@Moon @nousnaut >they tried to keep it a secret

I don't really think they did. Look at the date of this WIRED issue, this is one year before Snowden.

https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff-nsadatacenter/

It's all a matter of public framing, not knowledge of their operations. They don't care if people know about their operations, as long as the narrative is framed favorably or is at least not overly hostile to them. It's the difference between "look at the cool tech of this massive domestic spying operation" and "look at how creepy it is that there is a massive domestic spying operation"; with Snowden for a short while they lost control over the framing of that knowledge.