Demise of an Evil Genius / John Poindexter
By Tom Mooney
Scientific inquiry is by nature amoral and intellectual giants can be moral pygmies, but that's what they pay these guys for -- to think outside the box. On the other hand, we pay senators to recognize a moral abomination when they see one and do something about it. The most salutary effect of the colossal stink the Pentagon's dead pool raised on Capitol Hill was to finally drive a stake through the career of the chief moral pygmy, retired rear admiral John M. Poindexter.
It was the brilliant and amoral Mr. Poindexter -- he holds a doctorate in nuclear physics and is apparently a first-rate computer programmer -- who first thought of selling arms to Iran to finance the death squads of the Nicaraguan Contras. He took the fall for President Reagan when the plan was exposed and got out of jail free when his conviction for conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence was overturned on a technicality.
Admiral Poindexter was also the architect of the Total Information Awareness program, a proposal for a high-tech domestic spying apparatus that would have opened the e-mail and computerized records of every American to review by military intelligence. Funding for this nefarious police state tool was held up by a Congress justifiably suspicious about the motives of its creator.
There is a role for the evil genius in the national security state. The U.S. employed captured Nazi scientists, some of them actual war criminals, in its ballistic missile and nuclear submarine programs during the Cold War. The Bush administration's reckoning that it takes the mind of a terrorist to catch one may be dead-on. Admiral Poindexter, however, clearly has no respect for the Constitution or for the sanctity of human life. DARPA can continue its work, under close supervision, and without the scheming of Mr. Poindexter, who we hope has held his last government job.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101~6267~1547911,00.html#
Peace,
Tom
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