHINGTON, July 28 — The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has a new experiment. It is an online futures trading market, disclosed today by critics, in which anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups.
Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Pentagon called its latest idea a new way of predicting events and part of its search for the "broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." Two Democratic senators who reported the plan called it morally repugnant and grotesque. The senators said the program fell under the control of Adm. John M. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser.
One of the two senators, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. "Can you imagine," Mr. Dorgan asked, "if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in — and is sponsored by the government itself — people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?"
After Mr. Dorgan and his fellow critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke out, the Pentagon sought to play down the importance of a program for which the Bush administration has sought $8 million through 2005. The White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events to be considered by the market that were visible earlier in the day at www.policyanalysismarket.org could no longer be seen.
But by that time, Republican officials in the Senate were privately shaking their heads over the planned trading. One top aide said he hoped that the Pentagon had a good explanation for it.
The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales.
"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."
According to descriptions given to Congress, available at the Web site and provided by the two senators, traders who register would deposit money into an account similar to a stock account and win or lose money based on predicting events.
"For instance," Mr. Wyden said, "you may think early on that Prime Minister X is going to be assassinated. So you buy the futures contracts for 5 cents each. As more people begin to think the person's going to be assassinated, the cost of the contract could go up, to 50 cents.
"The payoff if he's assassinated is $1 per future. So if it comes to pass, and those who bought at 5 cents make 95 cents. Those who bought at 50 cents make 50 cents."
The senators also suggested that terrorists could participate because the traders' identities will be unknown.
"This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities," they said in a letter to Admiral Poindexter, the director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Office, which the opponents said had developed the idea.
The initiative, called the Policy Analysis Market, is to begin registering up to 1,000 traders on Friday. It is the latest problem for the advanced projects agency, or Darpa, a Pentagon unit that has run into controversy for the Terrorism Information Office. Admiral Poindexter once described a sweeping electronic surveillance plan as a way of forestalling terrorism by tapping into computer databases to collect medical, travel, credit and financial records.
Worried about the reach of the program, Congress this year prohibited what was called the Total Information Awareness program from being used against Americans. Its name was changed to the Terrorism Information Awareness program.
This month, the Senate agreed to block all spending on the program. The House did not. Mr. Wyden said he hoped that the new disclosure about the trading program would be the death blow for Admiral Poindexter's plan.
The Pentagon did not provide details of the program like how much money participants would have to deposit in accounts. Trading is to begin on Oct. 1, with the number of participants initially limited to 1,000 and possibly expanding to 10,000 by Jan. 1.
"Involvement in this group prediction process should prove engaging and may prove profitable," the Web site said.
The overview of the plan said the market would focus on the economic, civil and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey and the consequences of United States involvement with those nations. The creators of the market envision other trappings of existing markets like derivatives.
In a statement, Darpa said the trading idea was "currently a small research program that faces a number of major technical challenges and uncertainties."
"Chief among these," the agency said, "are: Can the market survive and will people continue to participate when U.S. authorities use it to prevent terrorist attacks? Can futures markets be manipulated by adversaries?"
Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wyden called for an immediate end to the project and said they would use its existence to justify cutting off financial support for the overall effort. In the letter to Admiral Poindexter, they called the initiative a "wasteful and absurd" use of tax dollars.
"The American people want the federal government to use its resources enhancing our security, not gambling on it," the letter said.

posted 07-29-2003 06:52 PM            

"Congress Votes to Ban Internet Gambling: President Bush Expected to Sign Bill into Law"

posted 07-29-2003 11:39 PM            

Gotta have that heirarchal illuminati pyramid in the logo.

What do you expect from a bunch of Machavellian Trotskyite NEO-CONS.

posted 07-30-2003 01:11 AM            

so they want to put the money back into local bookies eh ?

boo

posted 07-30-2003 05:37 AM            

Terror Trading Site Goes Bust
by Carl Hulse

Washington -- July 29 -- The Pentagon's new terrorism futures market is suddenly a thing of the past.

Only a day after it was disclosed, outraged senators of both parties called today for the immediate end to the online trading bazaar that would have rewarded investors able to predict terror attacks and other global unrest. Pentagon officials raced to oblige, saying it would be shut down posthaste.

"It is a very significant mistake," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Democrats quickly pointed the finger at John M. Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was a key official involved in developing the plan.

"This Poindexter program is still a runaway horse that needs to be reined in," said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the two Democrats who brought the plan to light on Monday.

Admiral Poindexter first gained notoriety in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration and more recently he oversaw a Pentagon program for extensive electronic surveillance of computer records in the search for terrorists.

"That is two strikes now," Warner said. "Do you have to throw a third strike?"

Admiral Poindexter did not respond to requests for comment left at the Pentagon.

Wyden and Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota disclosed the existence of the futures program on Monday, calling it grotesque.

