Valerie Plame Quotes

When I blew the whistle on the whole thing, it was [William J.] Casey who, I felt, regarded what I had done as treason.

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

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.

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

When people ask me if I have worked for the C.I.A., I often answer: what good to you is my answer? Because if I did, I might not say so.

The information I received as a member of the National Security Council, in my capacity as Vice—President, was so confidential that I would lose my right arm before I divulge it to anyone, even to members of my own family…

Our agency (the Central Intelligence Agency) is the last refuge of organizational privacy available to the U. S. Government.

We would not have a national discussion without the actions of Edward Snowden. Democracy is at work because of Edward Snowden.

Some things simply cannot leak. And if they do leak, the government has to do something about it.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

In the '60s - and right up to the present day - the identity of a member of the British Secret Services was and is, quite rightly, a state secret. To divulge it is a crime. The Services may choose to leak a name when it pleases them.

National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account.

The secrecy stamp … has been used to withhold information which in 99 ½ percent of the cases would present no danger to national security.

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.

I worked with people like Edward Snowden. Well, not people who took stuff home.

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

The Espionage Act is very broadly written. It doesn't make distinguish - or it doesn't make distinctions between categories of people that can receive and publish information and under what circumstances.

Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.

I see Edward Snowden as someone who has chosen, at best, exile from the country he loves-with a serious risk of his assassination by agents of his government or life in prison (in solitary confinement)-to awaken us to the danger of our loss of democracy to a total-surveilla nce state

What many commentators have missed in the ongoing attack on Edward Snowden is not that he uncovered information that made clear how corrupt and intrusive the American government has become - how willing it is to engage in vast crimes against the American public.

For an American to be patriotic is to be loyal to the principles of our Constitution, and the First Amendment. The truth is that the policies of the government is sometimes in conflict with that. In our country, patriotism should not be defined as obedience to an authority.

Scott's Eastwood movie Snowden sounds fascinating. I want to see it because it's about deserting your country ... for whatever reasons you have. Edward Snowden became famous for the wrong reasons, as Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became famous for doing something spectacular.

Anyone who studies declassified documents soon becomes aware that government secrecy is largely an effort to protect policy makers from scrutiny by citizens, not to protect the country from enemies.

It is a privilege to join the campaign to support Bradley Manning for his courage and integrity in serving his country by helping make the government accountable to its citizens, and to inform the world of what its people should know.

You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.