Classified Disclosure Quotes

What happens when I'm dealing with the problems in North Korea and the Middle East? Are you folks going to be reporting all that very, very confidential information, very important, very - you know, at the highest level? Are you going to be reporting about that, too? So I don't want classified information getting out into the public in a way that was almost a test.

Broadly speaking, the problems with the Espionage Act are that it is hopelessly broad. And we tend to use the Espionage Act - we think about the Espionage Act as forbidding disclosures of classified information. That's not really what the statute says. What the statute talks about is information related to the national defense.

At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.

People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy - one of the early charges leveled against me. But it's a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail.

In the case of someone sharing classified information with foreign intelligence, for example, the FBI could surreptitiously ensure that they are no longer able to obtain sensitive information.

Mike Flynn is a fine person, and I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Mike Pence. And I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn't have to do that, because what he did wasn't wrong - what he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That's the real problem.

I can't take classified information that I get as a senator and give it to someone with no consequence.

The U. S. press has become a major source of unauthorized intelligence information. Classified information disclosed in the press is the equivalent of information obtained by enemy espionage.