John Marlan Poindexter (born August 12, 1936 in
Odon, IndianaOdon is a town in Madison Township, Daviess County, Indiana, United States. The population was 1,376 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Odon is located at ....
) is a retired American naval officer and
Department of DefenseThe United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military...
official. He was
Deputy National Security AdvisorThe Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor is a member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, serving as deputy to the President's National Security Advisor....
and National Security Advisor for the
Reagan administrationThe United States Presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan Administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989. Reagan was the first U.S. president since Dwight D...
. He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran-Contra scandal. His convictions were eventually reversed on appeal in 1991. More recently, he served a brief stint as the Director of the DARPA
Information Awareness OfficeThe Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security...
for the administration of
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000....
.
Education and early career
He graduated from the
United States Naval AcademyThe United States Naval Academy is an undergraduate college in Annapolis, Maryland, United States, that educates and commissions officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The Academy often is referred to simply as "Annapolis". It is also called "The Academy", "The Boat School", or "Canoe...
in 1958, where he was first in his class, and among his fellow graduates were
Bruce McCandless IIBruce McCandless II is a former naval aviator with the United States Navy and former NASA astronaut. During the first of his two Space Shuttle missions he made the first untethered, free flight using the Manned Maneuvering Unit.-Education:McCandless is the son of Bruce McCandless, a decorated...
who graduated second and
SenatorThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
John McCainJohn Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
. National Security Advisor
Robert McFarlaneRobert Carl "Bud" McFarlane is the former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, serving from 1983 to late-1985. He was one of the major players in the Iran-Contra affair....
graduated the following year.
From 1961 to 1964, Poindexter studied as a graduate student and earned his M.S. in 1961 and his Ph.D. in 1964 from the
California Institute of TechnologyThe California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. The Institute maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering, and operates and manages NASA's neighboring Jet Propulsion Laboratory...
(CalTech) in Nuclear Physics. For his PhD, he conducted laboratory research to further develop a model for understanding the
Mossbauer effectThe Mössbauer effect is a physical phenomenon discovered by the German physicist Rudolf Mößbauer in 1957, and refers to the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma ray photons by atoms bound in a solid form...
with Nobel Laureate Rudolph Mossbauer.
Senior naval career
While commander of a
destroyerIn naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range but powerful attackers .Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels without the endurance...
squadron, he was
Surface WarfareModern naval warfare is divided into three operational areas: surface warfare, air warfare and submarine warfare. Each area is comprised of specialized platforms and strategies used to exploit tactical advantages unique and inherent to that area....
and
Anti-submarine warfareAnti-submarine warfare is a branch of naval warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines....
Commander of battle groups in the Western
Pacific OceanThe Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Tepre Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and...
and
Indian OceanThe Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by South Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean...
, and he developed new tactics and battle management procedures under the Composite Warfare Commander concept. As the commanding officer of
USS England (DLG-22/CG-22)The second USS England , a Leahy-class guided missile cruiser, was a ship of the United States Navy named in honor of Ensign John C. England. Originally called a "destroyer leader" or frigate, in 1975 she was re-designated a cruiser in the Navy's 1975 ship reclassification.Ensign John Charles...
, he pioneered the shipboard use of computers to manage the ship's force portion of yard overhauls.
He was also an executive officer and a chief engineer of destroyers.
As Deputy Commander of the Naval Education and Training Command, his duties included commanding the
US Navy'sThe United States Navy is the sea branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. As of 31 December 2008, the U.S. Navy had about 331,682 personnel on active duty and 124,000 in the Navy Reserve. It operates 283 ships in active service and more than...
extensive education and training programs, for which he initiated a project to develop a distributed
data managementData management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource.- Overview :The official definition provided by DAMA or Boucher: "Data Resource Management is the development and execution of architectures, policies, practices and procedures that properly manage the...
system for more efficient management of training pipelines.
His significant staff assignments included: Executive Assistant to the
Chief of Naval OperationsThe Chief of Naval Operations is the highest ranking officer in the United States Navy and is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The CNO reports directly to the Secretary of the Navy for the command, utilization of resources and operating efficiency of the operating forces of the Navy and of...
