Except due to the extensive overreach of the NSA today, Snowden and many others working for the NSA are contractors, and so do not have the conditioning, the vetting or the hooks that a permanent job in the civil service would give. (Don’t underestimate the power of an early retirement plan, a cushy pension and numerous other benefits to keep employees in hand, even when the conditioning doesn’t take.)
Back in the day, when most INT was HUMINT, the security services understood this, and they still got bitten. Today’s ELINT nerdherders seem to think that they don’t need to understand people when they have control of our electronica, forgetting that people are the reason the security exists, and none of it would happen without people managing it.
