If the government is committing illegal acts, it’s in the interest of the citizens to know. Imagine if the government snatched people off the street and made them disappear. One of those police officers tells the press, and is subsequently arrested for violating an unlawful NDA. Is the officer in the wrong there?
Should everything be declassified? No! There absolutely is a need to keep things secret. But the government’s knee jerk reaction to everything has led to a “classify everything and don’t ask questions” mentality. I’ve heard this is because they’re worried those in charge fear they have broken some laws (either knowingly or unknowingly). The solution to that is not to classify things, but to investigate and fix the problem. The problem (no pun intended) is that the government doesn’t do that. They double down on their lies and half truths which leads to situations like Clapper testifying to Congress that the NSA wasn’t doing the thing that they were doing.
Perhaps, the leak and the subsequent outing was part of a deep-state plot to legitimize the assertion that Russia manipulated the 2016 United States election to get their man elected President.