Political Quotes

“I do so in the context of a commission created in the 103d Congress, the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, which was established to review the whole pattern of the protection of the Nation's intelligence and defense secrets as we moved into a very different era from that from which we are clearly emerging. The present regime for protecting secrecy in our country was basically put in place in a very few days, weeks at most, in the aftermath of the declaration of war on Germany in 1917. The Espionage Act of 1917 was introduced in the first week of April, 1917, as the United States entered the First World War, and is still in place, though an amendment passed the following year known as the Sedition Act--largely a revision of section 3 of the Espionage Act--was subsequently repealed. In that same first week of April 1917, the Civil Service Commission presented to President Wilson a request for an Executive order on the question of the loyalty of Federal employees. Again, demonstrating a pattern, although one interrupted, that we see in our present situation--the arrangements put in place near the beginning of the century remain in place today. These are very considerable arrangements. Some 2,300,000 American civil servants have clearances for various levels of access to classified material. Some 850,000 persons in civilian employment in defense industries in the main are similarly cleared for classified material.”