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TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS

Total Information Awareness and the Ethics of Governmental Data Mining

Paul E. King

Texas Christian University

Paul E. King is Professor of Communication Studies at Texas Christian

University, Fort Worth, TX, 76129, USA, (01) 817-257-6076, p.king@tcu.edu.

Presented at “Digital Dynamics: Control, Participation, and Exclusion,”

conference, co-sponsored by the International Communication Association and the

International Association for Media and Communication Research, Loughborough

University, U. K., November 6-9, 2003.

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Abstract

As a reaction to terrorist threats, the U. S. Department of Defense initiated a

program designed to search for electronic fingerprints of terrorist activity. During its

short life span, the program sought to apply modern data mining techniques to vast

quantities of personal information on U. S. citizens: bank records, credit card use,

Internet use, travel, medical histories, cell-phone calls, etc. Labeled Total Information

Awareness (TIA), the program raised significant privacy concerns, particularly since it

was headed by Admiral John Poindexter, a man convicted of lying to Congress and

obstruction of justice during his term as National Security Advisor under President

Ronald Reagan. This manuscript reviews both TIA and the background of Dr.

Poindexter, it’s director. Three approaches to the analysis of governmental data mining

ethics are proposed and discussed and the potential for future challenges to privacy

through governmental data mining are analyzed.

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Total Information Awareness and the Ethics of Governmental Data Mining

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September

11, 2001, the United States Government began a broad series of initiatives to prevent

future terrorist incidents by increasing domestic security. While the majority of these

initiatives were provided in legislation passed by the United States Congress (2001) in

the form of the Patriot Act, the Department of Defense was busy as well. John

Poindexter, an Admiral who had resigned in disgrace as a principal figure in the Iran-

Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, was brought back into the Defense

Department for the purpose of developing an extensive data mining system. This system,

which was named Total Information Awareness (TIA), was designed to establish a

massive federal database, containing information on U. S. citizens credit card purchases,

bank records, medical files, federal records, purchase of tickets, etc. and to connect those

records with “…events such as arrests or suspicious activities” (DARPA, 2003).

Although TIA met with significant public and Congressional resistance and

underwent substantial revision, significant opportunities for abuse of individual privacy

through government sponsored data mining still exist. This essay will briefly review the

controversial history of TIA. Attention will be given to the hiring of John Poindexter as

program director and the effect of Poindexter’s hiring on the eventual fate of the

program. Finally, the ethics of government data mining will be critically analyzed.

Data Mining and the Evolution of TIA

Systems of searching for important relationships in large volumes of data has

become generally known as data mining. Data mining is a loosely defined process which

can involve gaining access to information, using advanced statistical techniques such as

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factor analysis, discriminant analysis and cluster analysis to uncover non-obvious

relationships in the data, and cross-referencing multiple data bases to gain statistical

power (for a basic review, see Kumar & Baker, 2002). On a more sinister note, data

mining may also involve the development of relevant data through intrusive

computerized tools such as cookies, worms, and other forms of spyware. For example,

Brilliant Digital Entertainment revealed to the U.S. Government in 2002 that its software

had been installed on millions of computers running KaZaA (a file sharing program

which has been a widely used replacement for Napster, the music file sharing program).

Two schemes were involved (Snell, 2003). First, the company planned to use the

individual computers as a vast network—selling the unused processing capacity to other

companies. Second, the spyware was used to gather information from the individual

machines, and individual users, and sell that information to interested individuals and

corporations. The concern with spyware is not limited to private companies. The U.S.

Government (e.g., the FBI’s Carnivore system) has already established a precedent for

the use of tools to capture information as it is transmitted in the form of e-mail (Harrison,

2000; Schwartz, 2002).

One of the best known examples of the utility of data mining involves University

of Chicago Professor Don Swanson (Guernsey, 2003). Swanson, an information

specialist rather than a medical doctor, was interested in identifying the causative factors

in migraine headaches. By using an analysis of unexpected terms appearing in some 2500

medical articles related to migraines, Swanson identified magnesium deficiency as a

potential cause of the headaches. Later experimentation confirmed the link. While

research is normally deductive, proceeding from a hypothesis or theory to predict an

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association between variables, data-mining permits investigators to conduct massive

inductive investigations.

