My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.
— Ron Paul
Thrilling Classified Information quotations
I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public.
This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends.
I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States.
It was never my intent to hurt anyone. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
I think anybody in our - in the, in the national security apparatus has, has got to take full cognizance of their responsibility for the safeguarding of classified information.
There are two things that matter in a criminal investigation of a subject.
What did the person do, and when they did that thing, what were they thinking? When you look at the hundred-years-plus of the Justice Department investigation and prosecution of mishandling of classified information, those two questions are obviously present.
Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects, and schedules.
I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.
If my son or your son handled classified information the way that Hillary Clinton did, they'd be court marshaled.
Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked 'classified' in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.
People have given me classified information, but always with the disclaimer 'This can never end up in a book.' And it never does.
Leaking classified information is a crime.
And if we have evidence that somebody in the executive branch is committing a crime, we should prosecute that person.
There is evidence that Democrates were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
I'll turn the page on a growing empire of classified information.
We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources and methods to hide the truth.
Clapper has been straight and direct in the answers that he's given, and has actively engaged in an effort to provide more information about the programs that have been revealed through the leak of classified information.
If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.
If any individual who objects to government policy can take it in their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will never be able to keep our people safe or conduct foreign policy.
People, I am actually fairly smart. Why has this not occurred to anyone? The information is all out there, if you go looking for it, and the classified stuff just comes from analyzing the unclassified stuff and connecting the dots.
Mr. Luskin also says that Rove did not knowingly disclose classified information and did not tell any reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the C.I.A.
The FBI found Hillary Clinton to be extremely careless with classified information on her non-secured private e-mail server. While secretary of state. In addition to all we've been talking about, we're learning that Clinton actually lectured her own staff about the importance of cyber security back in 2010, telling them to do one thing while she herself was doing another thing.
In my view, a huge portion of WikiLeaks's activities has nothing to do with legitimate newsgathering, informing the public, commenting on important public controversies, but is simply about releasing classified information to damage the United States of America.
Russia is all fake news. It's all fake news. The nice thing is, I see it starting to turn, where people are now looking at the illegal - I think it's very important - the illegal, giving out classified information. It was - and let me just tell you, it was given out like so much.
If you share information widely, but you present that information in ways that fits your own view, you're actually still misrepresenting. So instead what you should do is figure out ways to build systems that allow people to experience and classify their information in ways that are meaningful for them.
I've never heard a White House staff say that the president was too stupid or too ill-informed to have broken the law. And that's really what it comes down to. The truth is, he leaked highly classified information that he shouldn't have leaked. It's one thing to say, "Hey, I'm the president. Nobody can punish me for that." It's another thing entirely to just deny that he did it. We know that he did it. And he really ought to own up to it.
Hillary [Clinton] has a resume. What is the story in Hillary's resume? Four dead in Benghazi, illegal emails, trafficking in classified information. The media hasn't gone there on that yet because when covering that aspect of Hillary minus [Donald] Trump, the story is the same.
When Wikileaks comes out, which I have nothing to do with, they're giving classified information. They're giving information about Hillary [Clinton] cheating on the debates. No one mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates. Seriously, can you imagine if I received the questions? It would be the electric chair, ok?
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.
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.
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.
I didn't investigate Hillary Clinton before she was in office, I started investigated Hillary Clinton's actions after the inspector-general said that there was classified information housed in a non-classified setting.
Obviously, as secretary of state, I had some of the most important secrets that we possess, such as going after bin Laden. So I am very committed to taking classified information seriously.
The fact that this highly classified information of very, very important people in many cases was so poorly protected demonstrates that cyber security is just one more area where the Obama administration has failed.
I don't think a woman [Hillary Clinton] who has revealed numerous classified information, doesn't know that the letter "C" means confidential.
Which [the cyber hacking] is why one of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.