Helen Thomas Quotes

People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.

There is a veil of secrecy that is descending around the administration which I think is unseemly

The most secretive White House in modern history has learned the hard way …that it must reveal a pretty steady stream of secrets.

I didn’t e-mail during my Presidency because I was afraid of the Freedom of Information Requests.

If the President really wanted to know exactly how Rove and Libby were involved, he could walk down to their offices and demand that they answer him honestly.

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

In 1971, near the middle of Nixon's first term, he approved a plan to install a White House taping system as a way of preserving an accurate chronicle of important discussions and decisions. Except for Nixon, three aides, and the Secret Service, no one knew about the listening devices.

People in power tend to be not as enthusiastic about open records as they were before they came to power.

In the Eisenhower days, for example, the "Top Secret" stamp was used very, very freely in order not to conceal information from the Soviets or from potential enemies, but simply to conceal it from the U.S. people and from the press. This is done again and again.

The longer presidents go without a press conference, the greater the suspicion that there is something to hide.

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

The fight is not over what shall be secret, but over who shall determine what shall be secret.

Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me.

Why does the White House sometimes seem so determined to close the door on the people's right to know what their government is doing?

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.

You can’t have Congressional hearings on classified matters.

Executive Privilege

Secrecy in government, in the public mind, becomes synonymous with deception in government.

It is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the Executive Branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising each other on official matters ... it is not in the public interest that any of their conversations or communications, or any documents or reproductions, concerning such advice be disclosed.

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows

There is a culture of secrecy. Nobody gets punished for over-classifying. They might be punished for under-classifying.

There is nothing about the President's health that should be secret—that includes baldness.

The present trend toward Government secrecy could end in a dictatorship. The more information there is made available, the greater will be the nation’s security.

Had the investigation been left to the government, the current administration would have concealed its own mistakes and blamed its predecessors, That is not a criticism of the Bush White House. Any administration would do the same.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.