Michael Hayden Quotes

Executive Privilege

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

Throughout [Barack] Obama's career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously.

President Obama's decision to bypass the constitutional advice and consent of the Senate is not an isolated incident.

You can’t have Congressional hearings on classified matters.

When a President asserts constitutional powers he needs to be pretty certain he has those powers.

That a district judge would overrule the president of the United States on a matter of border security in wartime is absurd.

There are a lot of presidents in both parties - including President Obama - who had strong claims of executive privilege that I certainly think went too far.

The [George W.] Bush administration would go into court on any kind of a case that they thought might embarrass them and would argue that it was a state secret and the case should not be continued.[Barack] Obama is doing the same thing, even though he promised not to.

The president and the executive branch are always going to have greater latitude and greater authority when it comes to protecting America because sometimes you just have to respond quickly and not everything that is a danger can be publicized and be subject to open debate, but there have to be some guardrails.

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

I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

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

President Obama has adopted a practice of picking and choosing which laws he wants to enforce. In most cases, his laws of choice conveniently coincide with his administration's political agenda.

The administration of George W. Bush, emboldened by the Sept. 11 attacks and the backing of a Republican Congress, has sought to further extend presidential power over national security. Most of the expansion has taken place in secret, making Congressional or judicial supervision particularly difficult.

Usually you kind of give the President a pass on leaking confidential stuff.

The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.

The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It's on a scale never seen before.

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

There is not a single Supreme Court case that insinuates that the President can violate a federal statute in order to gather foreign intelligence. It was a flagrant violation of The Constitution.

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.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

The President cannot refuse to enforce a law simply because he does not like it.

Why should we allow a Democrat President in the White House to use executive orders and not do the same with a Republican President?