Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online futures market.

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he had conferred with the program's director at the Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped.''

... program ... was met with astonishment and derision almost from the moment it was disclosed.
....

Under the discarded plan, traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel, say, or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have had the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

... two Democratic senators who disclosed the plan on Monday 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?''

Some of the contracts traded on AAM will be based on objective data and observable events, as on a horse track, e.g.

the next White House lie to break into the news

the next country to which the White House will issue an ultimatum, and when

the next foreign leader to move from the CIA payroll to White House \"most wanted\" list

the lifespan of various DARPA projects, such as Total Information Awareness and Babylon

the first White House staffer to resign in disgrace, and when

the President's approval rating on the day before Saddam is captured or killed

Other AAM contracts will more closely resemble stocks on the market; they will be based on possibilities and scenarios that may or may not be verifiable, but that may be progressively revealed over time (e.g. via journalistic sleuth-work, public statements by concerned politicians, or Congressional hearings):

how and at what stage the White House officially decided to use the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a reason for invading Iraq

whether Rumsfeld was the first, the morning of September 12, 2001, to decree that the attacks were the \"Pearl Harbor\" needed for attacking Iraq, or whether the idea came first from others

whether the invasion of Afghanistan had been planned from the start as a stepping-stone to an attack on Iraq, or whether the decision to attack Iraq was made only once the troops were massed nearby

whether or not the President was conscious of overt lying in his various pre-war speeches, or whether the decisions to lie were taken by others, with the President thinking himself to be truthful

whether or not the expulsion of U.S. and British oil companies from Iraq between 1972 and 1975 was an important long-term factor in the 2003 war on Iraq, and in what way

to what degree neo-conservatives Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams and other students of Leo Strauss (who may have taught that it was necessary for elites to lie to the public) [rely] on Strauss's teachings in their daily decisions

whether or not Iraq's 2001 switch to the euro as its trading currency, and Iran's and Venezuela's contemplation of similar steps, was a factor in U.S. decisions leading to the 2003 war on Iraq