Made out of people

Document Formatting can Cost Lives!

Have you ever had the problem of fighting with a word processor's text boxes? You aren't the only one. Intelligence agents may be able to kill a man with their bare hands in a crowded room, but when it comes down to it, computer interfaces are hard.

I'm glancing over the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq and ran into this bizarre quote:

While formatting the final version of the NIE, the NIC staff decided to separate the entire aluminum tubes discussion into a separate annex that laid out each agency's position. When this formatting change was made, a text box INR had previously submitted for the body of the NIE was split into a text box on reconstitution and a text box on the aluminum tubes. ... INR's dissent on the uranium reporting was inadvertently separated from the reconstitution section and included in the aluminum tubes box in the annex of the NIE. (pg. 54; 64th PDF page) ...

The language on Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Africa appeared as it did in the draft version and INR's position that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious " was included in a text box, separated by about 60 pages from the discussion of the uranium issue. (pg. 55; 65th PDF page)