US suffers from secrecy

The US government suffers, in general, from too much secrecy, plus a double standard for enforcement of secrecy rules (important officials are treated with leniency).

The problem of oversecrecy was recognized decades ago, but it got much worse through overreaction to the Sep 2001 attacks. In general, the US reaction 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 some official. The structure of this tends to push officials towards oversecrecy. If they don't mark something secret, and later on it appears that publishing it may have caused some bad consequences, people will blame them. If they do mark something secret, and later on it appears that concealing it caused some bad consequences, no one will blame them. For their career safety, they mark it secret by default. Systematically, the result is oversecrecy.