Totally unsurprising. When someone in government wants to get something shady like this done all they have to do is verbally gripe about it "too bad we can't legally obtain copies of everything the defense copies" whoever hears the gripe knows that it's a suggestion to go get it done without telling the boss. Doing it this way the responsibility chain gets fuzzy preventing anyone from getting seriously punished in the future. The people that heard the gripe go tell someone below them to ask the copy service if it's "technically possible" (or some intentionally ambiguous language) to get copies. Those people go coerce the copy center into cooperating and then tell their boss that the answer is "they can't do that but they sent this stack of CDs instead." The person they give the CDs to then turns to whoever was complaining in the first place and says "the copy service just sent us these out of the blue."

Granted that's a specific example and probably not how it unfolded in real life but it highlights the "don't ask don't tell" culture that perpetuates corruption and skirting of rules/regulation. Everyone has skin in the game so everyone keeps their mouth shut.

It's the same culture that results in something unethical but profitable at low levels and higher ups claiming ignorance. They're ignorant to specifics but they know that it's the job of those in the middle to keep the specifics away from them.

the copy service owner is about to get screwed when the FBI tries to blame him for all of it regardless of his level of involvement.