The US government suffers, in general, from too much secrecy, plus adouble standard for enforcement of secrecy rules (important officialsare treated with leniency).The problem of oversecrecy was recognized decades ago, but it got muchworse through overreaction to the Sep 2001 attacks. In general, the USreaction to those attacks has been quite harmful (most notably,attacking Iraq based on lies).Whether to mark something as secret depends on a judgment call by someofficial. The structure of this tends to push officials towardsoversecrecy. If they don't mark something secret, and later on itappears that publishing it may have caused some bad consequences,people will blame them. If they do mark something secret, and lateron it appears that concealing it caused some bad consequences, no onewill blame them. For their career safety, they mark it secret bydefault. Systematically, the result is oversecrecy.