Curt Weldon Quotes

Where protection of certain sensitive information is well-founded, I remain committed to upholding the laws and longstanding policies governing classification and public release.

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

As much as possible, you simply don't give out information to the public, that is the first principle.

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

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

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

Secretary Clinton was warned repeatedly about her duty to secure classified information and that her unsecure server did not meet that standard.

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.

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA's compliance record.

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

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 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.

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.

There are security risks not only from information falling into the wrong hands, but also from information failing to find its way into the right hands. The government’s current approach to protecting classified information does not recognize this risk from failing to share

[Defining state secrets:] All state affairs which have not yet been decided upon, or which have been decided upon but not yet been made public.

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

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

Bureaucracy always seeks the path of least disclosure.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

I worked with people like Edward Snowden. Well, not people who took stuff home.

Lawyers, judges, doctors, shrinks, accountants, investigators and, not least, journalists could not do the most basic tasks without a veil of secrecy. Why shouldn't the same be true of those professionals who happen to be government officials?

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

One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.