Data-mining techniques can also be used to test hypotheses and assumptions by

applying them to historical cases. The Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company noted that in

one fraudulent case a claim investigator had noted in writing that a particular accident

involved a car braking hard in front of another car and, later in the notes, that traffic

conditions were light. The company developed a computerized analytic tool which used

that information to successfully predict fraudulent insurance cases, leading to the reported

saving of 1.4 million dollars (Guernsey, 2003).

One of the most recent developments in data mining involves the application of

neural network techniques. Neural networks are very sophisticated modeling techniques

which can be applied to extremely complex functions (Kumar & Bates, 2002). They

abandon the linear assumptions of earlier analytic approaches in an effort to find non-

linear relationships in data. In addition, these approaches are capable of automatically

learning the structure of the data. Output may be represented graphically and does not

require as much training for the end user as more traditional statistical methods.

Interestingly, some references to neural networks could be found in web sites related to

TIA in late 2002 (DARPA, 2002).

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Defense Advanced

Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created the Information Awareness Office, “to

research, develop, and demonstrate innovative information technologies to detect terrorist

groups planning attacks against American citizens, anywhere in the world” (DARPA,

2002). DARPA, with a budget estimated at two billion dollars per year, has a long history

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of funding projects which may have application to improvements in national defense. The

agency generally credited with the development of the modern Internet, DARPA funds

most of its projects in the form of contracts awarded to companies, individuals and

institutions of higher learning (Malakoff, 1999). The Office of Information Awareness

and it’s TIA program were, however, internal agents of the Department of Defense.

TIA’s publicly announced objectives were to develop and test technologies related to:

(DARPA, 2002)

Collaboration and sharing over TCP/IP networks across agency

boundaries

Large, distributed repositories with dynamic schemas that can be changed

interactively by users

Foreign language machine translation and speech recognition

Biometric signatures of humans

Real time learning, pattern matching and anomalous pattern detection

Entity extraction from natural language text

Human network analysis and behavior model building engines

Event prediction and capability development model building engines

Structured argumentation and evidential reasoning

Story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance

Business rules sub-systems for access control and process management

Biologically inspired algorithms for agent control

Other aids for human cognition and human reasoning

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John Poindexter

TIA was conceived and promoted by John Poindexter. After graduating first in his

class at the U.S. Naval Academy, Poindexter went on to earn a doctorate in physics and

rose to the rank of Admiral (Safire, 2002). He ascended to a high level of public notoriety

during the Reagan Administration. While serving in the National Security Agency (NSA)

under National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Poindexter was regarded as a highly

intelligent individual who proposed and supported bold action and was intensely critical

of constraints that inhibited the Reagan Administration from dealing effectively with its

enemies. In fact, President Reagan’s chief legal counsel recently wrote that Poindexter,

despite all of his brilliance, was lacking in judgment (Wallison, 2003).

It was while working for the National Security Agency that Poindexter became

involved in a series of events which came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair (for a

review of Iran-Contra, see Fisher, 1997; Walsh, 1993). The affair began, in cooperation

with the government of Israel (Segev, 1988), as an effort to buy influence with the

government of Iran. Accomplished by selling weapons to the Iranians, including large

numbers of TOW anti-tank missiles and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, the policy was in

direct conflict with President Reagan’s public position of refusing to sell arms to

countries with links to terrorism. In fact the U.S. was in the position of placing significant

pressure on European allies to prevent arms sales to Iran at the same time that it was

conducting such sales in secret. While it was initially claimed that these sales were

designed to strengthen moderate elements in the Iranian government, later disclosures in

Congressional hearings laid bare the fact that the arms were a form of ransom paid in an

effort to free hostages being held in Lebanon (Safire, 2002).

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In the midst of these clandestine operations, Regan’s National Security Advisor

resigned and, on December 4, 1985, Poindexter was named to assume the post. This was

a monumental responsibility. Only the White House Chief of Staff, Don Regan, Vice-

President George Bush, and Poindexter were allowed free, unscheduled access to the

President (Kowert, 2002).

