Having worked on many government and DoD contracts, I find this rather unsurprising. The phrase "tip of the iceberg" comes to mind..
I find it very hard to believe that the DoD (NSA?) do not have sufficient highly talented programmers / analysts to review these programs.
Another issue is that after 9/11, they were evaluating a larger number of possible solutions, In the hope that at least some of them produce viable results.
I don't even think this ever got to the hands of the NSA or people who have the technical proficiency to call bs (this in and of itself is surprising given the sheer stupidity of what this clown was trying to sell).
If anything this fraud was faciliated by petty political and institutional bureaucratic jostling for relevance, power, and funding. Basically some tards, convinced that they're onto something big, hides it from everyone else because they don't want to share in the credit/fame. Not surprising given this is the US govt. Hell most corporations are like this too.
What I find most troubling about all of this is that after 9/11 there was a such a stink about intra-department communication and cooperation. The argument being that if people simply talked more with one another lapses in security and plain dum-dum-ness would be greatly reduced if not eliminated outright. Fuck, Bush even created a whole department to do just this!