They're boiling the pot but the government doesn't realise THEY are the frog.

Sounds like the sort of thing you'd see in a Roadrunner/Tom and Jerry sketch with Wile E Coyote/Tom taking a saw to a tree branch both WEC/Tom and RR/Jerry are sitting on only for the camera to zoom out at the last moment when the branch is finally severed and reveal WEC/Tom was on the distal/far end of the branch the entire time.