Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday recalled that "as a young member of Congress back in the 1960s, still in my 30s, I was a co-sponsor of the Freedom of Information Act."
"Now we all recognize that that Act causes government officials occasional pain," Rumsfeld said in a speech to the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "but in my view, it has been a valuable Act in helping to get the facts to the American people."
"Our great political system needs information to be self-correcting. While excesses and imbalances will inevitably exist for a time, fortunately they tend not to last."
"Ultimately truth prevails," Secretary Rumsfeld said. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/04/dod042204.html