BBC NEWS | Americas | Pentagon axes online terror bets

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<table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="0" width="203" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="152" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="203" alt="US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39339000/jpg/_39339245_wolfowitzap203.jpg" /> <div class="cap">Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: "I share your shock"</div> </div> </td></tr> </table>  <b>The Pentagon has abandoned plans to set up a controversial online trading market to help predict terrorist attacks.</b> <p> There was uproar after opposition Democrats in the US Senate highlighted the plan and described it as ridiculous and grotesque. <p> Under the plan, bets could have been made about future terrorist attacks, conflicts, and assassination attempts. <p> But the proposal ran into fierce opposition in the US Congress. <p>  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="208" align="right" border="0"> <tr> <td width="5"><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="5" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div> <div class="mva"> <img height="13" border="0" width="24" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote.gif" /> <b> The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque </b> <img height="13" align="right" vspace="0" border="0" width="23" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote.gif" /><br clear="all" /> </div> </div> <div class="mva"> <div> Ron Wyden, Democratic Senator </div> </div> </td> </tr> </table>  Earlier, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle took to the Senate floor calling the proposal "a plan to trade in death". <p> "This programme could provide an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism," he declared. <p> "It is perhaps the most irresponsible, outrageous and poorly thought out of anything I have heard from the administration." <p> Ron Wyden of Oregon was one of two Democratic Senators who wrote to the Pentagon urging it to abandon the idea. <p> "The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," he said. <p> His fellow Senator, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. <p> <b>Market forces</b> <p> The idea was to improve the prediction and prevention of events by using the expertise of the open market instead of relying only on government agencies. <p>  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="208" align="right" border="0"> <tr> <td width="5"><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="5" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div> <div class="mva"> <img height="13" border="0" width="24" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote.gif" /> <b> It is trying to gather insights of people in a cost effective way </b> <img height="13" align="right" vspace="0" border="0" width="23" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote.gif" /><br clear="all" /> </div> </div> <div class="mva"> <div> Merli Baroudi<br />Economist Intelligence Unit </div> </div> </td> </tr> </table>  The market would have worked by getting traders to deposit money in an account and using that to buy and sell contracts. They would have made their money if a particular event actually happened <p> "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," said US Defence Department, defending the idea in a statement on Monday. <p> The proposed scheme - called the Policy Analysis Market (Pam) - was set up by a Pentagon unit known as the Defence Advanced Research Projects Unit (Darpa). <p> The BBC's Washington correspondent Nick Childs said the plan was a sign of the lengths defence and intelligence officials will go to find ways of preventing future events like the 11 September attacks. <p> <b>'Brilliantly imaginative'</b> <p> When confronted by outraged Democrats in Congress on Tuesday, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said he had learned about it from newspaper reports that morning. <p> "I share your shock at this kind of programme," he told a foreign relations committee hearing. "We'll find out about it, but it is being terminated." <p> However, he defended the work of the brains behind the project, Darpa. <p> "The agency is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative. It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative," he said. <p> Invitations for an initial 1,000 traders had already gone out in preparation for an October start date. <p> One of the organisations which provided data for the project was the Economist Intelligence Unit in London. <p> Speaking before the plan was abandoned, its Director of Risk Services, Merli Baroudi, told BBC News Online: "It is trying to gather insights of people in a cost effective way. <p> "Markets have done this in economics for some time and the Iowa Electronic Markets does it for US presidential elections, so it is not really novel." <p>  </font> <br /><br clear="all" /> <div class="mvtb"><table border="0" width="416" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr> <td width="213"><a onClick="popUpPage('http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3106559.stm','status=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=370,height=445','Mailer')" 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src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /></td> <td width="203" valign="top"> <div class="avh"> WATCH AND LISTEN </div> <a href="/media/audio/39340000/rm/_39340807_terrortrade.ram"> <b>North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan</b><br /> "It will be offencive to almost everyone"<br clear="all" /> <img height="13" hspace="0" vspace="5" border="0" width="60" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/audionews.gif" /> </a><br /> <img height="2" vspace="2" border="0" width="203" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/336699.gif" /><br /> <img height="10" width="1" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /><br /> <div class="puffbox"> <div class="o"> <div class="mph1"> INVESTIGATING AL-QAEDA </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <div class="nlp"> KEY STORIES </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/americas/7193038.stm">US politician on al-Qaeda charge</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/europe/6242867.stm">Moroccan jailed over 9/11 attack</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/americas/4874178.stm">Moussaoui can face death penalty</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/americas/4782524.stm">Moussaoui 'hid 9/11 plot details'</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/middle_east/4630314.stm">US rebuffs Bin Laden 'truce call'</a> </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/cccccc.gif" width="203" height="1" alt="" border="0" vspace="3" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <div class="nlp"> FEATURES/ANALYSIS </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <a href="/1/hi/uk/6066732.stm"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42441000/jpg/_42441839_ap66puffosama.jpg" align="left" width="66" height="66" alt="Osama Bin Laden" border="0" vspace="3" hspace="0"></a> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" align="left" width="5" height="66" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="0"> <a href="/1/hi/uk/6066732.stm"><b>Evolving threat</b></a> <br /> <a href="/1/hi/uk/6066732.stm"> Gordon Corera assesses how al-Qaeda has regrouped <br clear="all" /> </a> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/middle_east/4531538.stm">Terror threat remains global</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/europe/2349195.stm">The Hamburg connection</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/2780525.stm">Who's who in al-Qaeda</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/americas/4471019.stm">Q&A: Moussaoui trial</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/south_asia/2827261.stm">Hunt for Bin Laden</a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/1/hi/world/7546355.stm">Timeline: Al-Qaeda</a> </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/cccccc.gif" width="203" height="1" alt="" border="0" vspace="3" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <div class="nlp"> BACKGROUND </div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" class="" hspace="0"><br /> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><form method="post" action="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/openurl.pl"><tr><td> <select name="link" class="formatStyle" onchange="if (this.options[selectedIndex].value != '') location.href=this.options[selectedIndex].value"> <option value="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/americas/2001/day_of_terror/default.stm"> Day of terror </option> <option value="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1551100.stm"> Osama Bin Laden </option> <option value="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1670089.stm"> Al-Qaeda origins </option> <option 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BBC NEWS | Americas | Pentagon axes online terror bets