In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, "It's not a perfect world."

Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.

It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It's very, it's very exciting.

Maybe some of today's papers have too many 'feel-good' features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

Sometimes I am convinced there is nothing wrong with this country that couldn't be cured by the magical implantation of ethical standards on us all - leaders and followers. Until that becomes doable, the Center for Public Integrity is just about the best thing we have going for us.

National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail. So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that's a national security matter. Well, you're supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government. More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.