Sneakers/Headscratchers


 * Ummmm.... why is it possible for Bishop and co to blackmail Mr. Abbot at the end of the movie? Abbot has the guys with guns and the infrastructure to cover up anything he does to them. I get that they don't *have* to shoot the gang, but they can rather than let them blab to the world about the NSA's new toy. Certainly the situation is nothing approaching "having the NSA by the balls". As Crease pointed out earlier - there isn't a government on Earth that wouldn't kill them all for that thing. The NSA is exempt.... why?
 * Because in this movie, our government doesn't kill civilians. When Martin questions Crease about that very statement earlier in the film -- "You said it last night, there isn't a government on earth that wouldn't kill for that thing" -- Crease emphatically adds, "Not ours!" And Crease should know where the US draws the line; he's a CIA veteran.
 * There is also the practical concern that Abbot does not know who else they've told, and whether or not those people are sitting on instructions to release the news if Bishop and co. turn up dead. He also knows that they, especially Crease, are intelligent and experienced enough to remember to take this kind of precaution. Now, if the gang was bound and determined to release the news anyway then Abbot has nothing to lose by shooting them and hoping they he can catch up to any dead-man arrangements they have made before they go pop... but if Bishop and his crew are willing to keep silent in return for what are in fact relatively minor bribes, why not pay them? Abbot can easily afford what they're asking, it would hardly be the first time in the history of US intelligence that somebody was paid off as part of a cover-up, and its less risky than trying to successfully cover up multiple murders.
 * There's also that he doesn't need them to stay quiet forever, just long enough for memories to fade and evidence to be even more thoroughly burned. If they try to write a tell-all years later by that point everything is buried well beyond the point of plausible deniability anyway, but if the Sneakers crew has got their hands out asking for a payoff then they're already signaling that they're not interested in immediately revealing the secret.
 * In addition to the fact that nothing Abbott did was actually illegal. He's a director in the NSA, its sort of his job to find and hire people to invent new code-cracking systems. His only concern re: covering up "The Box" is in avoiding public embarrassment and interservice rivalry, not criminal prosecution, and he's apparently intelligent enough to remember that if you're not facing criminal indictment already then perhaps you shouldn't go around trying to cover up your scheme with actions that do run the risk of you ending up in a courtroom answering questions to the satisfaction of a prosecuting attorney.