Spill the beans on a SEAL mission and they will die, unless they know the beans have been spilled.

An awful lot of classified intelligence is not due to operation considerations (though your example is an excellent example of how people mis-understand operational intelligence). We don't want enemies to learn anything about how or when we gather information. Once they learn our operational parameters, the enemy will adjust his own operations to thwart our means and methods. The taxpayers ultimately pay for the toys so compromising them costs us a lot of money, not to mention the information itself.

As an example, early in the invasion of Afghanistan a reporter asked one of the senators (a Republican, IIRC) how we were able to track Bin Laden. He said something like, "Oh, that's easy, as long as his satphone is on, whether or not he is transmitting, we can triangulate his position within a few miles." Within a day or so of that revelation Bin Laden's folks quit using satphones. You want to blame somebody for losing Bin Laden in Tora Bora? There's your boy.

That was not the first time a member of Congress, or even a president, had revealed highly classified info. Jimmy Carter is the one who revealed stealth technology in order to make a point in a debate with Reagan. Reagan was pushing Carter on B1 bomber funding and Carter said we didn't need the B1 because we had aircraft that were invisible to radar.

Did the taxpayer need to know those little nuggets? Did anybody get hurt because of the revelations? If you were in the CIA or DIA would you like the idea of briefing Congressmen on means and methods of intelligence? How much would you tell a committee that was on your ass?

B