Mechanism

Known inside, disclosed late

A harm or failure documented internally well before the public was told.

Information and Perception

Finding INF-5.5: Primary record The 1973 Health, Education, and Welfare ad hoc panel judged the Public Health Service syphilis study "ethically unjustified in 1932." A panel member's separate statement quotes a 1969 CDC review committee, "in part concerned with the possibility of adverse criticism," as reassured that with good liaison with the local medical society "there would be no need to answer criticism."

Medicine and Public Health

Finding MED-7.1: Reported Before Cutter's polio vaccine was licensed, an NIH scientist found that half the Cutter lots she tested paralyzed monkeys. Her results did not reach the licensing committee.
Finding MED-7.2: Reported Federal officials knew by 1960 that polio vaccine carried SV40. They ordered new lots screened in 1961, recalled no existing stock, and certified every lot free of the virus only from 1963.
Finding MED-7.5: Reported Testimony to Congress in 2003 stated that some oral polio vaccine released between 1964 and 1967 still contained SV40.
Finding MED-7.6: Primary record NIAID funded EcoHealth Alliance's coronavirus work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth reported an experiment that made mice sicker nearly two years late, and HHS debarred it and Peter Daszak in January 2025.
Finding MED-7.7: Primary record CDC data showed the myocarditis signal in young males in 2021. FDA put age-specific risk figures and evidence of persistent heart injury on the labels in June 2025.
Finding MED-7.9: Reported Pfizer submitted its full plasmid sequence to Health Canada. According to reports of a Health Canada email, Pfizer did not specifically identify the SV40 promoter-enhancer element it contained.
Finding MED-11.1: Primary record Chisso knew by 1959 that its factory wastewater caused Minamata disease and continued discharging it.
Finding MED-11.2: Primary record Chisso’s 1959 wastewater equipment failed to remove methylmercury, while the government delayed its official conclusion on the cause until 1968.
Finding MED-11.3: Primary record DuPont's 2005 settlement resolved eight EPA counts, seven of them for failures to report to EPA information about substantial risk of injury to human health or the environment that DuPont obtained about PFOA from as early as 1981 to as recently as 2004.
Finding MED-11.4: Peer-reviewed A 2023 analysis of DuPont and 3M documents identified suppression of unfavorable PFAS research and distortion of public disclosure.
Finding MED-11.5: Primary record Tetraethyl-lead production killed workers in the 1920s; federal gasoline lead-reduction standards followed in 1973.
Finding MED-11.6: Primary record The federal tobacco judgment imposed racketeering liability in 2006; the final corrective-statement remedy received its implementation order in 2022.
Finding MED-11.7: Primary record Studies in the 1950s showed DES was not effective in preventing pregnancy complications. After the 1971 research linking prenatal DES exposure to cancer, the FDA notified health care providers that DES should not be prescribed to pregnant women.
Finding MED-11.8: Peer-reviewed The 1971 DES study linked maternal treatment to vaginal cancer in daughters, and later cohorts documented additional adverse outcomes decades after prenatal exposure.
Finding MED-12.1: Primary record VA initially denied herbicide-related claims beyond chloracne; in 1990, it recognized non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and soft-tissue sarcoma before Congress enacted presumptions.
Finding MED-12.3: Primary record Testing identified solvents in Camp Lejeune water systems in 1982 and 1983; contaminated wells were removed from service in 1984 and 1985.
Finding MED-12.4: Primary record ATSDR removed its 1997 Camp Lejeune public health assessment from its website in 2009 after learning that exposure lasted longer and benzene levels were higher than known in 1997.
Finding MED-12.7: Primary record The federal radiation inquiry documented plutonium injections into unsuspecting patients and secrecy intended to prevent embarrassment and legal liability.
Finding MED-13.2: Primary record The inquiry found that patients and parents were denied information needed for consent, including at Treloar's, where children underwent research without adequate explanation.
Finding MED-13.3: Primary record The inquiry found that clinicians, institutions, civil servants, and politicians hid the truth through concealment, misleading statements, and failures of candor.

