Another thing to keep in mind is that on these big operations things are highly compartmentalized, so you have good patriotic people who do their bit. "Would you be willing to tell a lie to keep America safe and help National Security? You're sworn to secrecy for your whole life." "We're trying to set up terrorists so we need you to deliver explosives to this group." "We caught John Doe selling nuclear secrets to Iranians, we want to keep it very quiet but he needs to have a heart attack..." "We need you to use your access to get the private information of so-and-so, it's of the highest importance." "This guy is infiltrating a certain group, we need you to make a US Passport for him..."

The people risking their lives doing this stuff don't know that somebody above them is actually a traitor or has evil intentions.