Ted Gup Quotes

A one year study by the Washington Post has documented 620 cases in which experimental drugs have been implicated in the deaths of cancer patients....And they amount to merely a fraction of the thousands of people who in recent years have died or suffered terribly from cancer experiments.

Ted Gup

Cancer, Dark, Years

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...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.

Ted Gup

Dark, Two, Drug

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These human experiments have gone largely unchallenged and unquestioned by Congress, the medical profession, and the scientific community at large.

Ted Gup

Dark, Community, Age

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If all these guys think that nothing is going to come out for 100 years, they're going to act a whole lot more boldly. So we need to get back into the declassification business. This notion of overclassification is not just a bleeding-heart liberal issue. When everything is classified, nothing is classified.

Ted Gup

Heart, Thinking, Years

Source: www.motherjones.com

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I would argue that in times of war, sealed lips sink entire democracies. If we don't have access to vital information, we lose everything.

Ted Gup

War, Democracy, Information

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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.

Ted Gup

Hands, Light, Presidential

Source: www.motherjones.com

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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.

Ted Gup

Eight, Years, People

Source: www.motherjones.com

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Whistleblowers is another aspect that needs to be addressed. We have to restore the protections of whistleblowers and also the encouragement and rewards. It shouldn't just be that they don't get crucified; it should be that they are again folk heroes, or celebrated for bringing critical matters to public attention, as opposed to traitors.

Ted Gup

Encouragement, Hero, Attention

Source: www.motherjones.com

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An attitudinal sea change. I think that's the hardest one to fix. Presidential directives, bills, provisions can all be rescinded, repealed, amended, but attitudes linger. The hardest thing is going to be to try to reverse an attitude, a bunker mentality that equates secrecy with either security or heightened efficiency and that regards transparency as an invitation to mischief and trespass. This default position of operating in the shadows is going to be somewhat appealing to whomever inherits office.

Ted Gup

Attitude, Thinking, Sea

Source: www.motherjones.com

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I don't think that the problems or the issues relate to any single piece of legislation. I think that they really do relate to the mindset that after eight years is pretty deeply embedded. It is not going to be easy to reverse itself.

Ted Gup

Thinking, Years, Issues

Source: www.motherjones.com

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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.

Ted Gup

Attitude, Thinking, Public Opinion

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The third factor is the natural predisposition of bureaucracies, both governmental and private, to exploit secrecy to whatever degree they are licensed to do so, and in this administration they're given virtually carte blanche.

Ted Gup

Administration, Degrees, Natural

Source: www.motherjones.com

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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.

Ted Gup

Government, Views, Facts

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The real secrets start leaking out when there are too many secrets because people can't remember what's a real secret. There's a very famous line by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy: "If you guard your toothbrushes and your diamonds with equal zeal, you'll lose fewer toothbrushes and more diamonds." And that's where we are right now.

Ted Gup

Real, People, Secret

Source: www.motherjones.com

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One of the principal factors fueling the proliferation of the abuse of secrecy and sensitive but unclassifieds is the administration's adherence to the unitary executive principal. This administration more than any of its predecessors believes that it is its responsibility to collect power onto itself in the executive office when it comes to the conduct of war, foreign policy, the management of agencies and departments, regulations, etc.

Ted Gup

War, Believe, Responsibility

Source: www.motherjones.com

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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.

Ted Gup

Party, Succeed, Bulls

Source: www.motherjones.com

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It will be important to restore those provisions, those disclose provisions, those release provisions so that presidents are indeed held accountable and their information and papers are made public.

Ted Gup

President, Important, Paper

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The SBUs have spread like kudzu and are choking off everyone's ability to see what the hell's going on in government.

Ted Gup

Government, Hell, Choke

Source: www.motherjones.com

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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.

Ted Gup

Simple, Thinking, Law

Source: www.motherjones.com

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I love the idea of a shield law; I don't know of any journalist who doesn't love the idea of a shield law. It's all in the details. Some of the shield laws that were floating around sounded good, but when you looked at them, exceptions or exclusions or broadness in the language really invited some problems.

Ted Gup

Law, Ideas, Details

Source: www.motherjones.com

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There are benefits in the sense that there's still a certain level of confidence. But there are liabilities because you can coordinate and manipulate better as the instruments of oversight are more under your control. You don't have so many rogue operations.

Ted Gup

Rogues, Benefits, Levels

Source: www.motherjones.com

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There's no faster way or surer way to consolidate power and disenfranchise critics than to operate in secret. So this plays squarely into the promotion of the unitary executive. That's one factor.

Ted Gup

Play, Secret, Way

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The mechanics vary from place to place and from office to office. The handling of SBUs can be different in the same agency just across the hall, one from another. There are virtually no standards.

Ted Gup

Agency, Office, Different

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The press is going to have to learn anew that it's possible to work in an environment that is not so toxic and to readopt those kinds of techniques. The relationship between the press and the Clinton White House during the later period was not a healthy one. There was a lot of hostility and a lot of suspicion. This administration has done systematically what no other administration had done. They came in with a corporate mentality, an ability to stay on script that was without parallel.

Ted Gup

White, House, Healthy

Source: www.motherjones.com

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The level of trust is extraordinarily low and the level of suspicion extraordinarily high, and with good reason and on both sides. The press has hunkered down for very good reason, because it's being treated like a mushroom.

Ted Gup

Mushrooms, Levels, Sides

Source: www.motherjones.com

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Latest quotes from interviews

"If all these guys think that nothing is going to come out for 100 years, they're going to act a whole lot more boldly. So we need to get back into the declassification business. This notion of overclassification is not just a bleeding-heart liberal issue. When everything is classified, nothing is classified."

- Ted Gup,

www.motherjones.com, added Nov 3, 2015

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