After the story of the arms sales began to break in Middle Eastern news sources, it

came to the Attention of the U.S. Attorney General that possible violations of Federal law

were occurring in the National Security Agency. Alerted in advance that the Justice

Department would be seizing records, Poindexter and his chief operations officer, Oliver

North, destroyed massive numbers of records and logs related to their activities. North

was fired and Poindexter resigned. Later investigation revealed the extent of the

chicanery. With authorization from Poindexter, North and retired General Richard Secord

had used the profits from the sale of the arms to Iran to (among other things) fund

military support for the anti-government forces in Nicaragua. Nicaragua had long been a

thorn in the side of the Administration. Led by Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista Government

was a communist regime that appeared to be solicitous of help from the Soviet Union.

Reagan had repeatedly tried to intervene through covert operations in an effort to support

the anti-government forces (the Contras). Lacking Congressional support, the CIA had

mined a Nicaraguan harbor, an action which caused a great deal of international

embarrassment. In response, Congress had passed the “Boland Amendment” which

denied the use of any Federal funds for support of the Contras or other intervention in

Nicaragua.

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In the course of Congressional testimony, it appeared that Poindexter had

knowingly and intentionally carried out an operation to sell arms to a nation which was

believed to be supporting terrorism, to have somehow arranged to take several cargo

plane loads of U.S. arms “off the books” of the Defense Department, to have authorized

the use of the proceeds of that sale to have been placed in Swiss bank accounts, to have

authorized Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and another individual no longer associated

with the U.S. Government to gain complete control of the funds (some were later

determined to have been put to personal use), and to have directed the purchase of

weapons on the international arms market for the support of the Nicaraguan Contras. In

sum, Poindexter set up an unaccountable shadow agency for the purpose of

accomplishing an objective specifically forbidden by U.S. law. This last point sets

Poindexter up in direct juxtaposition to the U. S. Constitution. Fisher (1997, p. 224)

writes, “For reasons both constitutional and practical, U.S. foreign policy must be

conducted only with funds appropriated by Congress. Allowing the President to carry out

foreign policy with private or foreign contributions would create what the framers feared

most: the union of the purse and the sword.”

In order to carry out this scheme, Poindexter was required to lie. He lied, under

oath, to Congressional oversight committees. During later hearings on the scandal, Oliver

North famously turned lying to Congress into a patriotic act by testifying that he had no

alternative buy to lie—that he was forced to choose between lies and lives. While this

excuse played very well for conservative Republicans, the extent to which Poindexter and

North lied to their own allies and superiors did not come out in the testimony. For

example, U. S. Secretary of State George Schultz indicated that Poindexter lied to him

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about arms sales to Iran. As President Reagan’s legal counsel, Peter Wallison was asked

whether Reagan could violate his own executive order that arms not be exported to

countries dealing with terrorists. In seeking to respond to the legal issues, Wallison was

advised by the White House Chief of Staff to speak with Poindexter. The story provided

to him by Poindexter was a lie (Wallison, 2003). In their book concerning the Iran-Contra

Hearings, Senators William Cohen and George Mitchell relate that Poindexter lied to the

Administration’s own chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Ed Meese (Cohen

& Mitchell, 1988).

Poindexter was even rebuked by his former boss, National Security Advisor,

Robert MacFarlane (1994, p. 103), who wrote:

Once you put a person like this in a new environment, he continues

to apply the same old skills as best he can. In John’s case, these were

discipline, loyalty to his boss, disdain for Congress and the press. I was

disappointed that his response to the scandal was to refuse accountability,

since it seemed out of keeping with his character. Yet I understood the

policy judgments he had made, and I felt a measure of responsibility for

having put him in a position for which he was unsuited.

