The former Navy admiral behind a Pentagon project to create a futures market allowing investors to profit by predicting terrorist attacks will quit his post within weeks, US defence officials said.
News of his departure came just two days his plan for a futures trading market in predictions of assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East was scrapped by the Pentagon.
The plan was derided by Democrats and Republicans as "bizarre," "unbelievably stupid" and "offensive." The normally hawkish defence secretary Mr Donal Rumsfeld said he cancelled the programme "an hour after I read about it".
Mr Poindexter earlier spearheaded a computerised surveillance project to collect information about potential terrorist threats by scouring private databases containing data about millions of people, a move that drew criticism from privacy advocates.
The Pentagon had said the $8 million Policy Analysis Market project was meant to explore the power of futures markets to predict and possibly prevent terrorist attacks, arguing that futures projects had a track record of being good at predicting events such as election results.
A defence official said he did not anticipate Mr Poindexter working even as a consultant to the Pentagon after his departure.
Mr Poindexter served as President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser in the 1980s. He became a central figure in the Iran-contra scandal in which Reagan administration officials diverted cash from secret sales of arms to Iran to bankroll Nicaraguan guerrillas at a time when such aid was forbidden by Congress.
He was convicted of lying to Congress, but the conviction later was set aside.