Cover-up
Encyclopedia
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal
evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing
information. In passive cover-up information is just not provided, in active cover-up deception
is used.
The expression is usually applied to people in positions of authority
who abuse their power to avoid or silence criticism
or to deflect guilt
of wrongdoing. Those who initiate a cover up (or their allies) may be responsible for a misdeed, a breach of trust or duty or a crime.
While the terms are often used interchangeably, cover-up involves withholding incriminatory evidence, while whitewash
involves releasing misleading evidence.
breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.
The mildest case, not quite a cover-up, is simply to release news which could be embarrassing but is not important enough to guarantee attention at a time when other news is dominating the headlines, or immediately before a holiday or weekend.
Initially a cover-up may require little effort; it will be carried out by those closely involved with the misdeed. Once some hint of the hidden matter starts to become known, the cover-up gradually draws all the top leadership, at least, of an organization into complicity in covering up a misdeed or even crime that may have originally been committed by a few of its members acting independently. This may be regarded as tacit approval of that behaviour.
It is likely that some cover-ups are successful although by definition this cannot be confirmed. Many fail, however, as more and more people are drawn in and the possibility of exposure makes potential accomplices fearful of supporting the cover-up and as loose ends that may never normally have been noticed start to stand out. As it spreads, the cover-up itself creates yet more suspicious circumstances.
The original misdeed being covered may be relatively minor, such as the 'third-rate burglary' which started the Watergate scandal
, but the cover-up adds so many additional crimes (obstruction of justice
, perjury
, payoffs and bribes, in some cases suspicious suicides or outright murder
) that the cover-up becomes much more serious than the original crime.
Cover-ups do not necessarily require the active manipulation of facts or circumstances. Arguably the most common form of cover-up is one of non-action. It is the conscious failure to release incriminating information by a third party. This "passive cover-up" is often justified by the motive of not wanting to embarrass the culprit or expose them to criminal prosecution or even the belief that the cover-up is justified by protecting the greater community from scandal. Yet, because of the passive cover-up, the misdeed often goes undiscovered and results in harm to others ensuing from its failure to be discovered. (In Catholic Moral Theology
this would be considered the Sin of omission and a Mortal sin
)
Real cover-ups are common enough, but any event which is not completely clear is likely to give rise to a thicket of conspiracy theories alleging covering up of sometimes the most weird and unlikely conspiracies.
"Snowjob" is an American colloquialism for a deception or a cover-up; for example, Helen Gahagan Douglas described the Nixon Administration as "the greatest snow job in history."
Sometimes an apparently simple and low-risk cover-up grows out of control. For example, an employee may take money covertly from his employer to finance something, in the expectation that (s)he will shortly return it with nobody being the wiser; but the money taken is lost, the employee cannot make good, and must dangerously extend the cover-up. Compulsive gamblers, who irrationally think that they will bet the embezzled money, win, return the stake, and keep their winnings are an example. They will typically steal more, still intending to repay it with winnings, until eventually the shortfall can be concealed no longer. The case of derivatives
trader
Nick Leeson
is similar.
Concealment
Hiding is obscuring something from view or rendering it inconspicuous.Concealment is obscuring something from view or rendering it inconspicuous, the opposite of exposure...
evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing
Embarrassment
Embarrassment is an emotional state of intense discomfort with oneself, experienced upon having a socially unacceptable act or condition witnessed by or revealed to others. Usually some amount of loss of honour or dignity is involved, but how much and the type depends on the embarrassing situation...
information. In passive cover-up information is just not provided, in active cover-up deception
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
is used.
The expression is usually applied to people in positions of authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
who abuse their power to avoid or silence criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
or to deflect guilt
Guilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
of wrongdoing. Those who initiate a cover up (or their allies) may be responsible for a misdeed, a breach of trust or duty or a crime.
While the terms are often used interchangeably, cover-up involves withholding incriminatory evidence, while whitewash
Whitewash (censorship)
To whitewash is a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.- Etymology :Its first...
involves releasing misleading evidence.
Modern usage
When a scandalScandal
A scandal is a widely publicized allegation or set of allegations that damages the reputation of an institution, individual or creed...
breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.
The mildest case, not quite a cover-up, is simply to release news which could be embarrassing but is not important enough to guarantee attention at a time when other news is dominating the headlines, or immediately before a holiday or weekend.
Initially a cover-up may require little effort; it will be carried out by those closely involved with the misdeed. Once some hint of the hidden matter starts to become known, the cover-up gradually draws all the top leadership, at least, of an organization into complicity in covering up a misdeed or even crime that may have originally been committed by a few of its members acting independently. This may be regarded as tacit approval of that behaviour.
It is likely that some cover-ups are successful although by definition this cannot be confirmed. Many fail, however, as more and more people are drawn in and the possibility of exposure makes potential accomplices fearful of supporting the cover-up and as loose ends that may never normally have been noticed start to stand out. As it spreads, the cover-up itself creates yet more suspicious circumstances.