Ultimately, Poindexter was charged with five felony counts: conspiracy, two

counts of obstruction of Congress, and two counts of false statements. He was convicted

on all charges on April 7, 1990 and sentenced to spend 6 months in prison. On Nov. 15,

1991, an appeals panel reversed Poindexter’s convictions because of immunity issues

related to his testimony before Congress in 1987.1 During Congressional testimony,

Poindexter claimed that he had acted independently and without knowledge of the

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President. During his trial, he reversed himself and claimed to have acted on specific

instructions from the President. In fact, the Poindexter trial became something of a show

when Poindexter subpoenaed the former President to testify. During seven hours of

videotaped responses, President Reagan’s testimony was fraught with contradictions,

inexplicable lapses of memory, and inconsistencies with previous remarks made to the

Tower Commission (Walsh, 1993).2 Remarkably, President Reagan repeatedly claimed

that he had never been presented with evidence that any diversion of funds to the Contras

had ever occurred. He maintained this position even when shown copies of the findings

of the Tower Commission. In summarizing these events, President Reagan’s first

National Security Advisor, Robert MacFarlane, wrote “The President of the United States

is ultimately accountable for whatever happens in his administration, and his subordinates

should not be held criminally to account for a political disagreement. They never have

been before. And they should not have been in 1986. But Ronald Reagan lacked the

moral conviction and the intellectual courage to stand up in our defense and in defense of

his policy (1994, p. 360).” The final defendants in the case, including Secretary of

Defense Casper Weinberger, were pardoned by President Bush on December 24, 1992.

An Assessment of Ethics

It seems truly bizarre that the current Bush administration would choose John

Poindexter to head a project with potential implications for violation of constitutional

rights. The news story concerning TIA broke late in 2002 and each description of the

program carried some statement about it’s head, Dr. Poindexter. Conservative columnist

William Safire (2002, p. B4) wrote, “This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again

with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-Contra…This time, however, he has been

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seizing power in the open.” The editorial staff of the Asheville Citizen-Times (2002, p.

A8) concluded, “The fact that a person with such proven disregard for both the law and

the truth is in charge of this project—with $10 million in funding this budget year—

should be the most prominent warning light of all.” The respected Helen Thomas, long-

time White House reporter and now syndicated Columnist wrote (2002, p. B6), “TIA’s

grandiose mission is just what its name implies: to find out everything about us…Scary,

isn’t it? Even scarier is the fact that the director of this Orwellian vision is, of all people,

John Poindexter.” Clearly, the association of Poindexter with TIA created a storm of

editorial protest, with some claiming that TIA would not be a public concern at all save

for Poindexter’s involvement (Baer, 2003, p. 1A).

Ethics of an activity, or proposed activity, may be assessed in a number of ways.

A common default argument is to examine the legality of an activity. This approach may

provide a bright line, but often is not supported by underlying theory or reasoning tied to

more lasting ethical principles. A second approach may be to examine the utility of the

activity. Utilitarianism is often used by Governments, as in Churchill’s claim that in time

of war truth is so precious that it must be guarded by a pack of lies. A final approach is to

examine the activity in question and measure it using relevant systemic criteria. In other

words, the actions of a democratic government may be assessed based upon whether

those actions involve democratic practices and promote democratic goals.

TIA and U. S. Law

The United States, while protecting individual privacy, has less protection than

the European Union, which adopted, in 1995, a directive on “The Protection of

Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of

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Such Data” (Schacter, 2001, p. 329). Passage of this directive has had a positive affect on

U. S. privacy protection since American firms are often compelled to abide by the more

stringent EU standards for purposes of commerce.

DARPA staff was sufficiently concerned that TIA was a violation of the U. S.

Privacy Act of 1974 that they had begun discussions regarding the need to modify or

amend the laws (Baer, 2003). The 1974 Federal Privacy Act actually required

government record-keepers to abide by the federal Code of Fair Information Practices,

thus imparting legal authority to that document. A review of the provisions of the

document is informative (Simon, 2000, pp. 132-133):

There shall be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence

is a secret.

Means must be provided for a person to find out what information about

himself or herself is in a record and how it is used.

Means must be provided for a person to prevent information about himself or

herself that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available

for other purposes without his or her consent.

There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of identifiable

information about himself or herself.

Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of

identifiable personal data must ensure the reliability of the data for its

intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data.

Obviously, TIA would be incapable of permitting individuals to obtain and

correct specific information since individuals would only be identified when patterns and

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profiles emerged. The TIA data base would not be generated for its own purpose but

would be secretly gleaned from data ostensibly used for other, very private, purposes.

