As best I can tell there was no advance warning of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was the first significant foreign terrorist activity in the U.S. No tip-offs that it was coming.

You want to keep intelligence separate from policy.

Zealots often carry the day.

And Oliver North was really a good soldier, up to the last moment, shoving memos into the shredder and defending the policy to the end.

Myself, I don't think you will ever get security in the Mideast until you have what on the surface appears to be fair to both sides. You have to have leaders committed to peace, on both sides. One side can't impose a solution.

Another factor is the decision, made in 1976, to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States; the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas.