Only an idiot or a foreign agent would argue that there is never an area of national security where absolute and continuing secrecy is not only warranted, but crucial, rising to the level of an essential responsibility.
It would be interesting to know if this foreign security expert agrees, and exactly under what circumstances.
The public need to know can never trump the security of 300 million...
The public does not have a right to know. The First Amendment codifies our right to speak/print, right or wrong. If we can speak and print even though we are in fact wrong, the public which hears and reads us may be misled into "knowing" things which are not so.