China Quotes

The law does not distinguish terribly well between real secrets and sort-of secrets, especially in an age when the instinct to stamp “classified” runs rampant.

Some information has to remain in the privy of the office of the Prime Minister and the ministers for the proper administration of government.

It is up to the government to keep the government's secrets.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

No country anywhere in the world allows material that genuinely puts national security at risk into the public domain, and that includes a courtroom.

Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate.

Why are diplomatic cables secret at all?

When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.

In real danger sometimes even a democracy can really keep a secret.

The information I received as a member of the National Security Council, in my capacity as Vice—President, was so confidential that I would lose my right arm before I divulge it to anyone, even to members of my own family…

The National Security Agency plays so highly specialized a role in the defense and security of the United States that an outsider can actually describe its activities. They are guarded not only from the public but from other government agencies as well. The Civil Service Commission, which audits all government positions, is not allowed to know what NSA employees do.

You can’t have Congressional hearings on classified matters.

The U. S. press has become a major source of unauthorized intelligence information. Classified information disclosed in the press is the equivalent of information obtained by enemy espionage.

The secrecy stamp … has been used to withhold information which in 99 ½ percent of the cases would present no danger to national security.

No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to give them to the people than he would have to filch another man's property off a taxicab seat. The Government, of course, commonly leaks classified documents when it deems publication convenient to manipulate public opinion to its advantage. Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents.

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

The attached paper is sensitive, particularly if its existence were to leak. It has not been given, and will not be given to any other official of the government. Title: Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam.

Just because a document is classified does not mean that it is truthful.

I am unable to tell a quarter of a billion Americans what we are doing on their behalf, because if I did, it would become the table of contents of the training manual of the enemy.

Politicians often refuse to talk about things on the grounds of national security. Most of the time it’s not national security; it’s national embarrassment.

Some things simply cannot leak. And if they do leak, the government has to do something about it.

It is not unusual to see intelligence agencies classify newspaper clippings as secret even after they have been published. The reason is that the agency people can then avoid answering questions about a matter that the do not want to publicly dicuss by sayting that the subject is classified and they are not allowed to discuss it.

I do not want to respond to leaks that concern things that have to do with state secrets of the first degree.

Providing classified information to a foreign agent of the People's Republic of China is a real and serious threat to our national security.