"That possibility was the basic need for this rigmarole, and why only the first letters of the code words “Talent” (for U-2 photography) and “Keyhole” (for the reconnaissance satellite program and photos) were to be mentioned in a public place, where they might be overheard. Elaborate as it sounds, this two-phone-call routine was something I practiced many times in later years before talking with someone whose access was not known to me. Procedures like this—and the sanction of being summarily cut off from access, involvement, and advancement by violating them—kept a vast amount of information relevant to government decision-making (“higher than Top Secret,” SCI) secret from the public, Congress, and most of the government, along with foreigners and enemies, for long periods of time; they were proof against leaks for decades and generations, even when information was known to hundreds or thousands of individuals cleared for it. The cliché that “everything leaks; it all comes out in the New York Times eventually” is emphatically not true, above all for sensitive compartmented information. It’s a cover story, designed both to hide and sustain the effectiveness of the overall secrecy system. (Edward Snowden was the first ever to expose a large amount of SCI, including massively unconstitutional and criminal dragnet surveillance of American citizens and others in the world without probable cause for suspicion. Many thousands of NSA employees had known for a decade of that mass surveillance and its criminality. Not one other had disclosed it. Snowden is currently in exile, probably for life.)"