Alberto Gonzales Quotes

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

There are, for example, exemptions in FOIA in which the government can withhold certain kinds of information, and the courts have recognized that there is certain documentation that do deserve protection, that certain privileges do apply and do deserve protection.

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

When the Democrats were investigating the U.S. attorneys that were accused of responding to political pressure, that I joined Senator Leahy in efforts to get transparency of all of the documents.

Many state parole boards claim exemptions from state sunshine laws that would be unthinkable for other government officials.

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

The Freedom of Information Act isn’t used, for the most part, by the people. It’s used by Journalists … The information is not sought to bestow knowledge upon the people. It is used as a weapon.

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

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III's conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.

As there is no spiking-the-football exception to our open-records laws, Judicial Watch initiated a federal court battle with the administration over the release of postmortem images of bin Laden and his alleged burial at sea.

Even more shocking is a proposal to create a new biodefense research agency that would be completely exempt from FOIA ...We can all agree that the nation must prepare, but it should not do so in abject secrecy

It’s hard to sometimes get information out of the government. It’s really hard. You can’t do it without asking tough questions.

When the Vice President of the United States shoots somebody, the public has the right to know.

If I have to invade the sacred precincts of the White House to find out what is behind this paralysis of the Senate, I will.

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.

The Presidency is a four-year contract with the American electorate. But with television news, the American people can more easily monitor that contract, being sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed.

One advantage to covering the Congress rather than the White House is that no one is controlling the agenda.

No person shall be deprived of the right to examine documents or to observe the deliberations or all public bodies or agencies of state government and its subdivisions ...

What happens in the White House stays in the White House.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

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.

The separation of powers of the Constitution almost encourages leaks.

Our government cannot function cloaked in secrecy. It cannot function unless officials tell the truth.

Secrecy is for losers.... It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.

The overarching purpose of access to information legislation … is to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to ensure first, that citizens have the information required to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and secondly, that politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry.