With all due deference for Bill in Portland who included this link in his highly, highly entertaining andd informative Cheers & Jeers...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/20/85619/4790
which was borrowed from Think Progress...who took it from the Missouri Freedom of Info Center:
This speech deserved its own diary with the hopes that more people will go directly to it.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/07/19/president-reagan-on-leakers/
From Reagan's speech in 1982 celibrating the signing of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982:
When President Dwight Eisenhower came here almost 23 years ago to dedicate the cornerstone of this building here, he spoke of heroes -- ``heroes,'' he said, ``who are undecorated and unsung, whose only reward was the knowledge that their service to their country was unique and indispensible.''
We've got to do something about that airport. [The President was referring to the noise of an airplane taking off from National Airport.] [Laughter]
Well, today I speak again of those heros, the men and women who are locked in a dangerous, sometimes deadly conflict with the forces of totalitarianism, the men and women whose best accomplishments, whose greatest deeds can never be known to their countrymen, but only to a few of their superiors and ultimately only to history. These men and women, these heroes of a grim twilight struggle are those of you who serve here in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Whether you work in Langley or a faraway nation, whether your tasks are in operations or analysis sections, it is upon your intellect and integrity, your wit and intuition that the fate of freedom rests for millions of your countrymen and for many millions more all around the globe. You are the trip-wire across which the forces of repression and tyranny must stumble in their quest for global domination. You, the men and women of the CIA, are the eyes and ears of the free world.
Like those who are part of any silent service, your sacrifices are sometimes unappreciated; your work is sometimes misunderstood. Because you're professionals, you understand and accept this. But because you're human and because you deal daily in the dangers that confront this nation, you must sometimes question whether some of your countrymen appreciate the value of your accomplishments, the sacrifices you make, the dangers you confront, the importance of the warnings that you issue.
And that's why I have come here today; first, to sign an important piece of legislation that bears directly on your work, an act of Congress whose overwhelming passsage by the representatives of the American people is a symbol of their support for the job that you do every day. But even more than this, I've come here today to say to you what the vast majority of Americans would say if they had this opportunity to stand here before you. We're grateful to you. We thank you. We're proud of you.
I don't think the Reagan in this speech would agree that Karl deserved a medal for what we know he did.