I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that. But there is a competing interest, and that is the ability of prosecutors to get information that may be absolutely essential to assist them in the investigation of illegal wrongdoing. And so you've got these two competing interests. I believe that the current policy at the Department of Justice reflects a careful balancing of those interests.

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

The FBI director's probably spent a great deal of pressure to go either way - you know, to have said something, to not have said something. And, you know, he made the decision this was the right way to go. You know, I'm not going to second guess him without knowing all the information related to the investigation.

We haven't seen a situation where you have the FBI director talk about an investigation side by side with the attorney general who confirms, yes, I accept the recommendation of the FBI director.

Well, first of all, let me say that - let me remind your viewers that I am recused from this investigation, and what I said this weekend is not anything new.

Am I worried about additional attacks in this country? Of course I'm worried about it. We expect the American people to go on living their lives as normally as possible. But it is a post-9/11 world, and the United States government is doing everything we can do to ensure that another terrorist attack does not occur here in this country.

The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.