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.

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.

Well, there is an attorney-client privilege here that needs to be respected, and it's a privilege that has been found to be worthy of protection by our courts.

I will be the first to admit I am not perfect and I make mistakes.

At the end of the day, you realize that this is important stuff, but it isn't as important as how my kids feel about me. That's how I'm going to measure my success - not how I did as counsel to the president or as attorney general. How did I do as a dad?

There are, for example, exemptions in FOIA in which the government can withhold certain kinds of information, and the courts have recognized that there is certain documentation that do deserve protection, that certain privileges do apply and do deserve protection.

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.