NY Times and transparency

Check out this article in the NY Times's Week in Review. I'm not sure if it's specious self-defense (and I'm not too happy with the Times these days) or a real public concern. Transparency / accountability is a tricky issue. Some suggest that a little lack of transparency can be a good thing by helping officials get things done without having to constantly appeal to their broader audience on every detail of their work. Others argue that that work is supposed to be democratic, informed by real concerns of the public. Transparency in the latter case plays into accountability by facilitating information to and from a democratic public. So, your call on this article, a transparency issue or not?

The investigation into the disclosure of the identity of a then covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, might end with a broadly defined charge that boils down to divulging secret information, a category that covers not only real secrets, but the daily give and take between officials and journalists.

Reporters worry about a chilling effect, one that would make it even harder to explain what the government is doing. Some government officials say they fear the impact because they know that it is often difficult these days to try to justify a national security decision, or warn of an impending threat, or even complain about some kinds of budget cuts without slipping into classified territory.

In short, the law does not distinguish terribly well between real secrets and sort-of secrets, especially in an age when the instinct to stamp "classified" runs rampant.