The original misdeed being covered may be relatively minor, such as the 'third-rate burglary' which started the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, but the cover-up adds so many additional crimes (obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
, perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
, payoffs and bribes, in some cases suspicious suicides or outright murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
) that the cover-up becomes much more serious than the original crime.
Cover-ups do not necessarily require the active manipulation of facts or circumstances. Arguably the most common form of cover-up is one of non-action. It is the conscious failure to release incriminating information by a third party. This "passive cover-up" is often justified by the motive of not wanting to embarrass the culprit or expose them to criminal prosecution or even the belief that the cover-up is justified by protecting the greater community from scandal. Yet, because of the passive cover-up, the misdeed often goes undiscovered and results in harm to others ensuing from its failure to be discovered. (In Catholic Moral Theology
Ethics in religion
Most religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. "For many people, ethics is not only tied up with religion, but is completely settled by it...
this would be considered the Sin of omission and a Mortal sin
Mortal sin
Mortal sins are in the theology of some, but not all Christian denominations wrongful acts that condemn a person to Hell after death. These sins are considered "mortal" because they constitute a rupture in a person's link to God's saving grace: the person's soul becomes "dead", not merely weakened...
)
Real cover-ups are common enough, but any event which is not completely clear is likely to give rise to a thicket of conspiracy theories alleging covering up of sometimes the most weird and unlikely conspiracies.
"Snowjob" is an American colloquialism for a deception or a cover-up; for example, Helen Gahagan Douglas described the Nixon Administration as "the greatest snow job in history."
Reasons
People, governments or institutions may try to cover up if- they are dishonest enough to wish to hide things that they should not conceal (hiding information is not in itself a cover-up);
- and they believe that they can successfully cover up the facts, either by effective concealment or using their authority and power to prevent investigation and publication;
- and they believe that public knowledge of the facts will harm them in some way, from long jail sentences through possible loss of electoral office to mere embarrassment;
- and they believe that the benefit of a successful cover-up outweighs the riskRiskRisk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...
and harm to them of being caught covering up.
Sometimes an apparently simple and low-risk cover-up grows out of control. For example, an employee may take money covertly from his employer to finance something, in the expectation that (s)he will shortly return it with nobody being the wiser; but the money taken is lost, the employee cannot make good, and must dangerously extend the cover-up. Compulsive gamblers, who irrationally think that they will bet the embezzled money, win, return the stake, and keep their winnings are an example. They will typically steal more, still intending to repay it with winnings, until eventually the shortfall can be concealed no longer. The case of derivatives
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
trader
Trader (finance)
A trader is someone in finance who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. A broker who simply fills buy or sell orders is not a trader, as they are merely executing instructions given to them. According to the Wall Street Journal in 2004, a managing...
Nick Leeson
Nick Leeson
Nicholas "Nick" Leeson is a former derivatives broker whose fraudulent, unauthorized speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank, for which he was sent to prison...
is similar.
Examples
- The Dreyfus AffairDreyfus AffairThe Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
- The Iran–Contra affair
- The My Lai MassacreMy Lai MassacreThe My Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of 347–504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Most of the victims were women, children , and...
- The Roman Catholic sex abuse casesRoman Catholic sex abuse casesThe Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and members of religious orders. These cases began receiving public attention beginning in the mid-1980s...
of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. - The Watergate scandalWatergate scandalThe Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
Alleged cover-ups
Conspiracies to cover up the facts of a number of prominent events have been alleged in the following cases:- John F. Kennedy assassination
- New World OrderNew World Order (conspiracy)In conspiracy theory, the term New World Order or NWO refers to the emergence of a totalitarian one-world government.The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an...
- Roswell UFO incidentRoswell UFO incidentThe Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
- September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
- M/S EstoniaM/S EstoniaMS Estonia, previously MS Viking Sally , MS Silja Star , and MS Wasa King , was a cruise ferry built in 1979/80 at the German shipyard Meyer Werft in Papenburg. The ship sank in the Baltic Sea in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century...
- UFOUnidentified flying objectA term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
s in general - Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternate theoriesKorean Air Lines Flight 007 alternate theoriesKorean Air Lines Flight 007 alternative theories concerns the various theories put forward regarding the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007...
- The Pusztai affairPusztai affairThe Pusztai affair is a controversy that began in 1998 after protein scientist Arpad Pusztai went public with research he was conducting with genetically modified potatoes. In a short interview he reported that rats fed potatoes engineered to express a plant lectin had stunted growth and a...
.
See also
- Gatekeepers
- Media manipulationMedia manipulationMedia manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding...
- PropagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
- Whitewash (censorship)Whitewash (censorship)To whitewash is a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.- Etymology :Its first...