Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to take a moment to clarify this question of secret law. This code book I am holding is the law. It is not secret. This is all of the code provisions which guarantees the legality of what the intelligence community does. There is a whole section on congressional oversight. There is a whole section on additional procedures regarding persons inside the United States and persons outside the United States. This, in fact, is the law. We can change the law, and Senator Wyden had something to do with adding section 704. He did, in fact, change the law to put additional privacy protections in and those privacy protections are up for reauthorization in this bill before us. I wish to address, if I could, what Senator Merkley said in his comments. I listened carefully. What he is saying is opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court should, in some way, shape or form, be made public, just as opinions of the Supreme Court or any court are made available to the public. To a great extent, I find myself in agreement with that. They should be. Why can't they be? Because the law and the particular factual circumstances are mixed together in the opinion, so the particular facts and circumstances are possibly classified. Hopefully the opinion can either be written in a certain way for public release or the Attorney General can be required to prepare a summary of what that opinion said for release to the public.…”