Noam Chomsky Quotes

Federal prosecutors want to indict Julian Assange for making public a great many classified documents.

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.

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

There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to give them to the people than he would have to filch another man's property off a taxicab seat. The Government, of course, commonly leaks classified documents when it deems publication convenient to manipulate public opinion to its advantage. Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents.

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

I don't see anything that's come out on WikiLeaks that was a legitimate secret.

I think Assange has been very courageous. I've also defended Bradley Manning. I think they've been tremendously courageous in telling the truth, and the public has the right to the truth.

Wikileaks is providing information on what ambassadors are sending to Washington and things like that. Maybe some of that has a right to some kind of secrecy, but there is a heavy burden and I think its pretty hard to meet. I haven't read everything from Wikileaks by any means but the parts that I have read and seen I think are things the public should know.

WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs and U.S. diplomatic cables stolen from a classified network by an Army private.

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.

The fact is that when it comes to judgment as to what should be secret and what should not be secret, Julian Assange's judgment has been pretty good so far.

The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.

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.

Leaks usually have more value to the public at large than the harm which they occasionally do.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

The Official Secrets Act is not to protect secrets. It’s to protected officials.

The United States is the only country in the world that has ever released the operations files of its intelligence agency.

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.

WikiLeaks' disclosures should be protected under the First Amendment.

There are some episodes in the history of Israel that are still kept under the strongest secrecy thick veil possible. Some of them are 40 years old, 50 years old, and are still under thick, thick secrecy, and anyone violating this secrecy would be thrown into jail himself.

The Official Secrets Act 1989 may need reforming for the digital era, but I would argue that at its heart there should be protection for whistleblowers.

I think we do sympathize. And a lot of us think a lot of what Snowden did was great, and you're abetting him. But, we also think, well, if we are going to have someone who is going to be the one to take secret materials and disseminate it...why you? You weren't elected to that post. That seems to be what the question always comes down to.