Yes, precisely. One of the worst things about being like a 5th generation King back in the day, was that you seriously legitimately no longer had an idea of what your populace's everyday life was like, and everyone was basically too afraid to tell you, so you just wouldn't find out unless you seriously went out of your way to try and figure it out.

Having a wise man who has been through all that, and also is good at communicating, is an invaluable tool to a ruler. Regardless of if the ruler's intent is benevolent or malicious, it is simply an accurate information source. It gives a crystal ball in to a world a king cannot comprehend because they've never lived it. This helps with making policy decisions that please the populace (aka keep them in line). One of the worst mistakes a ruler can make is to fall out of line with the happenings of physical reality, and live in an insulated fantasy-land surrounded by yes-men. This is a path toward guaranteed loss of power, eventually. And every good ruler knows that. So having people "on the ground" like Noam Chomsky can be super useful, simply because they're accurate and well-spoken, and intelligent people are a truly rare resource, so they will indeed cultivate that as long as it doesn't cause them too many direct problems with current operations (which is, I would guess, probably why they threatened Noam not to talk about 9/11, because I agree he seems compromised on that particular issue)