In the end, it was not surprising at all that the feds came down on him like a ton of bricks. It was surprising that he got a plea deal for a lesser sentence.
I'm guessing we can read it all about it in a book in a year or 2.
Seriously. Being a whistle-blower is one thing. Being a rogue canon playing fast and loose with national security so you can negotiate a better pension settlement is something else entirely.
The reason is that once this becomes official enough and "on the books" this kind of stuff would happen again. The real nightmare is not him doing it and getting way is every disgruntled agency employee doing it and then pointing fingers at this case saying "but you negotiated with him!".
So I think he wasn't smart enough, he could have had a chance at this had he not stirred the waters that much.
Another, general way of putting it, is that in large bureaucratic institutions (officially!) you never put your superiors in a position to make a new rule or break an existing rule.