at this stage your default assumption is that the 3 letters agencies control the government through blackmail or corruption
Hoover was known to blackmail and he defined the FBI. Do you think it has reformed itself since then, or just gotten better at it?
https://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/j-edgar-hoover/#:~:te....
While I find it a tad too dystopian to assume the intelligence services &c control government, surely it isn't too far-fetched to imagine some spook visiting a legislator, putting some dirty laundry on his/her desk and murmuring 'Nice career you've got there, would be a shame if anything happened to it?'
My monkey
But I think politicians understand that capital and the national security state are very influential, and their careers will go much better if they do their bidding (without anyone ever explicitly asking them to). They'll find it easier to get elected, less interference from courts, great consulting and speaking gigs after they retire, and so on.
Even a true believer three letter agency head, thinking he does something good for his country, could have their team use information to blackmail a politician into giving the agency more power or greenlighting this or that operation. No financial or other personal gain need be involved.
And that's the best case of the "true believer". More cynical types (the type that rise in every organization) would also use it to score points within the agency, expand his teams scope and budget, and so on.
"The court documents unsealed under a US judge in New York sparked suspicions about the pedophile links to Mossad. According to the website Global Village, this revelation is consistent with claims by former Israeli spy Ari Ben Menashe, who argues in his upcoming book that Epstein was also an Israeli spy.
Menashe’s book also mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell, linking her to Mossad, the website reported, stressing: “Ben-Menashe alleges they ran a “honey-trap” operation, providing young girls to politicians for sex and then using the incidents to blackmail them for Israeli intelligence.”
The author notably reveals that Epstein was introduced to Mossad by Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, who worked as an Israeli espionage agent.
The Daily Mail reported similar details, stressing that the unsealed document has “reignited suspicions” about Epstein’s links to Mossad."
At this point, its not really a conspiracy theory to think an intelligence agency controls the US government through blackmail, its elementary common sense.