Each act of concealment commits organizations to further escalating concealments

Evidence

Concealment of harm within organizations is not easy. To maintain it, further concealments are likely to be necessary, even though these were perhaps not contemplated by the organizational actor at the moment of choice between acknowledging and denying the harms done. The evidence of previous harms had better disappear. Those in the organization who might discover the previous harms had better be hindered or muzzled. Computer memories had better be wiped clean. A chain of repugnant and evil actions are found to be required following the initial decision to conceal the initial harm. People who don’t think of themselves as corrupt find themselves burning incriminating documents and paying out bribes to potential informers. (Needless to say, one thinks of Watergate here, and the Iran-Contra scandal.) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4014

Categorization

• SEED: A piece on how the first cover-up decision, not the original harm, is the real point of moral no-return — with Watergate, Iran-Contra, and clerical abuse scandals as case studies.
• CANDY: The escalatory logic — one small lie that requires burning documents and paying bribes — is a compact, grimly funny observation about institutional corruption.