Pentagon market on Mideast ‘grotesque’

THE Pentagon is setting up a commodity market-style trading system in which investors would be able to bet on political and economic events in the Mideast – including the likelihood of assassinations and terrorist attacks.

But two Democratic senators said last night they wanted the project stopped before investors began registering this week.

The Pentagon office overseeing the project said it was part of a research effort “to investigate possible ways to prevent terrorist attacks”. It said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.

The Policy Analysis Market is intended to help the Pentagon predict events in the region based on investors’ information or analyses.

A graphic on its webpage showed hypothetical futures’ contracts where investors could trade on the likelihood Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or that Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.

Although the website described the Policy Analysis Market as “a market in the future of the Mideast”, the graphic included the possibility of a North Korean missile attack. That was apparently removed after the news conference by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticising the market.

“The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and grotesque,” Wyden said. Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and “unbelievably stupid”.

“Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlour so people could bet on the assassination of a US political figure, or the overthrow of an institution ?” he said.

According to its website, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint

programme of the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, and two private companies: Net Exchange, a market technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of the publisher of The Economist magazine.

DARPA has received strong criticism from Congress for its Terrorism Information Awareness programme, a computerised surveillance programme that has raised privacy concerns.

Wyden said the Policy Analysis Market was under retired Admiral John Poindexter, the head of the Terrorism Information Awareness programme and in the 1980s a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The website says government agencies will not be allowed to participate and will not have access to the identities or funds of traders.