When I worked at the Pentagon, the security briefing I got said that anything that was classified as Confidential should be assumed to be in the enemies hands i

When I worked at the Pentagon, the security briefing I got said that anything that was classified as Confidential should be assumed to be in the enemies hands immediately. Anything classified Secret should be assumed to be in their hands within six months. Anything classified Top Secret should be assumed to be in their hands in eighteen months. I think that's why they invented compartments (Secure Compartmented Information), so that something could be classified at a lower level but compartmentalized, and that would make it take a lot longer to get into enemy hands. You weren't allowed to access something unless you had both the clearance level and had also been read onto that particular compartment, plus were able to show "need to know". We were also told that just because something was printed in a newspaper, that doesn't mean it's unclassified. There were more than a few times when certain newspapers were banned in the building, because of an article that got printed that day.