Intelligence gathering techniques have changed. (Security Beat).

"We do nor have good intelligence primarily, because for a very long time it was illegal to have good intelligence," Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told a conference on Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict organized by the National Defense Industrial Association.

For example, Ledeen said that on September 10, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigations was "not permitted to clip newspaper articles about openly violent anti-American organizations."

The intelligence community can't be transformed easily because for 20 years, it could not report information, even if they discovered it "because the political leaders were not prepared to take action," he said. "Not only were they nor prepared to take action, they did not want to hear about this stuff. This makes them look bad."

On the delivering end of intelligence, Ledeen said, people from other countries have learned not to help Americans, "because helping Americans means a threat to their lives."

"You must act in order to get intelligence, and then they will start to give you the information," he said. For example, special operators "will have to fight for their ability to get in, and get involved, and get engaged, even when the intelligence system is not good enough, theoretically because the only way the intelligence is going to be good is paradoxically if you jump in. There is a certain amount of jumping that is going to have to happen," Ledeen said.