Sysadmins have lots of access into systems. Governments routinely favor security theater over actual mechanisms to secure things. The US government has a strong

Sysadmins have lots of access into systems. Governments routinely favor security theater over actual mechanisms to secure things. The US government has a strong cultural bias towards having outside contractors rather tha employees on the government payroll (partly due to the ideological bent of the major political parties and partly due to lobbying by contractors). These things make it more than plausible that contract sysadmins had far too highly elevated access into far too wide-ranging sets of systems. No spying needed.