Omerta

Patriarca [Raymond Patriarca Jr.] pleaded guilty in December 1991 to racketeering and conspiracy charges, but he refused to admit he was a member of the Mafia, clinging to his vow of "omerta" to the secret organization.

There was a time that high-profile killings such as the 1968 assassinations of Robert F[rancis] Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. brought passionate cries for limitations on handguns. A bipartisan omerta now smothers the issue.

But although her [Carol Thatcher's] agent has invoked that tradition of post-show omerta in her defence, the truth is that few would trust these days to what it is now possibly risky to call Chinese walls.

Over the past ten years, a series of high-profile CEOs have broken unwritten omertas not to address the contentious challenges posed by climate change, human rights, and increased transparency.