To be honest I'd be leery of hiring a former intelligence agent regardless of technical ability. I'm sure if they wanted to plant someone it wouldn't be someone with NSA on his/her resume, but the thought would be hard to shake.
Interesting perspective. For the record, I was doing radar signal processing for a contractor for the Navy. While there I bumped into plenty of people who were in the Order of Secret Squirrels, and got the definite impression that once you join you never really leave.