War and Defense

Finding DEF-2.3: Primary record The Defense Department's Vietnam study, commissioned by Secretary McNamara in 1967 and presented to Secretary Clifford on 15 January 1969, reached the press in June 1971. On 30 June 1971 the Supreme Court held that the government had not met its burden of justifying a prior restraint on publication, and in 2011 the National Archives released the complete report, of which about 34 percent had never been available.
Finding DEF-2.8: Primary record The Washington Post's complaint alleges that it first requested a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Lessons Learned interview record in August 2016 and sued in October 2017. The court record states that the Post requested all such records on 23 March 2017 and sued again on 14 November 2018, and the Post published its "Afghanistan Papers" on 9 December 2019. In 2021 the district court rejected SIGAR's deliberative-process withholding and largely upheld its other exemptions.
Finding DEF-6.1: Primary record The Church Committee found that the FBI ran five COINTELPRO programs from 1956 to 1971 and approved 2,370 actions to "disrupt" and "neutralize" domestic groups and individuals, among them the November 1964 anonymous note to Martin Luther King Jr.
Finding DEF-6.3: Primary record The Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra concluded that the investigations and prosecutions had shown that high-ranking Administration officials violated laws and executive orders.
Finding DEF-6.6: Primary record The CIA Inspector General found no information that the CIA or its employees conspired with Contra-related persons in drug trafficking, and found that the CIA acted inconsistently when it learned of trafficking allegations.
Finding DEF-6.7: Primary record The Senate BCCI report found that Justice Department personnel obstructed the Manhattan District Attorney's inquiry and that the CIA continued to use BCCI and First American after it knew BCCI was a criminal enterprise.
Finding DEF-6.8: Reported Part Four of the 2002 Joint Inquiry report, commonly called the 28 pages, was withheld in full until 15 July 2016. It reports leads about Saudi-linked contacts with the hijackers, and the Inquiry stated it made no final determinations.

Politics and Government

No findings in this subject are tagged with this mechanism.

Food and Agriculture

No findings in this subject are tagged with this mechanism.

Religious Institutions

Finding REL-3.1: Primary record The Massachusetts Attorney General reported on 23 July 2003 that Cardinal Law, as head of the Archdiocese of Boston, and his senior managers had direct, actual knowledge for many years that substantial numbers of children in the Archdiocese had been sexually abused by substantial numbers of its priests. The report found no evidence sufficient to charge the Archdiocese or its senior managers under the law then in force and states that clergy were not mandated reporters of child abuse in Massachusetts until May 2002.
Finding REL-3.2: Primary record Church files supplied to the 2004 John Jay study recorded allegations against 4,392 priests, 4.0 percent of the 109,694 who served from 1950 to 2002, made by 10,667 individuals. The 2011 John Jay study found that by 1985 bishops knew that sexual abuse of minors by priests was a problem but not its scope, because more than 80 percent of the cases now known had occurred by then and only 6 percent had been reported to dioceses.
Finding REL-3.3: Primary record A Pennsylvania grand jury report released on 14 August 2018, based on half a million pages of documents from six Catholic dioceses, found credible allegations against more than 300 priests and more than 1,000 identifiable child victims in the dioceses' own records. The report says FBI behavioral analysts identified seven practices that recurred in the files, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered the identities of 11 priests who challenged the report permanently redacted.
Finding REL-3.4: Primary record Australia's Royal Commission recorded 4,444 claimants in 4,756 claims against Catholic Church authorities between 1980 and 2015, with 1,880 known alleged perpetrators and $268.0 million paid on 3,057 claims. It found numerous cases in which senior Catholic officials knew of allegations and failed to take effective action, and that complaints were not reported to police or other civil authorities.
Finding REL-3.5: Primary record Case files that Watchtower Australia produced to the Royal Commission recorded allegations of child sexual abuse against 1,006 members of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization in Australia since 1950, including admissions by 579. The Commission found no evidence that the organization reported any of the 1,006 to police or other secular authorities.
Finding REL-3.6: Primary record Ireland's Murphy Commission found that until the mid-1990s the Archdiocese of Dublin's priorities in handling child sexual abuse complaints were secrecy, avoiding scandal, protecting the Church's reputation and preserving its assets. It found that no Archbishop reported to the Gardai in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, and that the Archdiocese first gave the names of 17 priests to the Gardai in November 1995.
Finding REL-3.7: Primary record France's independent commission CIASE estimated that 216,000 children were sexually abused by clergy and religious from 1950 to 2020, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 165,000 to 270,000, from a survey of 28,010 adults. It found that over most of that period the Catholic Church's attitude was concealment, relativization or denial.
Finding REL-3.10: Primary record The Guidepost Solutions investigation of 22 May 2022 found that from 2007 a staff member of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee kept a list of accused ministers, the latest version with 703 names, and that there is no indication anyone acted to ensure those ministers were out of positions of power at SBC churches. It found that senior Executive Committee leaders and outside counsel were focused on avoiding liability, and that counsel advised staff not to elicit further information so the Committee would not assume a legal duty.
Finding REL-4.4: Primary record The SEC found that the LLCs' forms misstated that the LLCs had sole investment and voting discretion, and that the Church's audit department highlighted in 2014 and 2017 the risk that the SEC might disagree with the structure. The practice ended with a consolidated Form 13F filed on 14 February 2020 that listed 1,659 securities worth about $37.8 billion.