Washington ? Defense officials said Thursday that retired Adm. John Poindexter, a central figure in the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal, would resign his current job at a Pentagon research agency after a controversy erupted about its plan to set up a futures trading market designed to help predict possible terrorist attacks.

Pentagon officials said Poindexter, who worked in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, would resign within the next several weeks. The announcement came two days after the Pentagon abruptly canceled a nearly completed effort to establish what it called the “Policy Analysis Market.”

Under the plan, investors would buy and sell futures based on the likelihood of political changes or events in the Middle East. The hope was to attract knowledgeable investors whose speculation on possible terrorist attacks would tip off U.S. authorities to actual plots.

“Futures markets have proven themselves good at predicting such things as election results: they are often better than expert opinions,” the agency said in a press release announcing the cancellation of the futures market idea. The agency had planned to begin signing up investors today.

But the scheme drew a chorus of objections from Capital Hill when lawmakers learned of it earlier this week. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) labeled the program “a rather egregious error of judgment.”

Testifying in the Senate earlier this week, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said he first read about the futures market plan in a newspaper.

“I share your shock at this kind of program,” Wolfowitz said. “We’ll find out about it, but it is being terminated.”