People are very good at insulating themselves in bubbles where they convince themselves that everything they do is for the good of people. In those instances it takes public revelations before they will start taking notice. And even when it gets public you can expect that a lot of the morale issues is that some of them will feel betrayed for not getting lots of officials (and Obama) speaking up in their support for doing what many of them presumably still think is vitally important work.

This is one of the reasons why transparency is so vital: People with power are scary when they operate without getting to hear what people think about what they do. We're experts at filling in the blanks with what we think we deserve to hear.