Fisa

Just like the changes made by Clinton in the 90’s effected the home mortgage crisis of the past couple of years so did the changes made by the Church Commission of the 70’s effect our military actions of today.
For those who don’t remember the Church committee it was designed to rein in the power of the CIA as they had been caught using illegal tactics investigating US citizens. While this was well and good the committee went on to limit the activities of the CIA in foreign intelligence using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). It was not designed to effect activities outside the country but it did. The net result was that the CIA people no longer dealt with unsavory characters around the world and in the process lost valuable contacts which led to loss of valuable information.
Fast forward to today. People are questioning why the US did not know about the 9-11 disaster in advance or why we seem to be behind the curve on so many incidences. It is because we cut off our information channels years ago in an attempt to control the activities of the CIA which many thought were unacceptable. Even today the use of drones relies on observers on the ground and this requires that we have troops on the ground. Perhaps if we had more secret contacts we could be using them to find targets instead of our own troops.
Laws that are passed today may have negative effects many years from now. Even something like waterboarding may one day come back to haunt us. While we are taking the high ground today will we one day regret it.