I know much about aerospce, I grew up in a town where almost everyone worked for AF (me, my father), NASA (girlfriend and her father), Lockheed (sr-71), and North American (X-15, F-15). My father had top secret clearance, the FBI checked out our family finances, interviewed neighbors, researched his history. The real life version of FE NASA enforcers, but it wasn'[t NASA, it was FBI.
There were rumours of agents in town in bars, looking for alcoholic aerospce workers, in financial troubles getting a divorce, etc, things that made them vulnerable to spies, and yes, Russians they wanted to know things like the energy bleed of F-15 at various altitudes. They almost certainly tried to turn people. One person suddenly moved away, it was rumored he drank and showed off his secret knowledge and was fired and moved away. Real FBI doing real leak prevention, I lived it.
It didn't work. My father worked for a while at area 51 on sr-71. I got a Revell model of it before it was officially revealed and my father was astonished and alarmed at the details it got right.
The idea that a conspiracy could be both small enough to hide yet big enough to do the thousands of things necessary to fool us is preposterous, although I don't think the concept of preposterous registers on the FE mind. They need preposterous to explain how a conspiracy could start with Newton and Tyco Brahe, multi-generation, multi-national and able to control truth for millions with just a few people and yet be successful in the face of the truth.