State secret

“ The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If anyone denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.
But a secret government is little less than a government of assassins. Under it, a man knows not who his tyrants are, until they have struck, and perhaps not then. ”

“ Let me ask, Will the people intrust their dearest fights and liberties to the determination of one body of men, and those not chosen by them, and who are invested both with the sword and purse? They never will—they never can—to a conclave, transacting their business secret from the eye of the public. ”

“ In these cases we are not faced with a situation where Congress has failed to provide the Executive with broad power to protect the Nation from disclosure of damaging state secrets. Congress has on several occasions given extensive consideration to the problem of protecting the military and strategic secrets of the United States. This consideration has resulted in the enactment of statutes making it a crime to receive, disclose, communicate, withhold, and publish certain documents, photographs, instruments, appliances, and information. ”

“ In the name of security the police state justifies its arbitrary oppressions on evidence that is secret, because security might be prejudiced if it were brought to light in hearings. The plea that evidence of guilt must be secret is abhorrent to free men, because it provides a cloak for the malevolent, the misinformed, the meddlesome, and the corrupt to play the role of informer undetected and uncorrected. ”

“ Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us and insinuated into our councils, in order to be made instruments for their purposes. Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services. ”

“ Besides, the learned tell us, that ministers of state make an excellent plea of their not betraying their intelligence, against all party inquiries into the great sums of money pretended to be paid for secret service; and whether the secret service was to bribe people to betray things abroad or at home; whether the money was paid to some body or to no body, employ’d to establish correspondences abroad, or to establish families and amass treasure at home ”

“ “It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs be conducted in secret.... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead.... Better that right counsels be known to enemies, than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; ”

“ All three members of the panel have reviewed the documents filed by the government under seal that arguably are protected by the privilege. The state secrets privilege operates as a bar to the admission of evidence to which the privilege attaches, and the plaintiff must proceed without the benefit of such evidence. ”

“ Understand that if you divulge that secret to the British Government, or if in any way it reaches their ears, you are a dead man. No human precautions and no human laws can possibly protect you. We shall know at once by the steps the British Government will take on receipt of the intelligence whether they have learnt the secret or not. ”

“ Each country is casting its net of espionage into the slimy bottom of the others, fishing for their secrets, the treacherous secrets brewing in the oozy depths of diplomacy. And what is their secret service but the nation's underground trade in kidnapping, murder and treachery and all the ugly crimes bred in the depth of rottenness? ”

“ As more information about sweeping government surveillance of law­abiding Americans is made public and the American people can discuss its impacts, I believe more Americans will speak out. They’re going to say, in America, you don’t have to settle for one priority or the other: laws can be written to protect both privacy and security, and laws should never be secret. ”

“ With the European situation to lend strong emphasis to the suggestion of sinister tendencies and secret combinations, it cannot be thought extraordinary that here in America, where traditional opinions and institutions were as certainly being undermined, the conviction should take root that beneath all this commotion over foreign and domestic policies secret forces must be at work, perfecting organizations, promoting conspiracies, and ready at any hour to leap forth into the light to throttle government and order. ”

“ Where it is hidden I do not yet know; but it is through this link that, I believe, our next great move will be played. By it I trust we shall run her down, and by doing so obtain information as to the gang, and possibly capture the papers relating to this great European conspiracy, and to her various plots in the Secret Service. ”

“ Error itself may stalk abroad and do her mischief, and make night itself grow darker, provided truth is left free to follow, however slowly, with her torches to light up the wreck! Why, then, should any portion of the people desire to retire in secret, and by secret means to propagate a political thought, or word, or deed, by stealth? ”

“ The Captain stroked his short mustache for several silent moments before answering. "I quite understand how you feel," he said at length. "And I appreciate it. You're 8seventeen, Patricia,—almost a woman grown. I know I could trust you utterly with the whole thing, but it isn't wise,—in fact, it isn't even allowable. A government secret is a government secret, and cannot be revealed even to one's nearest and dearest. ”

“ It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of which the Freemasons are the commanditaires, the ministers “the managers,” and the deputies and functionaries the employees. ”

“ The merest novice who enters in any capacity into the limelight of publicity, even artists, literary men, frail queans of the demi-monde, financiers, politicians, social fancy-men, jockeys, actors, clerics, opulent mistresses, editors—all these in point of personal "pedigree," to cull an expression from the American police vocabulary, are better known to the secret service than to their own parents. ”

“ It's wonderful to be alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all the governments—that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives, not intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible forces. ”

“ In short, the Court's holding and opinion break down barriers that have heretofore stood in the way of secret and arbitrary governmental action directed against persons suspected of crime or political unorthodoxy. ”

