US Has Way Too Many "Top Secrets"

Nuclear secrets, names of spies, diplomatic cables: governments everywhere carefully protect information that could compromise security, names of agents or relations with other nations.

The discovery of classified documents at the homes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence has rekindled a debate about an old habit of the US government -- slapping millions of documents every year with labels of "secret," "top secret" and other confidential designations.

Nuclear secrets, names of spies, diplomatic cables: governments everywhere carefully protect information that could compromise security, names of agents or relations with other nations.

But in the United States, the machinery of secrecy works overtime.

Every year, some 50 million decisions are made on whether to mark government documents as "confidential," "secret" or "top secret," according to several experts.