He planned everything fairly carefully.
I'm sure the actual downloading only took a few minutes.
Frankly, if I put my BOFH hat on and gain the requisite level of access, the actual op might only take an hour or two. A single usb stick can load a DVD worth of info in a few minutes. All he has to do is load up a lunchbox full and transfer it to an unsecured network with sufficient bandwidth and it's out of hand. As an admin he probably could visit the server facility, if he had access to classified and unclassified networks and along with lame-ass security he could make the whole thing leak like a tarpaper roof in a hailstorm.
Really. I remember a DOD contract where the people inside the "secure facility" could interact with any outsider via AIM using the AOL servers. What a joke. And that turned out to be the tip of the iceberg.