Paid silence costs all of us too much (Whitmire/al.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

Who needs an Omerta when you have an NDA?

By Kyle Whitmire | [e-mail]
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on January 20, 2018 at 8:00 AM, updated January 20, 2018 at 10:39 AM

***
As we'd learn in the years since, Gov. Robert Bentley personally changed a state policy to give Lewis the extra pay because he didn't want others on his security detail privy to his big secret -- his relationship with Rebekah Caldwell Mason.

However, others in his office had picked up on things, too. They knew things that could, and ultimately would, destroy the governor's administration. They had to be kept quiet.

So the governor and his senior advisors had the staff sign non-disclosure agreements.

I can tell you now that those NDAs hampered our investigation of the governor and they kept crucial information from the public. Sources who shared the inner workings of that office refused to go on the record because they were afraid those NDAs would be used to punish them if they did.

If only this were an isolated incident. These days it looks like the price of doing business. Across the country, the opportunity to work, both in government and in private enterprise, is silence. The NDA has become the legal equivalent of the Mafia's Omerta.
***
more: http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/01/who_needs_an_omerta_when_you_h.html