@Cripplecreek
I've been assuming all this time they've been referring to the staffers. Everything you said about them is spot on.
A lot of people seem to have the impression that staffers are fresh faced idealistic kids fresh out of school. In reality they're more likely to be a corporate attorney or other upper level corporate people.
I'm not going to hunt down the name right now but one that really clued me in to the way the game worked was a John McCain chief of staff. She came from a DC lobbying firm to work in the public sector as McCain's chief of staff. She returned to the private sector as vice CEO of Boeing for a few years. The last I knew she had returned to Washington and was staff director for republican staffers on the US senate defense committee. Some of these elected officials have staffs of dozens of people.
Not all of them are bad. When Allen West was in office he had a half dozen veterans working for him with a couple of them being veterans affairs lobbyists. Last I knew, my congressman had a staff of 3. The democrats are a real horror show with staffs full of environmental attorneys, pro choicers, union attorneys and organizers.
The problem I have with the intelligence community was exposed during the fight over domestic spying exposed by Edward Snowden. I started researching guy who were testifying like James Clapper and found that they were all stepping back and forth between the public and private sector. Both democrat and GOP NSA appointees all seemed to have a history of working for Booz-Allen, the same company that Edward Snowden worked for.
Look at John Brennan. During the 08 election Candidate passport files were breached. The media immediately blamed someone connected to John McCain but it turned out to be Brennan's company so the media dropped it but look where Brennan ended up.