> In my personal experience, international government conspiracies are pretty rare and so a more mundane explanation is more likely to be correct.

That's a really funny quote. I'm tempted to downvote you for being so ridiculous (but I've upvoted instead, so others have a better chance to see it).

I'll apologize, if you elaborate on how your personal experience might be relevant (though, the only good explanation I can think of is that you are some omniscient being who has good knowledge of conspiracy theories and whether or not they are based on fact; good enough knowledge to derive statistics, at least).

Conspiracies are pretty rare, but opportunistic behaviour by governments is not hard to believe. Pissing off governments is like running for president; your transgressions will be dug up and used against you.

Are you finding it hard to believe that the US government is trying to disrupt Wikileaks by unusual means, outside of any potential legal proceedings? But this is not theory, it's known fact - both Visa and Amazon dropped Wikileaks after pressure. It's been successful too.