NSA collapsed under Bill Clinton

Washington Times:
Bill Clinton’s neglect left NSA ‘brain dead’ as al Qaeda plotted 9/11 attacks

...
One day in January 2000, the NSA’s clunky, aging computer network became so overburdened that it crashed. The NSA, he says, was “brain dead.”

The “coma” crisis lasted for several days as new computer hardware was flown into Fort Meade, Maryland, and techies shut down every node in order to reboot the nation’s largest spy machine.

But it was a symptom of something far more serious at the NSA, and for the country.

“The outside world had passed it by in many areas,” Mr. Hayden says in “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror.” “It was going deaf.”
...
It is happening again thanks to Snowden and tech companies like Apple.   It is one of the reasons why there have been so many successful terror attacks in recent years.

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