The 1974 law was informative in the development of international rules

concerning privacy, including the guidelines developed by the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development (Simon, 2000). These international guidelines

specify that data can only be used with the knowledge and consent of individuals, that

data provided for one purpose cannot be hijacked for another, and that individuals must

be able to access and check all databases. So, even were U. S. law changed in such a

fashion as to permit the operation of a system like TIA, the U. S. would likely find itself

in violation of international agreements.

Utilitarian View

There is often a strong desire to argue that the ends justify the means in cases of

extreme crises. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Americans felt

particularly and personally vulnerable. In this context, many felt that it would be

justifiable to shoot down an Airliner if such a vehicle were to be used as a massive

weapon, or to obliterate a portion of a city where biological agents were being prepared.

This argument, the greatest good for the greatest number, is a classical utilitarian

approach that often, and unfortunately, goes unchallenged. Bovée (1991) suggests a

number of questions that should be addressed when an appeal is made based upon

means/ends reasoning: Is the end universally good or simply good for us? Is the end

actually immoral or simply unpopular or distasteful? Are more ethical means available if

we are simply more patient, deliberative or skillful? Will the consequences of the bad

means be more noxious than the good effects of the ends?

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Most important is the question of whether the unethical means will, in fact,

produce the good ends. In this case TIA may be judged entirely unethical because it

cannot be shown to be efficacious. According to Pyle (2003), data mining suffers from

three primary problems: bias of the data set, garbage (spurious relationships), and over

searching (e.g., “If you look long enough and hard enough for any particular pattern in a

data set, the more you look, the more likely you are to find it—whether it’s meaningful or

not.” p. 363). In the present context, consider the trade-off between type I and type II

error in a data set. In the social sciences, type I error protections (avoiding a false positive

result) are established at a minimum level of .05. That means that we are unwilling to

publish research findings unless we are 95% certain that the findings are not the result of

chance (statistical random fluctuations). However, type I and type II error are reciprocal.

Any increase in one leads to a decrease in the other. So, in order to avoid the potential for

a false positive, we must open the door for possible false negative (type II) errors. In the

social sciences, we generally accept type II protection above .80. Type II error is also a

function of effect size—the extent to which a particular phenomenon can be observed in a

larger population. In summary, if statistical analysis is established to prevent false

positives (suspecting innocent citizens of terrorist activity), and given the fact that the

effect size (number of discovered terrorists compared to size of the population) is

incredibly low, the system will be extremely prone to type II error (missing the terrorists).

Of course, the programmers may introduce high levels of type I error in an effort to

increase statistical power. That is exactly what civil libertarians are concerned about.

Another concern related to data set bias is that terrorists will quickly learn not to

use credit cards or bank accounts to purchase suspicious materials immediately before

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booking one-way airfare at the last minute. Gilham Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture

fund established by the CIA, discussed the issues and related them to friends of his who,

“…have Arabic names…they are naturalized citizens and because they are investment

bankers they buy one-way tickets” (Lohr, 2003, p. 6). Louie argues against a data mining,

or profiling, system since it would be much more likely to produce faulty results,

particularly given the adaptive nature of the terrorist threat. Rather, he argues that data

analysis should only be brought to bear when suspicions arising from normal

investigative leads occur. This would have proven effective in the case of the 9/11 attacks

since two FBI offices had communicated suspicious activity by the terrorists. TIA would

not have been required. However, the manner in which innocent individuals are swept up

into terrorist investigations was recently illustrated with the FBI’s Carnivore e-mail

reading system when agents destroyed data concerning Osama bin Laden’s network

because the investigation swept in large quantities of private correspondence (Schwartz,

2002).

Critics have vociferously attacked the utility of TIA. Fortune magazine named it

the Worst Technology of 2002 and Chris Hoofnagle, counsel for the Electronic Privacy

Information Center claimed, “This type of profiling has been the goal of direct market for

years…If you get a 2 to 3 percent response from direct mail, that’s considered a victory.

That’s how inaccurate the system is. With junk mail, you can just throw it away; we’re

talking about people’s civil liberties being invaded here” (Baer, 2003, p. 1A). At the very

least, the efficacy of TIA has been seriously questioned.

