Saving Lives with Design

valdean writes "Last year, the White House declassified an August 2001 intelligence brief entitled: 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Among other things, the brief mentions that Bin Ladin 'wanted to hijack a US aircraft.' So why was it ignored? Graphic designer Greg Storey thinks part of the reason is poor design. He set out to modify the format of the original document into a more legible one."

Comments

All Over in August 2001

[Wyatt Earp]

This was all over in the summer of '01. I think the problem was that the focus was on the Genoa summit, they thought the hit was going to be there, so then after nothing happened there was a lull. I remeber Drudge carrying this report on his big font banner in middle to late August for a few days.

Why was it ignored?

[blueberry(4*atan(1))]

MIHOP/LIHOP. They (neocons) made/wanted it to happen. The Bush regime needed a "catalysing event" to wage war and institute repressive measures in the name of "fighting terrorism". (think Pearl Harbor) It didn't take long for them to then conquer Iraq and establish their 14 military bases at a cost of $300 Billion. Now they are beating the war drums against Iran and threatening the judiciary. Why was it ignored indeed.

Re:Why was it ignored?

[Boronx]

It's always worth asking who benefits.

In any case, it's interesting that Prince Abdullah, leader of Saudi Arabia, home of most of the hijackers who were at least partly assisted by Saudi agents, came to Crawford Texas less than six months after the attack. Bush proceeded to kiss his butt.

One of G.W.Bush's closests advisors is Prince Bandar "Bush" (so called by the Bush clan), who is ambassador to the US from Saudi Arabia. He worked closely with Bush in determining the country's response to 9/11, was one of the first people to revue the Iraq war plans, and smoked a cigar with Bush on the White House balcony at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

All you really need to know is that Bush/Cheney fought tooth and nail to prevent investigations into 9/11. Why the American people didn't run them out on a rail for that alone, I will never understand.

My question is this: Some rich, powerful members of the Saud and bin Laden family, some Saudi agents, and some Pakistani agents must have had wind of the attack, and yet they feared the wrath of America so little that they never tried to stop it or tip off American intelligence. Why is that?

Re:Why was it ignored?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the fact the US was holding FIVE military exercises on the morning of 9/11, when the planes hit the WTC, and the fact that some of these EXERCISES involved terrorists crashing planes into buildings, should be enough to prove to you that, at the least, the US government had prior knowledge:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2004 /080904wargamescover.htm

Also the US government has at least made plans, in the past, to attack its own forces, i.e. blow up a plane, bomb a ship, etc., in order to justify going to war. This has been revealed in declassified government documents. The plan was called "Operation Northwoods":
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

Oh, and here is a short documentary "movie" on the 9/11 Pentagon hit: http://www.elchulo.net/files/pentagon.swf

Har

[pyth]

The president's response at the time, to either style of report: "Oh, it's just some crazy named Bin Laden. As if terrorists could attack the USA."

Have you already forgotten the mindset of the US government before the tower-plane collisions?

Re:Not possible to take all threats seriously

[commodoresloat]

The problem is, that there are soooooo many theats that its impossible to take all of them seriously.

That would make sense if this was the first they had ever heard of bin Ladin. By the time of this memo, he had been openly at war with the U.S. for over five years, and had been slaughtering people in ever-more spectacular attacks designed for maximum civilian damage for even longer. He had demonstrated his deadliness and determination to destroy American interests around the world; they goddamn better have taken a memo like this seriously. I don't give a shit what font it is in, this is an important memo. That they missed it -- and ignored the bin Laden threat completely during most of 2001 -- is not excusable.

Tufte, anyone?

[shpoffo]

It sounds like he's trying to one-up Edward Tufte, who had published a well-read report on the slide presentation that led to the Columbia Disaster. I guess we could use a few more such public analyses before people will begin to realize the reach of what falls under "Interface Design" and how critical it is our functioning in the complex system we've created.

THE INTERFACE IS THE INFORMATION. If you don't have an interface, you don't have any information. Period.

Incidentally, I can think of a few reasons not to implement some of the changes that Storey suggests:
- Bolded and highlighted text may draw the eye toward material that was incorrectly analyzed; or the burdern of analysis may fall upon the reader of that (original) memo.
- The threat level may not be something that is established, but rather something that is established through decisions that come from this document

Whether these kinds of metrics are appropriate in the case of the President is unknown to me. My main here is to illustrate that Storey's ideas, though thoughtful, are perhaps a bit sensational.
.
-shpoffo
kNOw Research

Re:Not possible to take all threats seriously

[rastos1]

Well, I remember when I started using internet, I wandered over to FBI web server and found there a web page simmilar to this. It was something like 1998 ... and yes, it did mention Bin Ladin in top ten most wanted people. I expect that a report delivered to White House having this name in, should ring a bell no matter what the rest of the report says.