re: When do you trust the government and why?

Combination of personal experience and a condescending attitude towards those in government. The vast majority in government are neither intelligent nor clever enough to deceive on a large scale.

The defense/intelligence stuff is a little tricky by its very nature, though I do think it's become much easier to decipher motives and events over the last five years or so. I mean, shoot, if you know what you are doing, you can get on jihadist websites and read a lot of stuff for yourself or get points of view and first-hand accounts from hundreds of different sources.