...In the vast majority of drug experiments, it is not uncommon for none or one or two of hundreds of patients to benefit from the drug.

I don't think the question is if should we have a shield law. I think the question is what kind of shield law we should have. Yes, I'd like to see a federal shield law, but if and only if it provides genuine safeguards and doesn't green-light prosecutors and judges and litigants from going after the press and getting things to which they should not be entitled. It's not a simple kind of litmus test.

One of the things that will probably need to be addressed is in the treatment of history, i.e. the Presidential Papers Act. If they can act with impunity, if they know that what they're doing is not going to see the light of day anytime in their lifetime, if they have the right to withhold information from the public, then presidents are given a vastly freer hand.

And fourthly there is a major shift in public opinion and attitude to accommodate to the post-9/11 mentality and the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy. I think the public has simply become increasingly accustomed to being turned away from vital information and is protesting less and less. You have some squeaky wheels out there, but I don't think they're representative of the population at large.

Secrecy doesn't attach to particular parties; it attaches to power. All of the bull work is in place for whomever succeeds. That's my concern.

Every effort is made to control information. Secrecy is just one of the toggles on their control board. The mindset is in place, and they've done a lot of hiring over eight years, not just political appointees. And they've done a lot of firing or driving people out who might have countermanded or resisted. So, institutionally, it's not going to be simply a matter of flipping the switch to undo it. You're going have to bring in people dedicated to transparency, and you have to demonstrate that there are rewards for candor.

Another factor is the post-9/11 security mentality, which views sunlight as toxic and imagines that somehow bin Laden is dependent upon our government documents, a "fact" that has never, ever been supported to my knowledge. So, that's the second factor.