Hardly a surprise at this point.
At the cost of exactly how many lives? If what this criminal claims is true, it appears to me that someone looked at our intel services, that failed us in discovering 9/11 and failed us in informing the leadership in both executive and legislative branches about Iraq, that we were deficient in human intelligence assets.
Some bright fellow must have thought, "hey, if we could capture all the info that reporters are digging up, we would have thousands of human intel assets in the field tomorrow."
As a long term policy should we do this, no. To defend our country when at war, yes. Should you even know about it, no. Neither should you know how sausage is made and for the same reason.