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Development of Academic Criteria for Evaluating Ethics

While a good deal of attention has been devoted to the development of criteria

related to public discourse, very little has been accorded issues of personal privacy

(Johannesen, 2002). Transfer of concepts may be possible in some cases. For example,

ethics models are often based upon the standards of the political system in which

government officials function. In other words, in a democratic political system, political

discourse must employ and promote democratic ideals to be judged ethical (Cody &

Lynn, 1992).

Among the standards often recommended in this area are equality and self-

determination. Both of these elements are fundamental to democracy and free enterprise

and both may be applied to the current case of data mining. Data mining systems such as

TIA are essentially profiling systems which cast suspicion on individuals due to country

of origin and personal characteristics (Lohr, 2003). To the extent that individuals are

placed under suspicion and increased scrutiny through no fault or actions of their own,

but due to personal characteristics beyond their control, such as surname, the proposed

system may be judged unethical. Self-determination is characteristic of systems in which

political power is vested in the individual rather than in the political system. In the U.S.

Bill of Rights, great care is taken to protect the rights of the minority and the rights of

individuals under suspicion. In fact, 5th amendment protections against unreasonable

search and seizure are the basis for U. S. privacy law and have been interpreted by the

Supreme Court as a basic human right—the right to be left alone. This feature of self-

determination could pose a significant constitutional challenge for TIA.

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Beyond that, Sissela Bok has written extensively concerning truthfulness and

secrecy in private and public life. In Secrets, she argues that it is vital that individuals

retain control over secrecy concerning private matters, “With no control over secrecy and

openness, human beings could not remain either sane or free” (Bok, 1984, p. 69). Bok

warns specifically and urgently about the joining of power and secrecy and concludes

that such an arrangement invites abuse. Her analysis may be summarized as pointing

toward an ethical arrangement in democratic society where individuals retain significant

control over their own personal information but government is an open book, inviting

voters to fully understand policy and practices in order to prevent abuse. Unfortunately,

current government efforts, including TIA, have been characterized as a “one-way

information highway…[in which] government wants to learn more and divulge less”

(Kuhnhenn & Brown, 2002, p. 1)

Aftermath and Conclusions

The death knell for TIA began when the program was seriously questioned by

Republican lawmakers and conservative media commentators (Eggen & O’Harrow,

2003). In particular the program’s association with John Poindexter provided critics with

substantial ammunition to question the Defense Department’s wisdom. Reacting to

outrage over TIA, Senators led by Ron Wyden (Democrat of Oregon) tacked an

amendment onto an important spending bill. Passed without opposition, the Wyden

amendment effectively ended the Pentagon program (Chaffin, 2003). The Senate action

eclipsed last-minute efforts by the Pentagon to save the program by providing for an

oversight committee and renaming the project Terrorism Information Awareness.

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John Poindexter’s reappearance in government as the Director of the Office of

Information Awareness undoubtedly functioned to bring adverse attention to TIA. In fact,

the whole incident seemed stranger than fiction. Apparently with no regard for the

privacy issues involved, Poindexter chose to represent TIA with the symbol of a great

eyeball inside a pyramid attentively watching an image of the globe. In other words, we

(the Federal Government, symbolized historically by the pyramid) are watching

everyone. Over his office door, Poindexter fixed the Latin motto, “Scientia Est Potentia,”

“knowledge is power” (Safire, 2003). Understanding that TIA was a plan to accumulate

all available knowledge about all U. S. citizens in one massive data base, Poindexter must

surely have recognized the extent of his apparent megalomania.

Besides Poindexter, several figures from the Iran-Contra schedule have been

allowed back into government during the current Bush Administration. Explaining this

phenomenon is difficult and involves outright speculation. It is however, a fact that Vice-

President George H. W. Bush, despite his later claims during his Presidential campaign to

have been completely out of the loop on the Iran-Contra decision making, was actively

present at key meetings where decisions were made on sale of arms to Iran. This fact was

established when Defense Secretary Weinberger’s notes were published. The special

prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, concluded in the executive summary of his final report

(1993):

“Independent Counsel's investigation did not develop evidence that

proved that Vice President Bush violated any criminal statute. Contrary to his

public pronouncements, however, he was fully aware of the Iran arms sales.

