>And also keeping plausible deniability for the people at the top. They never told anyone to do anything, they decided to do this themselves. The third reich was full of this as well.

Dude, every single government ever in the history of humanity works this way. The appointed administrators of ancient rome were scheming up ways to serve their benefactors without leaving a tablet trail that their benefactors opponents could complain about. When I worked for a podunk state department of a well run solidly blue state 15yr ago we did this. There were meetings with no agenda where they'd verbally go over what the new boss's (appointed positions at top of department, not the governor himself) inclinations were on areas of policy relevant to the department and there would be discussion about how to align to that. And this wasn't people who reported to the boss, these were line level workers and middle managers. This wasn't coming from the top down. This was the bottom simply knowing what was good for it.

And just to be clear, just because it's always like this doesn't mean you shouldn't hate it and hate them for doing it.