Come on, it's been 13 years now of this "grave damage to national security" talk. They claim it for everything.
I'm reasonably sure every thinking person has started, in their mind, to replace any invocation of "national security" with "covering up either incompetence, negligence or breaches of law". Theres zero reasons we should be paying any attention to that label.
(I like to remind people of the case of Ibrahim vs. DHS, where the government spent all its time invoking various secrets related laws and privileges, citing national security, even having Holder sign a declaration to that purpose, and what for? To cover up the clerical error of some lowly FBI agent, who checked a wrong box.)
The "grave damage to national security" wasn't something an official said. It was a warning inside the document.
Certainly there are instances where this is the case. I can think of a few others to add to your example.
But there's no good reason to assume that all invocations of classified and politically or strategically sensitive material are excuses to cover up incompetence, negligence or breaches of law. And in fact in this case I'm not sure what it would be covering up. What's listed here is hardly incompetence nor negligence and the argument for breach of law, while slightly stronger, wouldn't pass a smell test.
I'm reasonably sure every thinking person has started, in their mind, to replace any invocation of "national security" with "covering up either incompetence, negligence or breaches of law". Theres zero reasons we should be paying any attention to that label.
(I like to remind people of the case of Ibrahim vs. DHS, where the government spent all its time invoking various secrets related laws and privileges, citing national security, even having Holder sign a declaration to that purpose, and what for? To cover up the clerical error of some lowly FBI agent, who checked a wrong box.)