Filling corruption-sensitive positions is a really difficult problem. On one hand it's near impossible to trust the purity of anyone with ties to the opponent,

Filling corruption-sensitive positions is a really difficult problem. On one hand it's near impossible to trust the purity of anyone with ties to the opponent, whilst on the other it is precisely and pretty much only those people that have expertise, experience, and inside knowledge that one requires to achieve meaningful success. Also, if you were chief evil at bigco, wouldn't you keep some people without any backlink around precisely for situations like these?