Secrecy

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there. This part doesn't: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men in suits jumped out, and one said, "You just hit our line." Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center.

State Senate officials have secretly approved a $70,000 legal settlement that prohibits a staffer who accused a former colleague of harassment from going public with the charges. The payment, made last month, is the latest in a string of such settlements, most of which include confidentiality clauses that keep taxpayers in the dark about what exactly they are paying to settle and why.

The legal battle over lethal injection, which comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today, has been conducted in unusual secrecy, with courts permitting states across the country to keep from lawyers and the public precisely how death row inmates are executed.

The Orange County Great Park board voted Thursday to keep the resumes from its search for a chief executive confidential, in the face of a lawsuit from two of its members who are demanding to see them. Irvine council members Christina Shea and Steven Choi filed suit Wednesday requesting documents, including the 150 resumes the city said it received for the position. The council members have questioned the fairness and scope of the search, which yielded two top finalists with ties to City Hall.

The news hit Opera Santa Barbara like Wagnerian thunder: An anonymous donor had pledged $5 million -- the largest gift in the group's 14-year history. The windfall, announced in February, will finance an annual production by one of the donor's six favorite composers. In an operatic flourish, the benefactor's name will be unveiled only after his or her death -- on programs for productions made possible by the bequest.

They were born shrouded in mystery in a windowless building in Burbank. They flew combat missions over Serbia and Iraq virtually invisible to enemy radar. And today, the black, bat-like F-117A Night Hawks will fly quietly into the night as stealthily as they came. The last four of the world's first stealth fighters will make their final flights from Palmdale to a secret desert base in Nevada, where they will be locked up indefinitely in a secure concrete hangar.

For Warner Bros., the mission was to keep "The Dark Knight" from seeing the light of day. In an era of instantaneous digital copying and widely available high-speed Internet access, the premature and unauthorized release of a movie to the public -- especially a coveted summer blockbuster -- can spell disaster. If the movie's a stinker, the word will travel at the speed of a mouse click, ruining chances of making back money.

A simple question about Kim Jong Il's health provokes a torrent of angry, broken English. "It's a pack of lies," declared Oh Keum Suk. The 26-year-old North Korean tour guide jumped from his seat at a coffee shop and in an exaggerated motion stormed away. Then he turned on his heels to chew out the foreigner who had dared ask about reports that the North Korean leader had suffered a stroke. "Kim Jong Il is my father, my grandfather, my family. How do you talk about my family that way?"

With the Los Angeles Police Department suddenly confronted with intense criticism for its policies of secrecy, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton on Thursday called for changing state law to ensure that police disciplinary board meetings and some records are reopened to the public.

California State University trustees didn't violate state law when they met behind closed doors to discuss the return of former Chancellor Barry Munitz to the university system, a judge ruled Thursday. Munitz was offered a salary of $163,776 during his first year as a trustee professor, and then would be eligible to earn up to $112,548, the highest possible salary for a full-time professor.