> When you look at something like the U2 the "enemy" knew more about it than the American people. But at the same time, it's hard to be positive how much the e

> When you look at something like the U2 the "enemy" knew more about it than the American people. But at the same time, it's hard to be positive how much the enemy knows about anything. And you can't always decide "Well they probably know X, so let's tell out citizens." What if the enemy didn't actually know and made critical (or even non-critical) decisions based on bad information? After all, any good enemy is also going to play the counter-intelligence game and try to mislead you on what they do and do not know. > Same thing today, do you really think the Chinese can't figure out the capabilities of our spy sats? Some of our satellites? Yes. All of our satellites? No. And I'd bet the same in our situation and trying to figure out theirs. > Most of these secrets should have a defined and quite short timeframe. For those not in the know: they do have a time frame ("Secret" is 26 years, "Top Secret" is 52 in the USA). Obviously, those time frames are up for debate as being appropriate or not. What I don't think people realize of the military and intelligence community is that our biggest enemy in regards to some of this is actually the "average joe" that's working inside. I found that the number of people that miss-classify data, particularly by over classifying it, was staggering. Such as people that by default would set all emails to TS/SCI//ORCON/NOFORN, and then you end up with an invite to lunch with an address for a Chipotle but you can't even print it out because the sender is a moron. It's quite possible than when you hear the government having trouble FOIA'ing docs it's because of crap like that.