Pentagon
Scheme For A
Futures Market In Terror
By
Barry Grey
World
Socialist Web
09 August, 2003
The
latest revelation of depravity at the highest levels of the Bush administrationthe
exposure of a Pentagon plan to establish a futures market in terrorist
attacks, assassinations and military strikesis yet one more demonstration
of the criminal character of the forces that wield power in America.
Under the scheme,
dubbed Policy Analysis Market, or PAM, the Defense Department planned
to launch a futures market in which wealthy and anonymous insiders would
bet on the likelihood of such occurrences as the assassination of Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat, the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy, or a
North Korean missile strike. Those whose speculative investments panned
outin the form of terrorist violence and warwould stand
to reap a handsome return.
As the web site
of the Pentagon project promised: Involvement in this group prediction
process should prove engaging and may prove profitable.
The web site further
guaranteed the anonymity of speculators and their immunity from government
oversight, declaring that government agencies would not be allowed to
participate and would not have access to the identities or funds of
traders. The initiative was set to begin registering up to 1,000 traders
on Friday, August 1.
The Bush administration
had requested $8 million to fund the PAM futures market through 2005.
According to a July 29 article in the New York Times, The overview
of the plan said the market would focus on the economic, civil and military
futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and
Turkey and the consequences of United States involvement with those
nations. The creators of the market envision other trappings of existing
markets like derivatives.
The plan was scotched
after two Democratic senators, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron
Wyden of Oregon, called a press conference on Monday to denounce it.
Can you imagine, Dorgan asked, if another country
set up a betting parlor so that people could go inand is sponsored
by the government itselfpeople could go in and bet on the assassination
of an American political figure?
Wyden explained
the operation of the scheme as follows: For instance, you may
think early on that prime minister X is going to be assassinated. So
you buy the futures contracts for 5 cents each. As more people begin
to think the persons going to be assassinated, the cost of the
contract could go up, to 50 cents. The payoff if hes assassinated
is $1 per future. So if it comes to pass, those who bought at 5 cents
make 95 cents. Those who bought at 50 cents make 50 cents.
The senators pointed
out that those with vested interests, including terrorists and big investors
seeking to profit off of terrorist atrocities, could utilize the government-run
market to manipulate events. The Pentagon initially defended the program,
issuing a statement that said, Research indicates that markets
are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed
and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves
to be good at predicting such things as election results...
On Tuesday, however,
when leading Congressional Republicans joined in denouncing the plan,
the Defense Department reversed itself, removing the PAM web site and
announcing it had cancelled the project. At the same time a Pentagon
spokesperson rebuffed demands from some Democrats that the Pentagon
official in charge of the project, retired admiral John Poindexter,
be fired.
The plan was a joint
project of the Defense Departments Defense Advance Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) and two private companiesNet Exchange, a San Diego-based
market technologies firm, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, an arm
of the British Economist magazine. It was under the jurisdiction of
Poindexter, who directs the Terrorism Information Awareness program,
another DARPA project.
Poindexter is eminently
suited to oversee such a perverse and reactionary undertaking. Last
year he came under attack for proposing that his program, then called
the Total Information Awareness program, carry out a sweeping electronic
surveillance plan in which the Pentagon tapped into computer databases
to collect the medical, travel, credit and financial records of millions
of people. This year Congress banned Poindexters program from
being used against American citizens, and the Senate voted to block
all spending on it. A similar cutoff was defeated in the House of Representatives.
The Iran-Contra conspiracy
Poindexter is one
of several Bush appointees who, as officials in the Reagan administration,
played leading roles in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. He is one
of at least two Iran-Contra veterans in the present administration to
whom the designation criminal applies in a literal sense,
both men having been convicted of crimes arising from their actions
in that illegal and anti-democratic conspiracy.
Poindexter, who
was Reagans national security adviser, was convicted on five felony
counts, including lying to Congress and obstructing the investigation
of Iran-Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. His conviction was
overturned in 1990, along with that of Lt. Col. Oliver North, by a three-judge
federal panel, thanks to the votes of judges Laurence Silberman and
David Sentelle, two right-wing Republicans who subsequently played prominent
roles in the Kenneth Starr investigation and impeachment conspiracy
against President Clinton. [See Who is Laurence Silberman,
July 18, 1998]
Poindexters
partner in crime is Elliot Abrams, appointed by Bush to direct the office
for democracy, human rights and international operations at the National
Security Council. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to lying to Congress. As
one of his final actions before leaving the White House in 1992, the
elder George Bush, the father of the current president, pardoned Abrams.
