Church committee

As WW 2 came to a close and the cold war was born the United States intelligence agencies took on a greater role in protecting the country by making friends with a lot of bad guys. If anyone was opposed to the Soviet Union they were our friends. This growth in espionage led to abuse of power and in 1975 The Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church stepped in to defang the CIA. Many rule changes were made and two of those made it difficult to stop the 9/11 attacks. First, Church rules prevented the CIA from communicating with the FBI which caused confusion about the Muslim in Minneapolis who took pilot training. The second and more important is the fact that the Church Committee discouraged US agents from working with known criminals to gather intel. After 9/11 the pendulum swung again and intel gained importance. Because of the many years when working with criminal types was forbidden, the US was behind on intelligence gathering people and electronic surveillance proved inadequate. The incident in Paris was caused by lack of intelligence and this will be changing with more power going to intel gathering agencies. The west was repeatedly warned by ISIS that there would be attacks on their homelands but there was not enough intel to prevent attacks. When and I say when, not if, the US is attacked, it will be a wakeup call but if they come across the southern border the US will look pretty foolish and a wall will be going up a big hurry. Too little, too late.