As much as everyone is still pretending like it was a mistake, we don't hold anyone accountable to that level when it's taxpayer dollars. We're talking about board members. This is where there were a lot of mixed-in situations where, yes, executives would change things.
Let's say there was a certain project that got a “not recommend” from someone, which would effectively kill that project. Well, executives would supersede decisions, or go to the external reviewers, who were supposed to be independent, and have them change their reviews. In certain situations, they would actually prevent the employee from speaking about the project at the board level. They themselves would speak about it to make sure they could tell the story they wanted to tell.