I just don't buy it.
Kinnear is a functionally retarded drunk with the mis-direction/mis-information skills of a villain haunting the amusement park in a Scooby Doo episode. Ashley doesn't give a shit about flak and ascribing all of these conspiratorial qualities to his hiring is over complicating things. They're not the Machiavellian schemers some give them credit for - for if they were you wouldn't be seeing through their ruses so easily.
The simpler answer, and the one I subscribe to, is that they simply don't care.