I think that the futures market was a good idea, but was in the wrong shop. The bigger problem with this "resignation" is that is seems like the DoD is going to be forced to get rid of people that think outside the box, just because the ideas generate controversy. And when people are thinking out side of the box is usually when people get their best ideas.
Obviously the message is that we don't want brilliant, creative people working in the government and coming up with innovative, outside of the box thinking to try to protect us from terrorism.
John POINDEXTER
B.S., Engineering, U.S. Naval Academy, 1958
M.S., Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1961
Ph.D., Nuclear Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1964
From 1958 to 1987 Poindexter served the U.S. Navy in various positions. As Deputy Commander of Naval Education and Training Command, amongst his duties of commanding the U.S. Navy's extensive education and training programs, he initiated a project to develop a distributed database management system for more efficient management of the training pipelines. When Commander of a destroyer squadron, he was Surface Warfare and ASW Commander of battle groups in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean and developed new tactics and battle management procedures under the Composite Warfare Commander concept. As Commanding Officer of a cruiser he pioneered the shipboard use of computers to manage the ship's force portion of yard overhauls. He has been an Executive Officer and a Chief Engineer of destroyers. Significant staff assignments included: Executive Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations, Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy and Special Assistant for Systems Analysis to the Secretary of Defense.
From 1961 - 1964 Poindexter was a laboratory assistant at the California Institute of Technology, where he conducted laboratory research to further develop a model for understanding the Mossbauer Effect with Nobel Laureate Rudolph Mossbauer.
Poindexter has served the White House as Military Assistant from 1981 - 1983, as Deputy National Security Advisor from 1983 - 1985, and as National Security Advisor from 1985 - 1986. Joining President Reagan's White House staff in 1981, from 1983 to 1985 Poindexter was responsible for leading and managing the National Security Council Staff and was Chairman of the Crisis Pre-planning Group. As National Security Advisor, Vice Admiral Poindexter was responsible for providing recommendations to The President on national security, foreign policy and defense policy. Major events in which he played a significant role included: Strategic Defense Initiative, Operation Urgent Fury, Achille Lauro incident, Libyan Operation to respond to terrorist attacks, the Reykjavik Summit with Soviets, peaceful transition of government in the Philippines, and the Iran-Contra Affair.
From 1988 to 1989 Poindexter was senior scientist at Presearch, Inc. Presearch had primarily been involved with defense studies and analysis. Faced with anticipated defense budget reductions, Poindexter joined the firm to develop new commercial enterprises. He designed and developed hardware and software for the prototype of a digital real-time, imaging system to be used for physical security of high value facilities. It was used to obtain a contract for a nuclear power plant security system.
From 1990 to 1996, Poindexter served as co-founder of TP Systems, Inc. TP Systems was a software development firm specializing in commercial software for the IBM PCs and compatibles; Poindexter was the chief designer and programmer. Development included a symbolic debugger for multi-tasking environments, a BBS communications program, and numerous utility programs.
From 1993 to 1996, Poindexter served as a consultant to Elkins Group. Elkins was a business alliance with Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which has developed the Elkins Interactive Training Network (EITN), a satellite based training delivery system. Poindexter was the Chairman of the Maritime Advisory Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. He also provided advice on strategic planning.
From 1996 to 2002 Poindexter served as Senior Vice President for SYNTEK Technologiex. SYNTEK is a small high technology firm with contracts in domestic and international defense and commercial business. Poindexter was responsible for high-level advice on management and direction of information systems projects (for example Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Project Genoa).
As of December 2002, Poindexter serves as the Director of DARPA Information Awareness Office. The mission of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) is to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components, and prototype closed-loop information systems that will counter asymmetric threats (most notably, terrorist threats) by achieving total information awareness: enabling preemption; national security warning; and, national security decision making.
From Wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter If you think markets are smart, just remember that people were bidding Enron stock through the roof at the very moment that the CFO was cooking the books on his Weber grill. Of course, a lot of people made money on the bankrupt Enron stock, because other lemmings were doing the same thing.
I believe Adm. Poindexter was in charge of the Office of Information Awareness. Google it and go to the official website. The home page is nothing but gibberish. It is extremely doubtful that anyone who is unable to speak clearly will be effective in connecting the dots on terrorism.
Your Cousin Vinnie