, Administrative Assistant to the
Secretary of the NavyThe United States Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the Department of the Navy. The position was a member of the President's Cabinet until 1947, when the Navy, Army, and newly created Air Force were placed in the Department of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy was placed under the...
and Special Assistant for Systems Analysis to the
Secretary of DefenseThe United States Secretary of Defense is the head of the U.S. Department of Defense , concerned with the armed services and military matters. This position roughly corresponds to Minister of defense in other countries...
. He reached the rank of
Vice AdmiralIn the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps, and the United States Maritime Service, vice admiral is a three-star flag officer, with the pay grade of...
, but was retired as a
Rear Admiral- Rear admiral :In the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps, rear admiral is a one-star flag officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Rear admiral ranks...
in 1987 (see Iran-Contra Affair below).
U.S. Executive branch service
Poindexter went on to serve in the
Reagan AdministrationThe United States Presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan Administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989. Reagan was the first U.S. president since Dwight D...
as Military Assistant, from 1981 to 1983, as Deputy National Security Advisor from 1983 to 1985, and as National Security Advisor from 1985 to 1986. From 1983 to 1985, Poindexter was responsible for leading and managing the National Security Council staff as chairman of the Crisis Pre-planning Group. As National Security Advisor, Vice Admiral Poindexter was responsible for providing recommendations to the President on national security, foreign policy and defense policy.
Major events in which he played a significant role for the Executive branch included: the
Strategic Defense InitiativeThe Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposal by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
,
Operation Urgent FuryThe Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was an invasion ordered by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on the nation of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean Sea, north of Venezuela, and over southeast of the United States...
, the
Achille LauroThe Achille Lauro, originally the Willem Ruys, a passenger liner, was a cruise ship based in Naples, Italy. She is most remembered for her 1985 hijacking.-Concept and construction:...
incident,
Operation El Dorado CanyonThe United States bombing of Libya comprised the joint United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986.-Origins:...
(in response to
LibyaLibya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa...
n terrorist attacks), the
Reykjavik SummitThe Reykjavik Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in the famous house of Höfði in Reykjavík, the capital city of Iceland, on 11 October-12, 1986...
with the
SovietsThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
.
Iran-Contra Affair
Poindexter was convicted on multiple
felonyA felony is a serious crime in the United States and previously other common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...
counts on April 7, 1990 for
conspiracyIn the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
,
obstruction of justiceThe crime of obstruction of justice includes crimes committed by judges, prosecutors, attorneys general, and elected officials in general. It is misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance in the conduct of the office. Most commonly it is prosecuted as a crime for perjury by a non governmental official...
, perjury, defrauding the government, and the alteration and destruction of evidence pertaining to the
Iran-Contra AffairThe Iran–Contra affair was a political scandal in the United States which came to light in November 1986, during the Reagan administration, in which senior US figures agreed to facilitate the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo, to secure the release of hostages and to fund...
. The convictions were reversed in 1991 on the technical grounds that the prosecution's evidence may have been tainted by exposure to Poindexter's testimony before the joint House-Senate committee investigating the matter, in which Poindexter's testimony was compelled by a grant of 'use immunity'. The prosecution was not able to re-try the case.
Defense contractor work
From 1988 to 1989, Poindexter was senior scientist at Presearch, Inc., which had primarily been involved with defense studies and analysis. Faced with anticipated defense budget reductions, Poindexter joined the firm to develop new commercial enterprises. He designed and developed hardware and software for the prototype of a digital real-time, imaging system to be used for physical security of high value facilities. It was used to obtain a contract for a nuclear power plant security system.
From 1990 to 1996, Poindexter served as co-founder of TP Systems, Inc., a software development firm specializing in commercial software for the
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
PCsA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
and compatibles; Poindexter was the chief designer and programmer. Development included a symbolic debugger for
multi-tasking environmentIn computing, multitasking is a method by which multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions...
s, a
BBSA Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
communications program, and numerous utility programs.
From 1993 to 1996, Poindexter served as a consultant to Elkins Group. Elkins was a business alliance with
Electronic Data SystemsHP Enterprise Services, is a global business and technology services company, previously known as Electronic Data Systems , headquartered in Plano, Texas that defined the outsourcing business when it was established in 1962 by Ross Perot...
(EDS), which has developed the Elkins Interactive Training Network (EITN), a satellite based training delivery system. Poindexter was the chairman of the Maritime Advisory Committee and a member of Elkins' board of directors. He also provided advice on strategic planning.
