John Poindexter

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Admiral John Poindexter (1985)

John Marlan Poindexter (born August 12, 1936 in Washington , Daviess County , Indiana ) is an American admiral, politician and former high-ranking employee of the US Department of Defense .

He was best known as deputy security advisor and security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan , accused of conspiracy, fraud, lying before a committee of the US Congress and the destruction of evidence in connection with the Iran-Contra affair . More recently, the nuclear physicist and former Navy admiral served as head of the DARPA Information Awareness Office established by President George W. Bush , which reports to the Pentagon.

education

Poindexter attended a school in Odon . He then joined the United States Navy . In 1958 he graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis as the best of his class. He also graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering. He then studied nuclear physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena . In 1961 he received a master’s degree in physics. From 1961 to 1964 he was a doctoral student with the German Nobel Prize laureate Rudolf Mößbauer, who taught there, and worked on a model to understand the Mößbauer effect . He received his doctorate with honors in 1964. The topic of his dissertation was: "Electronic Shielding by Closed Shells in Thulium Compounds".

family

Poindexter lives in Rockville in the US state of Maryland . He has been married to Linda A. Godwin since June 6, 1958, who was once a priestess of the Episcopal Church , but converted to Catholicism in August 2001. They have five sons together, including the astronaut Alan Poindexter (1961–2012). From 1998 to 2010 he was a NASA astronaut and pilot of the space shuttle mission STS-122 and commander of the mission STS-131 .

marine

Between 1958 and 1987 Poindexter served in the American Navy. After his training he was first a technical officer (engineering officer), later chief engineer on board destroyers . In the course of several promotions, he got his first own command as the commander of the cruiser USS England in 1971 . In 1974 he became chief of the 31st destroyer flotilla. Due to his practical experience, he got various tasks at staff level and served several naval ministers as an advisor, was adjutant to the chief of the operations department of the Navy and in 1978 deputy chief of the naval command for education and training.

politics

Poindexter got his first political office in 1981. He became a member of the National Security Council of the USA (NSC) as a representative of his weapon branch. Between 1981 and 1983 he served there in various functions as a military advisor. On October 17, 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed him deputy to then National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane . In this role, Poindexter's main task was to fight terrorists. He was actively involved in the successful interception of the Egypt Air plane , with which the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro wanted to flee to Tunis . He also played a crucial role in Operation Urgent Fury , the occupation of Grenada in 1983. According to Reagan, he also made "an important contribution to the formulation and implementation of foreign policy objectives" on the Security Council.

In December 1985, Reagan appointed him National Security Advisor. In this office, however, he only served a year. A serious domestic political crisis erupted in the United States in 1986 when it became known that the government had supplied weapons to Iran . The crisis worsened when it became public that the profits from the arms business had flowed through illegal channels to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua , who were trying to overthrow the local government. The National Security Council played a key role in the so-called Iran-Contra affair , and Poindexter, who was primarily responsible, had to resign in 1986. During the subsequent investigation, he initially refused to give any statement, which initially blocked the investigation.

In 1988, Poindexter was charged on several counts, including participating in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct an official investigation, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence. On April 7, 1990, the court found him guilty on all counts and sentenced him to six months in prison. However, the sentence was overturned in 1991 by another court. The reason was the conviction of the court that the evidence of the prosecutors should not have been used. They had been devalued when it became known that Poindexter's testimony before the joint House-Senate committee came about only because he had been promised immunity. Without this evidence, the prosecution was unable to get a new trial.

Private sector

Between 1988 and 1989 Poindexter worked as a scientist at Presearch Inc., which was mainly concerned with the creation of studies and strategies for the Ministry of Defense.

In 1990 he co-founded TP Systems Inc., a company that developed software for personal computers. He was chief designer and programmer there until 1996. At the same time he worked from 1993 to 1996 as a consultant for the Elkins Group, a merger with the company EDS (Electronic Data Systems) for the development of a satellite-based delivery system.

From 1996 to 2002 he was First Vice President of Syntek Technologies, a small company that had contracts in both defense and private sectors. The company also became known in Germany when technical consultants were at Cargolifter AG's side in central positions .

comeback

In December 2002, the controversial ex-admiral's political career made a brief comeback. President George W. Bush appointed him director of the Information Awareness Office (ILO). This DARPA project was under the Ministry of Defense. The most important task was the internationally harshly criticized “Total Information Awareness Program” (complete knowledge building). It should collect and evaluate all available information on American citizens that can be used to prevent terrorist attacks. Critics feared the end of all democratic freedom in the USA. William Safire described the goal as follows: “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine you subscribe to and every prescription you fill out, every website you visit, and every email you send or receive, every degree you are awarded, every bank account you open, every trip you book and every celebration you attend - all of these transactions and transfers will go into what the Department of Defense calls a 'virtual describes 'centralized large database'. "

However, Poindexter had to resign due to another project. The idea was called Policy Analysis Market (PAM). The Pentagon wanted to use the mechanisms of the stock exchange to predict terrorist attacks or political turns. Traders online should bet on whether or when certain political events will occur. As with stock options, profits should be earned when the events actually happen in a given time period. On the basis of the bets that the traders are ready to make, the so-called Policy Analysis Program should predict which of the events are likely in order to create a kind of violent climate index, similar to the various surveys of economic experts, entrepreneurs and consumers with the help of these it tries to recognize the development of the economy. After heavy public criticism, the funding was stopped.

In August 2003, Poindexter resigned from office under pressure from then Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. http://thesis.library.caltech.edu/4310/1/Poindexter_jm_1964.pdf
  2. Mike Steere: The Baron's Big Balloon . In: Wired . Issue 8.08, August 2000
  3. ^ William Safire : You Are a Suspect . In: The New York Times . November 14, 2002