Bush was regularly briefed, along with the President, on the Iran arms sales,

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and he participated in discussions to obtain third-country support for the

contras. The OIC obtained no evidence that Bush was aware of the diversion.

The OIC learned in December 1992 that Bush had failed to produce a diary

containing contemporaneous notes relevant to Iran/contra, despite requests

made in 1987 and again in early 1992 for the production of such material.

Bush refused to be interviewed for a final time in light of evidence developed

in the latter stages of OIC's investigation, leaving unresolved a clear picture of

his Iran/contra involvement. Bush's pardon of Weinberger on December 24,

1992 pre-empted a trial in which defense counsel indicated that they intended

to call Bush as a witness.

If Bush had been involved in committee decisions to authorize Poindexter, North,

and others to engage in questionable activities, then it would not be unreasonable to

assume that the current President might wish to find means to aid those who met with

criminal prosecution over the affair—particularly since his father had avoided being

deposed by the special prosecutor. It must be remembered, however, that Poindexter

approached the DOD with the idea for TIA. There is no evidence that the current Bush

administration was actively seeking his service.

One unfortunate consequence of the involvement of Poindexter is that U. S.

officials may view the loss of the TIA program as a tactical rather than a strategic loss. In

other words, they may believe that the message is sound if a more palatable messenger

can be found. In fact, there is evidence that some aspects of TIA are still being actively

researched by another new federal office called the Advanced Research and Development

Activity (Markoff, 2003). Another apparent strategy is to get private companies and

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contractors to do the work that the Government is barred from doing. This approach,

straight out of the Iran-Contra textbook, may have been involved in a recent incident in

which JetBlue admitted that it had, “provided travel records on more than a million

passengers to a Pentagon contractor, violating its own privacy rules…The contractor,

Torch Concepts,…matched the JetBlue records against another database to determine the

passengers’ Social Security numbers, occupations and family size in an effort to identify

potential terrorists” (Shenon & Schwartz, 2003, C1).

Clearly, it would be disastrous to conclude that the uproar over governmental data

mining was caused solely by active involvement of Poindexter. Serious public

discussions concerning the ethics of such government activity and it’s implications for

citizens privacy rights must occur. Perhaps many Americans feel that freedoms must be

sacrificed to save the nation from terrorism. Others feel that such a path would rob the

nation of her soul. These sentiments were expressed on a different occasion by President

Abraham Lincoln, who in an April, 1864 address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland,

stated: “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the

same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with

himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for

some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here

are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty.

And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different

and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny" (Basler, 1953, pp. 301-302). Poindexter

was rebuked at trial for placing his judgment above that of the citizens of the United

TIA 22

States. More recently, he desired to mobilize vast stores of personal information in an

effort to preserve our liberty. Is that liberty or is it tyranny?

Denouement

Following the demise of TIA, John Poindexter remained at DARPA for the

purpose of pursuing new ideas for fighting terrorism. He quickly became involved in

advocating the development of an online futures market for betting on Middle Eastern

developments (Graham, 2003). “FutureMap” was a scheme to allow individuals to place

secure bets on the probability of future events, including terrorist attacks, assassinations,

changes in governments, etc. The scheme raised the specter of individuals profiting from

terrorist activity (e.g., “I’ve got $500 down on a bombing in Israel this week,” or “If

Sharon is assassinated, I stand to make over $1000”). The scheme was based on the

notion that the accumulated judgment of vast numbers of individuals would be more

accurate than expert opinion—as is the case with financial futures. However, the idea was

deeply offensive to many individuals on both sides of the political isle and Poindexter

was finally forced to resign from office, again, on August 12, 2003.

TIA 23

Notes

1 Poindexter appealed to his Constitutional rights (the 5th amendment) against self-

incrimination when called to testify at the Iran-Contra hearings. Congress then granted

him immunity from prosecution in order to compel his testimony, despite warnings from

the independent prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, that such immunity might jeopardize

Poindexter’s prosecution. While Poindexter and North were both found guilty, their

convictions were overturned on appeal.

2 The Tower Commission was appointed by Ronald Reagan to conduct an independent

inquiry into the events surrounding the Iran-Contra scandal.

TIA 24

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