- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John
Poindexter, the Iran-Contra scandal figure who headed two criticized Pentagon
projects, including one that would have enabled investors to profit by
predicting terrorist attacks, will quit his post within weeks, U.S. defense
officials said on Thursday.
-
- Poindexter, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, "expects
to, within a few weeks, offer his resignation," a senior defense official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
-
- Disclosure of his planned departure from the Defense
Department came just two days after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld terminated
a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, project supervised
by Poindexter for a potential futures trading market in predictions of
assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East.
-
- The program was derided by Democrats and Republicans
in Congress, some of whom called it "bizarre," "unbelievably
stupid" and "offensive." Rumsfeld himself said he canceled
the program "an hour after I read about it."
-
- Poindexter earlier spearheaded a computerized surveillance
project to collect information about potential terrorist threats by scouring
private databases containing mountains of information about millions of
people, drawing fire from privacy advocates.
-
- The official indicated that Poindexter had become a lightning
rod for criticism, but did not answer directly when asked whether Rumsfeld
forced his resignation.
-
- Poindexter served as President Ronald Reagan's national
security adviser in the 1980s. He became a central figure in the Iran-contra
scandal in which Reagan administration officials diverted cash from secret
sales of arms to Iran to bankroll Nicaraguan guerrillas at a time when
such aid was forbidden by Congress.
-
- He was convicted of lying to Congress, but the conviction
later was set aside.
-
- 'UNORTHODOX' PROGRAMS
-
- "Everybody certainly recognizes Admiral Poindexter's
background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways
very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he
was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.
-
- Poindexter has worked for DARPA since January 2002, serving
as director of its Information Awareness Office, and earns an annual salary
of $142,500, the Pentagon said.
-
- Among the lawmakers who expressed concern about the DARPA
projects, Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, said, "The problem
is that these projects were just fine with the administration until the
public found out about them. ... The lesson seems to be that you can do
whatever you want quietly, so long as it doesn't become a public embarrassment."
-
- DARPA had said the $8 million Policy Analysis Market
project was meant to explore the power of futures markets to predict and
possibly prevent terrorist attacks, arguing that futures projects had a
track record of being good at predicting events such as election results.
-
- Poindexter also was embroiled in controversy over the
surveillance project previously called Total Information Awareness. After
a wide range of critics blasted the project's potential for invasion of
privacy, lawmakers and the Defense Department established limits on the
scheme.
-
- The senior defense official said Poindexter possesses
"a very creative intellect," but noted that he had been involved
in "a couple of programs of varying degrees of merit that have been
seen as certainly unorthodox" and beyond merely being "cutting-edge."
-
- The official said he did not anticipate Poindexter working
even as a consultant to the Pentagon after his departure.
|
