Noam Chomsky, commenting on 9/11 conspiracy theories, was saying that one of the things that made them impossible in retrospect is that secrets are very difficult to keep, that there are always people who will leak something.

But one thing that really stuck in my craw is how the military intelligence Chelsea Manning had access to later on was accessible by thousands of people, and there are very few who have followed her example. Similar with Snowden, except that much fewer people had his kind of access.