First, I would like to say my heart and prayers go out to all those affected by the Boston Marathon bombing.

The reason I ran for the United States Senate was to expose the dysfunction within our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The fact that the FBI dropped the ball again in this instance comes as no surprise to me.

In this case, Russian authorities alerted the FBI multiple times over their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, including a second time nearly a year after he was first interviewed by FBI agents in Boston.

I would like to give the FBI the benefit of the doubt on their handling of this case, but from their past performance and my personal knowledge of their operations, I find that almost impossible to do.

Sadly, it’s not just the FBI. The problem is systemic in virtually all of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. We are not getting our money’s worth, and the leadership in these agencies needs to be held accountable.

The question is who will hold them accountable? And when?

Each time we hear the same story, whether it’s the Sept. 11 failure, Benghazi or the Christmas Day bomber: Our representatives hastily form a committee, and within weeks we find out that an agency failed to properly utilize its resources. How many times do we need to hear a senator stand up and say we could have done a better job?

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a nationwide network of Department of Homeland Security offices known as “fusion centers” was launched to address concerns that local, state and federal authorities were not sharing information effectively about potential terrorist threats.

Last October, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations released a report on the centers. After nine years — and regular praise from officials at the Department of Homeland Security — it said the 77 fusion centers have become pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions. I can give a personal example of the failures at these centers.

In 2011, I contacted the fusion center in Boston with names, locations and phone numbers of Taliban leadership operating in Kabul, and gave the fusion center the name of a source of information to contact.

For weeks, this source was never contacted; and I was forced to go to Homeland Security immigration and customs agents, who passed the information directly to agents in Afghanistan, who then contacted the source.

What is even more disturbing than the waste of resources is this: The catastrophes that result from the dysfunction and ineffectiveness of these agencies becomes a reason to then put in place extrajudicial capabilities such as the Patriot Act, use of torture, military tribunals or other methods that infringe on our civil liberties.

We should not impose restrictions on our freedoms and continue to undermine our rights just because we have ineffective leadership in these agencies.

We also do not need to expend more resources. We spent $80 billion a year on our intelligence community and it took 10 years to find Bin Laden. We found him and killed him because somebody was finally allowed to do their job properly. I don’t think the Patriot Act or torture had much to do with it.

Each one of these catastrophes or near misses is a wakeup call to our representatives who are tasked with providing oversight of our agencies. Unfortunately, our representatives do not seem to have the will or power to hold these agencies to a higher standard.

DANNY DALTON, an unenrolled candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010, is a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, FBI and U.S. State Department. He lives in Brunswick.