Presidential Confidentiality Quotes

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

The President is entitled to keep secret those conversations which a President may have had with his aids for the purpose of advising him in his Constitutional duties. Executive privilege cannot cover crimes, for they are not Constitutional duties.

If I tell him [President Abraham Lincoln] my [war] plans they will be in the New York Herald tomorrow morning. He can’t keep a secret.

What happens in the White House stays in the White House.

You do not walk into any hearing or committee meeting and reveal confidential communications with the president of the United States, who's entitled to receive confidential communications in your best judgment about a host of issues.

I don't get into conversations or information about anything that the president does with his personal attorney.

If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

There's several different forms of executive privilege. The one that is most absolute would be close advisers talking to the president himself.