Pentagon Reconsiders Internet 'Terror' Market

Pentagon Reconsiders Internet 'Terror' Market

Update: How Iran-Contra Pointdexter is linked to 9/11 Put Options
Update: "Fire Mr. Poindexter" (NY Times)
Original Website was shut down- Mirror here

The Pentagon says it is reconsidering its plan for an internet futures market on terror attacks and assassinations in the Middle East.

In a statement late Monday, the Pentagon said it would consider what it called the "technical promise" of the plan before asking for additional funds to make it operational.

The Pentagon's hesitation over the plan followed the project's disclosure by two Democratic senators. Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan expressed outrage as they revealed the planned $8 million Policy Analysis Market Monday. The internet site would allow people to place money on predictions and would pay profits if they guessed correctly. One example listed on the web-site is the overthrow of Jordan's monarchy.

...A website for the Pentagon division responsible for the plan tries to explain the rationale behind the market. FutureMap argues "the rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few participants may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise."

Some simple steps:

On Sept. 10, 2001, Amr Elgindy, a colleague of Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi (who is also a business partner of PNAC-Richard Perle) and a notorious inside trader on the financial markets, orders his broker to liquidate his children's $300,000 trust account, fearing a sudden crash in the market.

Elgindy is arrested in San Diego in May 2002, along with FBI agents Jeffrey Royer and Lynn Wingate who allegedly have been using their FBI positions to feed him inside information on various corporations.

The connection was Pacific Equity Investigations, a business based in San Diego California, which operated a public investment website, a subscription based e-mail newsletter and subscription based investment website. Elgindy founded and at material times controlled the business.

The NY Times reported in May 2002, that Elgindy "may have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks".

More disturbing, his brother Khaled Elgindy is National Coordinator for Political Action at the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC. Khaled represents AAI on a number of national coalitions, including the National Iraq Network, and is responsible for mobilizing Arab-American action on various legislative issues.

FBI agent Jeffrey Royer's girlfriend, Christy Sarkey (Oklahoma City FBI) identified the two agents investing with Royer as Charles Ruiz, who works in New York, and Todd Temple in San Diego

Investigative Journalist Tom Flocco already broke the 9/11 Put Options story in September 2001. At this time, Flocco found the first ties between the CIA (Wally Krongaard) and Mayo Shattuck III of Alex Braun Deutsche Bank. Shattuck resigned without any further explanations on Sep 11th, 2001.

Not only the 9/11 Insider Traders from the FBI came from San Diego.

The recently released 9/11 Report analysed other San Diego connections. As the Washington Post reported, at least four of the future hijackers were under active FBI investigation in San Diego.

Was the Terror Market Idea of Pointdexter, yet another famous Iran-Contra Buddy (others are Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Manucher Ghorbanifar )inspired by the 9/11 Put Options or even has some deeper connections?

"Fire Mr. Pointdexter"

NY Times -July 30, 2003

Poindexter's Follies

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.

Fortune - Wednesday, July 30, 2003

While betting on assassinations or the probability of terrorism may sound morbid, these kinds of betting pools have actually been in existence for centuries. In the Middle Ages, European nobles often bet on the outcome of wars. More recently Internet "ghoul pools" have become popular. Generally, these sites allow people to bet on the day an elderly celebrity will die.

At least one of these allows users to bet on the month and year India and Pakistan will have a nuclear exchange. And several sites allowed people to wager on when a war with Iraq would start. One of these sites, Tradesports.com, was extremely prescient in predicting the date Saddam Hussein would be removed from power. In fact, the idea of using futures exchanges to predict political events is so intriguing that it may surface again in another form. But for now, the Defense Department's Policy Analysis Market is defunct, and the hottest wager over at the Pentagon may be whether John Poindexter still has his job in a week.

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