"[S]ome people -- most, it seems -- will, under some circumstances, do anything someone in authority tells them to. ... Government institutions, like most humans, have a reflexive reaction to the exposure of internal corruption and wrongdoing: No matter how transparent the effort, their first response is to lie, conceal and cover up. Also like human beings, once an institution has embraced a particular lie in support of a particular coverup, it will forever proclaim its innocence."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Government