I wonder how many terrorist attacks and mass killings worldwide were actually the results of alphabetti goading and egging that got out of hand too early, ie., the wannabe terrorist actually got their hands on real explosives and weapons before their 'investigators' could arrange a meetup, and jumped the gun on them days or weeks in advance. And in turn, the humiliated agencies could only admit "yeah, they were on our radar for a while"...
Of course, that is just jumping to the most benign conclusion, that their intentions were to just "root the potential danger out of the woodwork" and government incompetence led to the rest. It could very well be a deliberate and calculated plot to create a controlled level of chaos around the world, enough to get the sheep to cry for more government and curtailing of personal liberties.
We can be assured that 99%+ of the stuff that is going on in the boardrooms of those who claim to "protect and serve" are never revealed to the public, intentionally or gleaned through hacking or whatnot. Governments were far more transparent when the level of technology they possessed were equal to what the citizenry had. It is hard to play Men in Black when you got 12 pounder cannons and sailing frigates, and private militias also had them and could meet you on the high seas ship for ship, gun for gun if it ever came down to that, and both sides knew that the other side can equally match them if a dispute got hot. The technological disparity between the government and the citizen body today, even in America, might as well be the same as that between the British army in the peak of it's strength in the late 1880s versus a tribe of aboriginal bushmen...