In the blame game that followed, the 9/11 Commission and other lawmakers—many of whom had voted to slash intelligence budgets over the previous decade—would all agree: intelligence had been at fault. The intelligence community needed more resources, more legal authorities, more data, more machines, and more people to ensure that nothing like 9/11 ever happened again. The Patriot Act was signed, and later the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended to expand the government’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance without court orders.
