There was joke in Egypt's Nasser about about materials translated from open sources for the intelligence apparatus. Once translated, the material became classified, despite the fact that the original source is available for all to see.

Fastforward to the USA in 2006. The NYT reports today on reclassification of many documents in secret review. Here is a paragraph from that article "Historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program."

A group of historians posted some of the reclassified documents today.