Indeed, why quote Mr. Aid at all? The Times has its own staff of experts who are able who divine what classified information should be released to the public–and therefore, to our enemies.

I don’t have a link but the story is fairly simple. During WWII allied intelligence needed a way to gauge when the germans had succeeded in repairing railroads in northern France. They figured out that the price of oranges in certain city markets reflected the condition of the tracks because the oranges were shipped almost exclusively by railroad. So, when bombings crippled the railroad, the cost of oranges rose and when the rails got repaired the price fell. By tracking the price of oranges they could tell when to bomb again.

I’ll see if I still have the book that has the story in it. All kinds of strange indicators have been used to provide intelligence. Counting cigarette butts by a refueling station was used in another case to calculate how many trucks had passed during the night.

1. I’ve been reading versions of this story for many years. However, carrying forward your ‘Big Picture’ theme, it DOES add another entry in to the “most secretive administration ever” storyline that the Democrats/MSM folks have been selling. So from that point of view, it advances their political agenda and is therefore a story worth doing. The big picture is not the bigger intelligence picture, it’s the bigger political goal of the story writer.

2. On the other hand, I haven’t the slightest doubt that in some cases documents are classified simply to cover up some gigantic mistake, misjudgement, etc. That’s more of real-time activity though, happening on the fly and as soon as they are able to it.

3. The media’s interest in keeping as much of the government’s records unclasified IS self serving, but it DOES provide a net benefit (usually) to society. All bueaurocracies and organizationsa of power (of any sort) are inhernetly self serving and secretive.