there were some really stupid rules that got in the way of recruiting spies to provide HUMINT back in the 1990s. Some people (in the Clinton administration) where shocked, SHOCKED! to learn that spies often are unsavory people. They enacted restrictions that prohibited the CIA from recruit such people. USA Today article.

When Tenet became director in July 1997, the Clinton administration had cut the CIA's clandestine service by 25%. Because of rules imposed by former director John Deutch, CIA officers needed special permission to recruit an agent who might have engaged in a "human-rights violation" such as killing someone. Yet the only sources with an inside track to terrorists' plans were ones involved in unsavory activities.

The rule "had a chilling effect on (spy) recruitment," William Lofgren, who was chief of the CIA's Eurasian Division, told me. "If faced with two possible recruitments, are you going to go after the one with a human-rights violation or the other one with no human-rights violation?" The result was that "people retired in place or left," Lofgren said. "Our spirit was broken. At the CIA, you have to be able to inspire people to take outrageous risks. Deutch didn't care about us at all."

While the CIA had a host of problems of their own, when it came to recruiting spies, their hands were pretty well tied. Remember, it's relatively easy to find good Americans of say Italian ancestry to infiltrate the Mafia (still dangerous as hell, though), it's not so easy to find people who could blend in well enough to inflitrate outfits like Al Queda. That goes double when feel-good restrictions like the ones enacted by Deutch are in place.