The Iran-Contra
conspiracy involved a secret and illegal operation headquartered in
the basement of the White House and functioning under North, an official
in the National Security Council, to finance and support the contra
forces that sought to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in
Nicaragua. North recruited a network of ex-CIA and military men, Cuban
counterrevolutionaries, fascists, drug-runners and other gangsters to
assist in the contras war of terror and murder against the Nicaraguan
people.
To finance the Nicaraguan
operation and secure the release of American hostages, North and his
cohorts in the Reagan administration arranged the clandestine sale of
missiles to Iran.
The entire operation
was in direct violation of the Boland Amendment, passed by Congress
in 1982, which banned US government assistance to the contras. Poindexter,
as head of the National Security Council, supervised the activities
of North and others, such as Abrams, who were involved in supporting
the Nicaraguan terrorists.
One aspect of the
Iran-Contra conspiracy was a Federal Emergency Management Agency plan
called Rex 84, reportedly drawn up by North, that called for the
declaration of a State of Domestic National Emergency in
the event of a war in Central America, and for rounding up 400,000 Central
Americans and known Communist terrorists.
Media cover-up begins
It is already clear
that the mass media has decided to bury the issue of the Pentagons
futures market in terror. In keeping with their consistent policy of
covering up the crimes of the Bush administration and concealing its
anti-democratic and gangster-like methods, the most prominent newspapers
reported the PAM revelations in a semi-jocular tone and the cable news
networks barely noted them at all.
At a White House
press conference held on Wednesday, Bushs first formal news conference
in four months, not a single question was asked about the Pentagons
terrorist futures market.
The New York Times
published an editorial under the title Poindexters Follies,
in which it called for shutting down Poindexters wacky espionage
operation at the Pentagon and dismissing the Bush appointee. That,
as far as the cynics at the Times are concerned, should be the end of
the matter.
Nothing more could
be expected from the corrupt and compromised US media. But the Pentagon
betting scheme is no joke. It embodies the nexus of fascistic political
forces at the highest levels of the state and elements of the corporate
underworld who are involved in continuous conspiracies to further enrich
themselves through attacks on the democratic rights and social conditions
of American workers and subversion and military aggression against the
peoples of the world.
These revelations
demand a full and open investigation. Who are the architects of this
monstrous scheme? What was the role of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?
Who are the 1,000 insiders handpicked by the Pentagon to be on the ground
floor of its betting parlor? What are their financial interests in the
Middle East, the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere?
There is a further
matter raised by the PAM project that demands serious investigationthe
well documented wave of stock and bond speculation that preceded the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001.
In the two weeks prior to 9/11, there was a sudden and extraordinary
rush of trades on the American financial markets that indicated certain
wealthy and well-connected investors had advance knowledge of an impending
disaster.
Large sums were
unaccountably bet on the prospect of a major crisis that would drive
down the value of stocks in the airline, tourism and insurance industries,
and undermine confidence in the US economy as a whole. This took the
form of short-selling in the stocks of major companies in the above-named
sectors, as well as firms with offices in the World Trade Center. This
was accompanied by unusually large purchases of five-year US Treasury
notes just prior to the hijack-bombings. These notes are prized as the
best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that
hits the US.
Shortly after September
11, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Secret Service and
the FBI all announced investigations into the suspicious pattern of
stock and Treasury note trading. At the time these probes were given
little coverage by the media, and as of todaymore than 22 months
after the 9/11 attacksno results of any investigations have been
publicized.
At the time, the
World Socialist Web Site wrote: But the otherwise inexplicable
rush of Treasury note buys and short-selling in specific stocks is a
further indication that those involved in the planning of the attacks
included highly sophisticated and well-endowed people with a deep understanding
of many facets of American society.
There is thus a
precedent for financial speculation in terrorist atrocitiesone
that is well known to government and media officials and certain large
investors, and remains unexplained to the American people.