The Washington Post reported over the weekend that a proposal by officials in Fairfax County, Va., to get the FBI to move its headquarters to a seemingly unused patch of government land next to a Metro station has run into opposition from a secret source. It seems that the CIA is a tenant, and, indeed, has used the facility for years for clandestine purposes of some sort. The Post goes out of its way to give readers a general idea about where this site is, but presumably out of a sense of responsibility or maybe in response to a request from the Agency, does not identify the actual address.

Reporters makes their own choices, and when it comes to national security, it's OK to err on the side of caution. But far too often, everyone with stakes in the secrecy wars finds themselves focused on precisely the wrong things, or on the trivial at the expense of the important.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.