Steven Aftergood Quotes (30 Quotes)

If the FBI can persuade a court that there is probable cause that there are stolen records in that collection, then they should go to court. They cannot bully or attempt to intimidate the family or the university into surrendering private records.

I think there is enormous understanding and tolerance for an argument from necessity, and there's willingness to retroactively forgive what might strictly speaking be violations of the law.

So somehow the notion that the U.S. had conducted a nuke test in Sudan had gotten into the news food chain and had triggered alarms on the part of the Sudanese government,

As a society we seem to be losing our ability to rationally debate complicated policy decisions. Secrecy aggravates the problem by excluding people from the debate, or by narrowing their frames of reference. Nothing less than the future of American democracy is at stake.

A lot of what we think we know of our recent history may be mistaken, ... It is a disgrace that it should be so in a democracy, but it is.

Secrecy seems to be the default here. It appears the judge wants to discourage media coverage.

I presume it's an attempt to provide some context for the information that was disclosed. If such information was already in public circulation or widely disseminated, that could arguably mitigate anything the defendants did wrong by communicating it.

If receiving and passing on national defense information is a crime, we're going to have to build a lot more jails. To make a crime of the kind of conversations Rosen and Weissman had with Franklin over lunch would not be surprising in the People's Republic of China. But it's utterly foreign to the American political system.

It's perfectly understandable the press office would be frustrated by leaks. But they are the ones with the documents, they are the ones who need to exercise discipline. You can't ask the press not to report what they learn.

It's a 'trust me' response. That's not good enough anymore. There needs to be an external check and balance to restore confidence in the system.

This illustrates the principle that unchecked authority goes astray. In this case, it's a relatively trivial infraction. But to me the point is that we need more aggressive and penetrating oversight than we have.

FOIA is one of the most vital tools we have left, and it's urgent that it be protected. It's under stress in this climate, but it's not broken.

It's a bit of a compromise, ... There is a cultural resistance to the polygraph that is different at the FBI than at the CIA. A polygraph is something that is given to new employees and suspected criminals, not to employees in good standing.

Some categories of classified information are protected by statute and not only by executive order. Intelligence sources and methods are protected by the National Security Act and cannot be declassified even by the say-so of the president.

I think there will be problems and cases where employees are tripped up by the tests, ... But the bureau as a whole will adapt.

The idea that this law is some kind of dinosaur is a misunderstanding.

I think it's driven by the individual agencies, which have bureaucratic sensitivities to protect. But it was clearly encouraged by the administration's overall embrace of secrecy.

I thought, Wow, ... Here's a historical revelation that will cause the history books to be rewritten. No one's ever heard of a U.S. nuclear test in the Sudan in 1962.

I don't think anybody welcomed that proposal. It wouldn't serve the interests of those who benefit from the status quo.

Secrecy has become a growth industry. It makes it harder for ordinary citizens ... to ask questions ... and to hold officials accountable.

It prompts speculation that perhaps the government was using information that was illegally obtained.

It is important to acknowledge that CIA hasn't totally neglected the issue of records management.

If you think about all of the infrastructure needed to support that number of people, you start to get a sense of just how vast our intelligence system has become. Think about all the things going on that we don't know about.

It is ironic, ... We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels.

This administration has embraced secrecy as a right.

One wants to be sure that terrorism is not used as a pretext for withholding information that the public needs to assess government policy and performance, ... It looks to me like the government is overreaching in some cases.

This whole activity was effectively concealed. It's baffling. It's basically a covert action taking place at the National Archives.

These incidents will have served a constructive purpose if the Pentagon is willing and able to learn from them. By exposing and highlighting vulnerabilities, the attacks can actually help to inoculate the system during times of crisis. But only if the appropriate lessons are learned now.

If you don't have the possibility of asking questions and presenting answers that officials may find unwelcome, then you short circuit the deliberative process, end up magnifying the power of the executive and undermining the system of checks and balances. Needless to say the press is not immune from criticism. But the possibility of independent reporting on government needs to be preserved or all of us are potentially in jeopardy.

We have an interest on public access to government information and in government control of such access. Don't shut down these guys whether they are communicating with their families or they are reaching out to the larger public.