The matter of what and whose interests are being represented in acts of abuse and misuse of power, I think, is of less importance than to focus on how to correct the system and practice of government to make it less susceptible to abuse its power regardless of in whose interests it is being done.
The fact is that once one branch has the capabilities and powers described above, any representative of any interest would find it beneficial to make use of it and most likely multiple interests are benefiting from it at any one time.
No matter how fascinating and how educating for future actions conspiracy theories might be, the Founding Fathers of the US system of Government made sure that in the end the bucket always ends up with the people when it comes to changing bad governance.
Focus on the “how:s”, “who:s” and “why:s” of political conspiracies risk fueling the human tendency to perceive themselves as powerless and victims when it comes to large scale politics. It would be both dangerous and wrong to create a “Them” on expense of personal responsibility.
Few people today is willing to publicly advocate armed and violent rebellion. Implicitly most people are aware that the next national security threat to be defined and sold to the public will be the one of domestic and homegrown dissent regardless of the agent or motive. The powers of the Executive, and the leniency of the checks and balances restricting it, are such that any view or form of expression can be subjected to the aforementioned exclusive power of the Executive to define threats, and to define and execute appropriate counter-measures.
There is little that says it does not have the ability, left to see is whether or not it will act upon it and get away with it.
It seems that the government as a whole already has done this.
The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of the U.S. was created with the goal of targeting people involved in violence, arson, threat or any other forms of terrorism by prescribing several punishments, but it has also has had what has been described as 'a chilling effect' on free speech, because several activists working legally for animal rights have been prosecuted under the law.
As the U.S. Justice department now labels these groups as "terrorist organizations" [viii], under the USA PATRIOT ACT, donations to them are federal crimes and punishable by substantial criminal penalties [ix].
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