Reply #9: I think that might happen...

[AZCat]

Our government has certainly hidden things in the past, with dire consequences (I hope there is no need for me to provide links, but if necessary I will).

But these take lots of work to hide, because the government (fortunately) is not monolithic. With an investigation by a civilian agency like the NIST into something that is arguably less vital to national security than, say, the atomic tests done during the cold war, I think the difficulty rises considerably because there is less incentive for the individuals involved to hide the truth. Most people aren't willing to rock the boat, but there's always a freethinker or two in a group that can't be bought or threatened. "Common good" might not mean the same thing to those individuals that it does to the people in power. I'm sure Nixon felt that it was in the "common good" for the Watergate scandal to be suppressed, but I think you would have to look hard to find an average person who felt the same way.