The CIA used a clever argument to win that debate. If you allow us to keep secret our “operational” files, the Agency said—our covert-action, chaos-creating files, the ones that chronicle how we disrupted and disimproved entire countries and indeed whole regions of the planet—we will be freed up to respond with more speed and efficiency to our current multiyear backlog of FOIA requests.

Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Sec…, loc. 922