Lest we forget: Poindexter the cyberblunderer. Fifteen years ago, in November 1986, then-National Security Advisor Poindexter, along with his chief aide, Colonel Oliver North, set out to destroy more than 5,000 of their own email messages. Apparently neither man knew much about email technology. All of the messages they deleted from their computers were stored on a backup tape. The tape was found quickly, and its contents detailed the facts of the Iran- Contra scandal.
The tapes showed that Poindexter and North had devised a scheme to sell arms to Iran and to funnel the profits to the so-called Contras, who were waging war against a democratically elected socialist government in Nicaragua.
The whole deal - sending guns to the Ayatollah and funding the Contras - was a direct violation of several Acts of Congress. Poindexter and North were indicted, tried and convicted.
At his trial, Poindexter admitted that he was running American foreign policy behind the backs of Congress and the president: "I made a very deliberate decision not to tell the president so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability for the president if it ever leaked out."
Although both men were guilty of something close to treason, neither suffered much. North parlayed his notoriety into a career as a wacko right-wing talk-radio host. Poindexter's conviction was overturned on appeal on a technicality - the lies he told Congress were found to be "immunized" by his position as National Security Advisor. Instead of going to jail, he went to work for an obscure company known as Syntek Technologies, which had contracts with the Department of Defense.
This is the piece of irony that would be amusing (given Poindexter's experience with email) if it weren't frightening: his new job was to develop a system for "intelligence mining and information harvesting" of computer databases.
For more than a decade, this man, who was undone by his own cyber- clumsiness, has been working as a high-tech spook. And as a result of his work at Syntek, John Poindexter now commands one of the most powerful fronts of the Bush administration's domestic War on Terrorism. [Smart Mobs]
