Unfortunately, you're probably right.
I’m not inclined to conspiracist thinking, but there exist historic events which have been borne out to be the result of conspiracies. The Bolshevik Revolution (though a pretty well-known conspiracy at the time-it was reported in the Russian press), and certainly the Reichstag Fire incident of 1933, used by the Nazis as a pretext to ram through the Enabling Act, giving Reichskanzler Hitler pretty much absolute power.
It should come as no surprise that these kind of incidents could be easily used to enact a State of Emergency; though currently it would be difficult to do so on a nationwide basis. You’d need more incidents to occur throughout the US, and much more frequently. As a certain Mayor of Chicago once said, “’Never let a good crisis go to waste.’”