Sure, but the obvious pro-government response is “revealing that the government is doing bad things reflects badly on the government and damages its reputation at home and abroad.”
Which is true, of course!
This is -incidentally- how the ancient English "state secrets privilege" got introduced into US law.
In the 1940's, godawful maintenance resulted in the crash of a bomber over US soil and the death of all three of the civilians on board the plane. The widows of the dead civilians sued the government and demanded the accident report. The government refused to provide the report, claiming the privilege because "national security", and courts all the way up to the Supreme Court agreed.
In the early 2000s, the accident report was declassified. Inspection revealed that the only real reason to refuse to release it was to both prevent government embarrassment and to avoid having to pay out -IIRC- nearly a quarter million in 1940's USD to the widows.
Given its enormous potential for unchecked abuse, along with the fact that the first ever invocation of it was abusive, courts should refuse to permit its use.
WRT to this instance - I would likely argue that 50 years should have been more than enough time keeping the embargo
https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...
Or we have just independently rediscovered why most regimes seek the justification of some external threats to strengthen their power over their population, 1984 style.
Nah. A single fucked-up maintenance shop is a single fucked-up maintenance shop. You can gut-check this by noticing that bombers weren't routinely falling out of the sky.
FedGov simply didn't want to be deeply embarrassed and wanted to try to wiggle out of paying a quarter million 1940s USD to the widows. Because they were unwilling to admit to their negligence and face the consequences, they did deep and lasting damage to the US justice system by introducing a mechanism that lets FedGov conceal nearly any evidence for any reason by uttering the words "state secrets privilege".
1. One actually did.
2. Dear enemy - bombers maintained by shop X...
If the enemy could track back the bomber to the shop that maintained it based on the information in that report, they
a) Already knew that it crashed.
b) Already knew if any other bombers maintained by that shop had crashed.
As I said, bombers weren't routinely falling out of the sky. And as I suggested, releasing a declassified report that only covered the reason for the crash revealed nothing that the enemy didn't already know.
The enemy thanks you for your cooperation in telling them where possible weaknesses are
edit: While the FedGov absolutely abused the privilege in Reynolds to hide negligence, from a pure intelligence standpoint, operational maintenance audit trails are rarely "harmless" information to hand to an enemy during a War. (Cold or otherwise)
You're telling the enemy where to look.
So how did such a law ever survive scrutiny?
It seems like a blanket ban on exposure of nearly all possible wrongdoing.
And a proportional increase in power goes with that ban on exposing wrongdoing. Which is absolutely the goal of secrecy in government.