From 1996 to 2002 Poindexter served as senior vice president for SYNTEK Technologies. SYNTEK is a small high technology firm with contracts in domestic and international defense and commercial business. Poindexter was responsible for high-level advice on management and direction of information systems projects (for example Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's
Project GenoaProject Genoa was a software project at DARPA's Information Awareness Office, the purpose of which was to analyse sick amounts of data and metadata. It's enough data to create a whole person from scratch...
).
Recall to public service
From December 2002, to August 2003, Poindexter served as the Director of the DARPA
Information Awareness OfficeThe Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security...
(IAO). The controversial mission of the IAO was to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components, and prototype
closed-loop information systemsControl theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics, that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The desired output of a system is called the reference...
that will counter asymmetric threats (most notably, terrorist threats) by achieving
total information awarenessThe Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security...
: enabling preemption; national security warning; and, national security decision making.
Poindexter also faced immense criticism from the media and politicians about the
Policy Analysis MarketThe Policy Analysis Market , part of the FutureMAP project, was a proposed futures exchange developed by the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and based on an idea first proposed by Net Exchange, a San Diego research firm specializing in the development of online prediction...
project, a
prediction marketPrediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions...
that would have rewarded participants for accurately predicting geopolitical trends in the Middle East. This was portrayed in the media as profiting from the assassination of heads of state and acts of
terrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism...
due to such events being mentioned on illustrative sample screens showing the interface. The controversy over the futures market led to a Congressional audit of the IAO in general, which revealed a fundamental lack of privacy protection for American citizens. Funding for the IAO was subsequently cut and Poindexter retired from DARPA on August 12, 2003.
Family
His wife, Linda Poindexter, was an Episcopal priest for 13 years, but left the clergy when she converted to Roman Catholicism. They have several children, including
Alan G. PoindexterAlan Goodwin "Dex" Poindexter is an American naval officer and a NASA astronaut.-Personal:Poindexter was born to John Poindexter in Pasadena, California, and grew up in Rockville, Maryland, which he considers to be his hometown. He is married to the former Lisa A. Pfeiffer of Gulf Breeze,...
, a
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for...
astronaut and
Space ShuttleThe Space Shuttle, part of the Space Transportation System , is a spacecraft operated by NASA for orbital human spaceflight missions. It began operations in the 1980s and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010 after 134 launches...
pilot on the
STS-122STS-122 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station , flown by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-122 marked the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS, and the 121st space shuttle flight since STS-1....
mission to the
International Space StationThe International Space Station is an internationally developed research facility currently being assembled in Low Earth Orbit. On-orbit construction of the station began in 1998 and is scheduled to be completed by 2011, with operations continuing until at least 2015...
, currently assigned as the commander of
STS-131STS-131 is a scheduled mission of , targeted for launch March 18, 2010.The primary payload is scheduled to be a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module...
.
Biographical links
Iran-Contra links
- CNN.com - 'Iran-Contra: White House e-mail'
- Dreamscape.com - 'The Iran-Contra Scandal', David Wallechinsky
- FAS.org - Report of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, US Congressional Record (June 30, 1992)
- Slate.com - 'John Poindexter, "Outstanding American": Ari Fleischer salutes a mendacious former national security adviser', Timothy Noah (February 25, 2002)
Total Information Awareness links
- CitizineMag.com - 'Senator Assails "Total Info Awareness"', Roggie McFadden (January 17, 2003)
- Cryptome.org - Poindexter's resignation letter to DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...
Director Anthony Tether (August 12, 2003)
- Guardian.co.uk - 'No more Mr. Scrupulous Guy: How one of the two brains behind the Iran-Contra scandal this week became one of America's most powerful men', John Sutherland, The Guardian
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
(February 18, 2002)
- HereInReality.com - 'Meet Big Brother'
- NewYorker.com - 'Too Much Information' (opinion) New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications...
, Hendrik Hertzberg (December 9, 2002)
- PoliTechBot.com - 'Transcript of Pentagon briefing on Poindexter's "TIA" program' (November 24, 2002)
- WashingtonPost.com - 'Poindexter to Leave Pentagon Research Job: Project to Create Futures Market on Events in Middle East Caused Controversy', Bradley Graham, Washington Post (August 1, 2003)