Barack Obama Quotes

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 wise to keep the mass of people in ignorance of disaster that may be immediately repaired, or of follies or even vices in government which may be repressed before they become dangerous.

We were able to flood the zone immediately.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

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.

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

Classification is used, not to protect the national interest but to prevent national embarrassment.

An urgent need exists for regular and responsible Congressional scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency. Such scrutiny is essential… Our form of government…is based on a system of checks and balances. If this system gets seriously out of balance at any point the whole system is jeopardized and the way is opened for the growth of tyranny…CIA is freed from practically every ordinary form of Congressional check. I agree that an intelligence agency must maintain complete secrecy to be effective. However, there is a profound difference between an essential degree of secrecy to achieve a specific purpose and secrecy for the mere sake of secrecy.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

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

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

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

Governments and local administrative bodies decide to inform the public of their mistakes only when losses have become disproportionately great.

In China, there is a long history of the government not revealing information, so it’s difficult for the Chinese people to ever know the truth. It is vital that we try to bring that truth to life.

Censorship is being abused as a cloak to cover all political, naval and military mistakes..

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

The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.

Bishops need to resist the defensiveness that institutions often fall back on in crisis moments.

I think it's something that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about - participating in democracy, and that includes issues like what's going on and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That's an on-going thing - in a democracy you want checks and balances and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country. It's a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.

I've spent a lot of time working on declassified documents - and they do get declassified after decades - you look at the record of declassified documents, and they are mostly concerned with keeping what the government does secret from its own population. It's mostly defense of the power system from its own population. Very little is authentic security.

When you're president, you can't vote present. You have to make a decision. Sometimes it's a split second decision. You don't have time to think about it. You've got to actually decide.

Most of what is done I think is to kept secret so the public won't know. The same is true of what Wikileaks exposed.

If you tell Congress everything about the world situation, they get hysterical. If you tell them nothing, they go fishing.

I think that if the president Trump would have fired Comey when he first came in, he would not have to be in a position now where he is trying to make up a story about why. It does not meet the smell test.

...it is appropriate to have an over representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.