John Brennan Quotes

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

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.

I believe that the American People have a right to know what was done in their name..

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

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

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

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.

All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.

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

It appears to the American people that the government is intent on prying into every nook and cranny of people’s private lives, while at the same time doing all that it can to block access to government information that would inform the American people what is being done in their name.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

My job is to be skeptical: skeptical of people like Edward Snowden and skeptical of the U.S. government.

As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire U.S. government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.

I believe the job of the FBI Director is to be as transparent as possible with the American people because we work for them.

Ever since I arrived in Washington in April 2009, I have been fighting for more transparency and accountability in government.

I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinion, listens to its citizens.

It is beyond dispute that President Obama and his aides have an extreme, even unprecedented obsession with concealing embarrassing information, controlling the flow of information, and punishing anyone who stands in the way. But, at least theoretically speaking, it is the job of journalists to impede that effort, not to serve and enable it.

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

Well that's true, and what is actually happening now is that there are accusations that those records contain conspiratorial information that has been concealed from the American people and that is a dangerous situation that just cannot be tolerated.

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

The American people have been denied important information for their own protection.