There was a big fiasco when the NRO was found to be stockpiling cash in their basement. It was their insurance policy against a launch (or other) catastrophic failure and they had to call up Martin and get another bird quick. When your agency doesn't exist (when I started in the business you couldn't even say NRO in a public forum), you can't go out quickly and get contingency funds or buy insurance from Lloyds. (This leads to another amusing story about one of the commercial satellite companies that had two successive launch failures but were insured, making more money NOT getting the satellites into orbit than if they'd succeed).