Throughout [Barack] Obama's career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously.
Nat HentoffFortunately most of the people who were involved in anti-Vietnam activity did not con themselves into being like the violent people they didn't want.
Nat HentoffCarl Armstrong was one of those people in the anti-war years who had been so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that he and some friends decided they would blow up a building at the University of Wisconsin, in which they said research was being done to help the war against the Vietnamese. What they blew up at three or four in the morning was a young scientist, who was married and had a couple of kids, who wasn't working on war stuff at all. And he was killed.
Nat HentoffThis book, "Speaking Freely," starts when I came to New York. And the first chapter is about a man who became a friend of mine, much to our mutual surprise, Malcolm X.
Nat Hentoff