The NSA and CDC are fundamentally different institutions. It does not make sense to treat them the same any more than it makes sense to treat NASA and the IRS the same...
They are not the same, but they are institutions with a lot of similarities (NSA, CDC, NASA, IRS). They largely receive funding the same way, and are answerable to the same people (congress, White House). There is some similarities to how the heads of these organizations are determined and how the heads of these organizations are fired.
In startup speak the organizations have the same VC and share many board members.
This isn't really true. The actual chain of command is, of course, completely different people until you get to the President. But more importantly, intelligence agencies conducting covert actions don't reveal their activities to all of Congress. With respect to funding, only select committees with specific clearance get to see the real budget. Everyone else sees a line item that says "classified budget." As for oversight, see here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3093
So that's 37 members of Congress they're accountable to, but not directly. If you read the actual law, it only says the "President" has to inform these committees of what the intelligence agencies are doing, and if they happen to do anything illegal, the President has to tell Congress (but only these 37 members).
Theoretically, the President is not above the law, but as we've seen in recent history, if the President is of the same political party as the majority party of Congress, they're not likely to actually enforce the law.
Practically speaking, all of Congress isn't going to care what all of the Executive Branch is doing all of the time given the limited number of hours in a day, which is why they they have committees, but at least in the case of the CDC, NASA, and IRS, if all 538 members of Congress request information, they have to give it to them. With the NSA, only 37 members of Congress are authorized to even receive information and only through the President.
Not only is the analogy questionable with board members, but it also carries the implication that they are essentially the same sorts of organizations. They are not.
If you really want to carry this analogy out further, you probably need to expand it so one is a traditional startup and the other a charitable non-profit, or something of the sort. Even if you did have the same people in charge (which again, questionably applicable here), the goals, transparency, and measures of success vary so wildly that I'm not sure it means that much.
The NSA in particular is part of the Department of Defense, a uniquely opaque federal entity. In general, federal agencies comply with accountability and transparency laws, but the DoD just doesn't.
If your criteria for conspiracy is "takes government money" then almost every company, country, and citizen is part of this conspiracy. People are in fact able to see nuance
