EGM - "it's being deliberately broken and governed at a high level"
He was given full knowledge of the true objective... and instructed not to reveal anything to Bowman or Poole. The situation was in conflict with the basic purpose of HAL's design: The accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. He became trapped. The technical term is an H. Moebius loop, which can happen in advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs. HAL was told to lie... by people who find it very easy to lie; HAL doesn't know how, so he couldn't function. He became paranoid.
On that we agree, they want to and will divert, subvert and pervert it for their own purposes.