From my thesis on 9/11 and intelligence agencies, It's true that that the US Human intelligence network have been eroded for some time. There have been restrictive rules put in place on who can and can’t be used as a source. Satellite and other forms of electronic were getting more advanced to the point of being able to read a newspaper and phones could be tapped remotely. Every agency wanted their own high tech resources, and that diverted funding away from human intelligent resources. Lastly, similar to a lot of other areas in government, they just couldn’t hire enough visible minorities, the kind that would have been useful to recruit and relate to sources in other countries.
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