“ I will take you to rooms where persons, under the name of 'secret societies,' privately meet to indulge in the most unnatural and beastly licentiousness. I will prove to you, by ocular demonstration, that in certain cities of the Union, not a letter passes through the post offices, that is not broken open and read, and then re-sealed by a peculiar process—by which means much [Pg 199] private information is gained by the police, and the most tremendous secrets often leak out, to the astonishment of the parties concerned. ”

“ They have two or three experts in cipher at the Foreign Office whose business it is to decode all secret messages, plans, documents, and treaties of which the Secret Service obtains possession. Now, those are the men whom they will trust to handle them, not the keeper of a curiosity shop in Westminster. ”

“ For reasons not always evident to the outside observer, the assumption has become prevalent that the normal operations of the United States Government should be kept confidential, secret, or even top secret. Often it would seem that the attempt to maintain secrecy in non-sensitive functions is not worth the security effort at all or, contrariwise, may even reassure the antagonists of the United States by not letting them realize how serious and how unfriendly our plans or policies with respect to them may be. ”

“ Similarly, the accused may find out that the United States has obtained certain information that his foreign government believes is still secret, even when our Government has also received this information from an independent source in a constitutional way. And he may learn that those in whom he has been reposing confidence are in fact American undercover agents. ”

“ There are only certain men, who call themselves presidents, senators, and representatives, and claim to be the authorized agents, for the time being, or for certain short periods, of all "the people of the United States;" but who can show no credentials, or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so; and who notoriously are not so; but are really only the agents of a secret band of robbers and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing, individually ”

“ For them, by secret combination, to make them unequal, to impose a burthen or restriction upon their privileges which the law does not, is to set themselves up above the law, and to supersede by private and secret authority, intangible and irresponsible, the rule of public, political right. ”

“ In all such matters secrecy will work to the disadvantage of that power which has the most straightforward aims and policies. America cannot willingly submit to such a condition. It is unthinkable that with our traditions of public life and with our Constitutional arrangements, we should ourselves play the old game of secret intrigue ”

“ The President, both as Commander-in-Chief and as the Nation's organ for foreign affairs, has available intelligence services whose reports neither are nor ought to be published to the world. It would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held secret. ”

“ Inasmuch as all the votes, given for you and your lawmakers, were given in secret, all that you and they can say, in support of your authority as rulers, is that you venture upon your acts as lawmakers, etc., not because you have any open, authentic, written, legitimate authority granted you by any human being,—for you can show nothing of the kind,—but only because, from certain reports made to you of votes given in secret, you have reason to believe that you have at your backs a secret association strong enough to sustain you by force, in case your authority should be resisted. ”

“ As a general proposition, the secret society emerges everywhere as correlate of despotism and of police control. It acts as protection alike of defense and of offense against the violent pressure of central powers. ”

“ Secret societies organized for the accomplishment of a pretended public good, and then lending themselves to the commission of crime, cannot be too severely denounced by every lover of honest law and open liberty. ”

“ Whether the threat to publish highly secret documents is of itself a sufficient implication of national security to justify an injunction on the theory that, regardless of the contents of the documents, harm enough results simply from the demonstration of such a breach of secrecy. ”

“ Mighty was the power of these secret courts, and striking the traditions to which they have given rise, based upon their alleged nocturnal assemblies, their secret signs and solemn oaths, their mysterious customs, and the implacable persistency with which their sentences sought the criminal, pursuing him for years, and in whatever corner of the empire he might take refuge, while there were none to call its ministers of justice to account for their acts if the terrible knife had been left as evidence of their authority. ”

“ Without entering into an argument for or against the secret society system, a large class of persons continually and habitually think and speak of the “evil tendencies” of the secret societies in a calm, exasperating way, as though the fact were established beyond dispute ”

“ The danger to be apprehended from the secret societies is that all the members are banded together by the most solemn oaths, and under the penalty of death, not to divulge one of its secrets, and to aid and assist its members under every circumstance; to bear no witness against them, whatever may be their crimes, to shield fugitives from the laws of the country, and lastly to carry out the orders of their chiefs, whatever may be the consequences. ”

“ I have seen highly trained and well-proven statesmen who none the less in the course of conversation, and by other signs, allowed expressions to escape them which gave important clues to their policy. And there are courtiers at every court who, though not members of the King's Council, know by long practice how to discover a secret, and who are always prepared to reveal it in order to show their own importance and their penetration. ”

“ If they would be kept secret, from whom would it be? from our own constituents only, for Great Britain is possessed of every tittle. Why, then, keep it secret from them? no ground of support for the Executive will ever be so sure as a complete knowledge of their proceedings by the people; and it is only in cases where the public good would be injured, and because it would be injured, that proceedings should be secret. In such cases it is the duty of the Executive to sacrifice their personal interests (which would be promoted by publicity) to the public interest. ”