A junior security operations employee at a company I worked at - who was fired for persistent incompetence - somehow obtained a fairly important position doing security for a government agency. That agency was (shockingly) later revealed to have very publicly embarrassing security issues.

I imagine this sort of thing is pretty common.

I feel like NSA might be able to make a stronger case for themselves if they were at least able to show they could do one of the most basic and fundamental things they're supposed to do be doing.