Not a bettingfag, but I suspect that these creatures never gave a thought to the ability of the NSA to vacuum up all their comms. One would think, however, that Brennan and Crapper would have known. Which only suggests that: (1) monumental incompetence, or (2) they didn’t give a fuck, because they were convinced she’d win.
But they were taking a substantial risk, even so, which suggests that the content of the comms was mighty iffy and needed to be protected from the IGs of the various depts, etc.
This is likely a lot worse than our suspicious minds yet realize.