Members of the Obama administration leaked a story to The New York Times last week saying the U.S. actually has stepped up operations against Qaeda-related groups in the midst of Yemen’s chaos, “exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets.” But some think the claim sounds suspiciously like an administration that’s in the dark, whistling. “I think it’s more signaling than fact,” says Princeton University’s Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. And in the meantime the chances of killing the wrong targets in such raids go up astronomically. “With the loss of intelligence cooperation with Yemen, we are trying to cut back the jihadis as much as possible,” says terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. “But where it used to be surgical, it’s now much blunter.”

The Americans have spent long years building liaison relationships with key figures in the military and intelligence apparatuses of countries across the Middle East who might deliver that kind of detailed information. But now, says Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “the Libyans, the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Yemenis—they are either gone or going.” And a particularly cruel irony, as a former CIA station chief in the Middle East points out, is that these relationships were so focused on catching a handful of terrorists that they missed the oncoming tidal wave of popular revolt. “What intelligence is supposed to do is be ready for things like this,” he says.

The thought is underscored by Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who now teaches at Hamilton College in New York state. “We became far too overreliant on those networks,” he says. “When you are totally dependent on local intelligence organizations, you tend to protect them.” In the process America becomes blind to what the regime will not see.