I very much agree with the main thrust of Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman’s new book about the many faults of undue tidiness (“In Praise of Mess,” January 6, 2007), for it can have a debilitating effect on imagination and ingenuity, but I am surprised at their ridicule of the so-called clean desk policies, which were adopted by many organizations around the world in the last decade or two. As a matter of fact, such policies have nothing to do with tidiness. They were introduced because terrorist bombing attacks often lead to the loss of much valuable information when papers left lying on desktops are pulled out of shattered windows and scattered far and wide. By requiring that all papers be put into drawers at the end of the working day, an organization can resume normal operation without much delay after an attack. To the best of my knowledge, these policies spread from London in the Nineties as a result of frequent IRA bombing attacks. Sadly, imagination and ingenuity were among the victims.