John Poindexter

John Poindexter - from the book Robbing Us Blind - Steve Brouwer - page 181

Admiral John Poindexter was the National Security Advisor in the Reagan/Bush White House and the man who brought in a brash Marine, Oliver North, to assist him in schemes to attack and undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. After being convicted of conspiracy, Iying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal, Poindexter went off to work in civilian life. Trained as a physicist, he was able to immerse himself in computer applications concerning secrecy and spying and became vice-president of a software company that contracted to work with the Pentagon agency known as Defense Advanced Research Projects, or DARPA. In 2002, Poindexter was rehired by Bush II to head the Total Information Awareness Office of DARPA, which immediately developed at plan for super-computer surveillance of the nation's internet, phone, and fax lines, enabling it (among other things) to tap into computer databases to collect the credit, financial, medical and travel records of individual citizens. In 2003, when the U.S. Congress barred the program from spying on Americans, the Pentagon changed the name of the office to Terrorism Information Awareness and permitted it to keep exploring similar operations. At the end of July 2003, two Democratic Senators-Dorgan of North Dakota and Wyden of Oregon-exposed the next item in Poindexter's bag of tricks, a futures market for predicting terrorist acts called "Policy Analysis Market." Under the plan, Wall Street traders were about to sign up at a website that the Pentagon was operating with private partners; they were scheduled to begin trading futures on Middle East developments as of October 2003. This bizarre scheme was so embarrassing to Republican Senators and the Pentagon that Poindexter was immediately forced to resign.

Zeroes page

Index of Website

Home Page