Charlie (Colorado),

A very valid possibility. A “Holy shit! How did this get in the file!?!?” moment, followed by some feverish thinking and note taking while some level of panic builds followed by a really bad choice made under duress. Rather than go away and hope whatever he discovered was not discovered by anyone else, he tried to think his way out of it and went all haywire.

Maybe. I tend to believe that people capable of handling the pressures of jobs like being NSA and getting put on the hotseat time and again by a bunch of political sharks and hacks in congressional hearings is not prone to panic and even when feelings of panic arise has sufficient self discipline to get them under control.

You’re point is certainly valid but I still think this is more like:

Bill: “Sandy, I need you to do this…”

Sandy: “That could be a suicide mission, Boss”

Bill: “Don’t be silly. Piece of cake. How many times have we done this sort of thing? Even if it goes wrong we’ll handle it, don’t worry about it. Now be a good soldier and do your job.”

later….

Sandy: “I told you this could be a suicide mission!”

Bill: “Hey, you’re the one who screwed the pooch here. But don’t worry, we’ll take care of this and we’ll take care of you and we’ll take care of your family. So you don’t get any more fancy jobs in government and, instead, you just fade away and play golf and do no-show, hi-pay consulting gigs for some of my friends. Is that so bad?”