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It comes as no surprise that a Defense Department scheme to turn the fight against terrorism into a game fell apart Tuesday once it was made public. The curious fact is that the plan to let people bet on future assassinations, economic disasters and acts of terror got as far as it did.
Claiming to bring the efficiency of commodities markets to intelligence gathering, a Pentagon agency created a program that would have allowed individuals to buy and sell "contracts" that predicted future hostile events, such as the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The "traders" would have won the money if they had guessed right.
On Tuesday, a day after two Democratic senators exposed the plan, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz terminated it, claiming to have had no knowledge of the program's existence.
That doesn't speak well of communication inside the Pentagon. As of Monday, a Web site for the so-called Policy Analysis Market invited the public to sign up on Friday and begin trading contracts on Oct. 1. The site suggested hypothetical bets on Arafat's assassination, the overthrow of Jordanian King Abdullah II and a North Korean missile attack. When Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon objected to the program, that page was pulled from public viewing.
Even in an administration that believes markets are the solution to every problem, this was a harebrained idea. The notion that terrorists would reveal their plans in order to win a bet is ludicrous. And if America's enemies had somehow been lured into the process, they likely would have used it to sow misleading information.
Not surprisingly, this program was brought to us by Adm. John Poindexter, the Pentagon official discredited during the Reagan administration for his involvement in another destructive scheme, the Iran-Contra scandal. Earlier this year, Poindexter championed an intelligence program called Total Information Awareness that would have secretly collected personal information on American citizens, including medical, telephone and credit card records.
Now that top Pentagon officials have been informed of the misguided terrorism contracts, they should investigate why the program was developed and who is responsible. It looks more and more as though Poindexter is a liability to the Bush administration.
Even the news that the program has been terminated won't bolster public confidence, which was shaken by the recent report on intelligence blunders before Sept. 11. At a time when the Defense Department should be focused on making real progress in the war against terrorism, one of its agencies was wasting resources and credibility by playing games with America's future.