IMO you have way too much faith in state agencies' ability to keep secrets. It's information the world would like to know, so it's a hard secret to keep. On top of that anyone with access to the keys of big wallets would be very tempted to just use them. This doesn't seem like a situation that can be kept secret by a mid-sized conspiracy. If this was a state project, how many people would have to know about it and still keep quiet, despite all the advantages of not keeping it quiet, or the risk of leaks?

It'd be tough to get three people to keep this quiet. The dozens that would have to be involved at an intelligence agency, if this is really a project that was started in one of them? The specifics would have leaked by now.