Poindexter Gets the Last Laugh

Way back in 2003, when the public still retained some capacity for shock and outrage over state incursions on personal privacy, there was a brief outcry when it was revealed that the Pentagon was concocting a pervasive surveillance system with the laughably Orwellian name Total Information Awareness. The program was the brainchild of Admiral John Poindexter, the former National Security Advisor and disgraced Iran/Contra conspirator, who had been an early adopter of technology in the federal government -- it was he who first introduced email to the White House -- and who believed that comprehensive surveillance presented the best hope for preventing another 9/11. 

When plans for TIA were revealed, members of congress decried the program -- and its controversial creator -- and it was announced that funding had been suspended, and Poindexter's omniscient megadatabase was no more. But as National Journal correspondent Shane Harris reveals in his new book, The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, Total Information Awareness never ceased to exist; it was simply broken up into pieces, funded by the clandestine "black" budget, and shifted to the National Security Agency. 

Harris's book tells the story of Poindexter and a handful of other techno-visionaries who believe that new technologies for monitoring the communications and transactions of people in the United States and around the world hold the key to keeping America safe. Poindexter cooperated with the book, giving fourteen long interviews about his career and his vision, and in Harris' telling, he emerges as a kind of tragic hero -- a mad scientist and tech evangelist whose greatest crime, apart from a tin ear for publicity, was being ahead of his time. 

It's a fascinating characterization -- if one that I'm not completely sold on. Shane and I discussed the book, Admiral Poindexter, and the difference between "collecting the dots" and "connecting the dots" in this six-part series for Slate. Please check it out.