I notice there's all these interviews with Google, Matt Cutts, etc. Has anyone ever heard them over-hint by mistake, or leak info about their algorithm? Has anyone ever heard of any ex-employees breaking their silence, selling books, etc.???
No. Google employees are under a contract, plus they all own shares of Google, so I doubt they would risk their jobs and money just to help out webmasters. Anyway you don't need a employee to tell "secrets" when you could just use basic seo to rank a site. Content+keywords+links= ranking