It's no surprise that they can keep a secret. Civilian personnel in defense and intelligence are, by and large, capable of keeping a secret when it counts. They are motivated to do the job and keep such secrets as are necessary to get it done (this does not include fraud, but the Important People do what they want). They know that info getting out could cause soldiers to die and wars to be lost. Speaking for my colleagues, it is not just another job because we know what's at stake.

Now, give classified info to some dummy in Congress...that's scary. Those people get their clearances by virtue of their jobs and not because of their own merits. And the spill procedures that we have to follow don't apply to them. Just like all those other laws and regulations don't apply to them.

As an acquisition guy, I hate this kind of stuff. This is how DoD projects go way over budget and behind schedule. Instead of "give us a long-range recon platform that the enemy is unlikely to notice," you get "give us a long-range recon platform that's stealthy, looks and flies like a bat, weighs this much, is this big, consumes this much power, can do all this other stuff that we think would be cool, etc., and by the way, you'll need to develop technology that's multiple generations ahead of what you have now." The former lends itself to more realistic requirements, useful incremental development, lower costs, and the like. The latter creates expensive messes.