Mike Mansfield Quotes

Everything the CIA does is secret and it is secret particularly from the Congress.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law. The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities

As both a career intelligence officer and as an American citizen, I am a strong believer in the importance of oversight. Simply put, experience has taught us that CIA cannot be effective without the people's trust, and we cannot hope to earn that trust without the accountability that comes with Congressional oversight.

The CIA claims that secrecy is necessary to hide what it's doing from enemies of the United States ... the real reason for secrecy is to hide what the CIA is doing from the American people.

Quite as important as legislation is vigilant oversight of administration; and even more important than legislation is the instruction and guidance in political affairs which the people might receive from a body which kept all national concerns suffused in a broad daylight of discussion .... The informing functions of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function. The argument is not only that a discussed and interrogated administration is the only pure and efficient administration, but, more than that, that the only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration.

[William J.] Casey was guilty of Contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in.

I believe that the American People have a right to know what was done in their name..

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

When I was at the CIA I asked my civilian advisory board to tackle some tough questions. Among the toughest: In a political culture that every day demands more transparency and more public accountability from every aspect of national life, could American intelligence continue to survive and succeed? That jury is still out.

While the intelligence profession oftentimes demands secrecy, it is critically important that there be a full and open discourse on intelligence matters with the appropriate elected representatives of the American people.

Checks and balances, in time of war, are more important than ever.

Our Presidents should not be able to conduct secret operations which violate our principles, jeopardize our rights, and have not been subject to the checks and balances which normally keep policies in line

The United States is the only country in the world that has ever released the operations files of its intelligence agency.

Our agency (the Central Intelligence Agency) is the last refuge of organizational privacy available to the U. S. Government.

Congress has really serious oversight powers over Intelligence Agencies that they have not exercised in recent years.

The combination of secrecy and bureaucracy in the CIA has led to a special kind of disaster.

Independence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it is mutually exclusive with accountability. The more independence you give a prosecutor, the less you make that prosecutor accountable to the public and regular checks and balances.

If Adam Schiff is able to review covert operations and intelligence, and if we have to be able to rely on his representations, our whole system is broken.

It's important to make sure that governments have some checks on what they do, that people can oversee what's being done so the government doesn't abuse it.

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

No nation ever yet found any inconvenience from too close an inspection into the conduct of its officers, but many have been brought to ruin and reduced to slavery by suffering gradual impositions and abuses.

My literal responsibility as director of the CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval; to inform.

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

The intelligence community, for the most part, has no accountability at all; to the Congress, to us the American people, and so they feel that they above the law.