Under the Pentagon plan, traders were to be able to begin registering on Friday to trade futures in Middle East developments as of October 1 on a Web site of the Policy Analysis Market, which the Pentagon was operating with 'private partners'.

At a Senate hearing this morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said he first learned of it from news accounts.

"I share your shock at this kind of program," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "We'll find out about it, but it is being terminated."

Warner and his colleagues summoned the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where the market idea was developed, to the Capitol to explain how the concept originated. The director, Tony Tether, put out a statement, saying the program was finished, effective immediately. "Our job at DARPA is to explore new ideas, and this is an idea that was not going to work out," he said.

Warner and other senators responsible for overseeing Defense Department spending moved quickly to disassociate themselves from the program, promising hearings and much more aggressive oversight of the research arm of the Pentagon. They said they had never been told any details of the $3 million program, which they harshly criticized as ill-conceived and unwarranted.

"It is totally unauthorized as far as we are concerned," said Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. "No funds should have been used for it at all. It's really a serious mistake on the part of DARPA."

Democrats said cutting off the money to this specific initiative was not enough. "I think those who thought it up ought not only close down the program, they ought not be on the public payroll any longer," Dorgan said.

He and Wyden said the uproar over the market plan should give momentum to their push to cut off all money flowing to the Terrorism Information Awareness effort being run out of Darpa. That program, originally called Total Information Awareness, was developed by Admiral Poindexter as a way of forestalling terrorism by tapping into computer databases to collect medical records, travel records, credit records and financial data. Worried about privacy concerns, Congress earlier this year prohibited it from being used against Americans.

Admiral Poindexter was a central figure in the 1980's Iran-contra scandal and was convicted of lying to Congress, though his conviction was later overturned. At the Pentagon, the chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, was asked about the status of the former Navy officer and said, "At the moment, Admiral Poindexter continues to serve in DARPA."

Republican lawmakers said the uproar over the marketing plan could jeopardize Congressional support for DARPA programs, though they were not ready to call for the end of the terrorism information effort. As for personnel changes, they said those decisions were the responsibility of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who serves on both the intelligence and armed services committees, called the market plan "absurd," and added, "It seems to me they are way off base and somebody should bear that responsibility -- and I think we know who that is."

The Pentagon market Web site was the first step in a broader program titled Futures Markets Applied to Predictions.

In statements over the past two days, DARPA said the idea behind the project was to use a marketplace to assess the probability of events, a concept that has worked with predictions in such matters as commodity prices and elections. Examples of potential events on the Web site included the overthrow of the king of Jordan, a missile strike by North Korea, or the assassination of Yasir Arafat.

While some lawmakers said they understood the fundamental idea behind the project, they said it clearly crossed a line given the continuing effort against terrorism and the war in Iraq.

"I cannot conceive of any reason why the United States Government should be involved in a project of this nature," the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in a letter to lawmakers responsible for Pentagon spending, urging that they cut off any aid to the market project.

The Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, was harsher. "I am troubled, alarmed, just amazed that anybody with positions of responsibility and authority would suggest that we do things of this nature," he said.

Warner and others said DARPA, which is credited with creating the forerunner to the Internet among other innovations, has proved its value in the past, but they said this plan was out of bounds.

posted 07-30-2003 09:17 PM            

They wanted to INSTITUTIONALIZE it.

More money for the globalists.

Talk about IN-YOUR-FACE!

Anyone not catching onto this by now and how CORRUPT the BU$H administration is..you are 100% ASSSSSSLEEP!

*******************************************

Posted on Wed, Jul. 30, 2003

A disgraceful blunder

Kansas City Star

Betting on potential acts of terrorism was a despicable idea that couldn't survive once the American public found out about it.

The Pentagon on Tuesday abandoned its plan to operate an online futures trading market that would have allowed obscene wagering on terrorism.

The abrupt decision came the same day that news organizations across the nation publicized the Policy Analysis Market(PAM). The program had been scheduled to start taking in money on Friday.

It would have allowed traders to bet on what might happen in the Middle East, including potential assassinations of key leaders. Pentagon officials claimed the market could have predicted events there � and helped the United States prepare for those events.

Two Democratic senators fortunately exposed it Monday. �This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities,� argued Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

By Tuesday morning, other U.S. officials had denounced the operation. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed the decisive action to pull the plug on the initiative.

The Policy Analysis Market(PAM) was the latest bad proposal from an agency under the control of Adm. John Poindexter.

He is the same inquisitive U.S. official who recently championed an alarming plan to electronically spy on Americans through computer databases. Public disclosure forced the Pentagon to abandon that ludicrous proposal. Poindexter disgraced himself in the Iran-contra scandal when he was national security adviser during the Reagan administration.

Pentagon officials should get back to the tough, serious intelligence gathering that's crucial to protecting Americans from future terrorist attacks.