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Opening Arguments

Get your game face on

Today's tips for controlling the situation.

No. 1 -- Telling the press about your coverup tends to defeat the purpose of the coverup:

State transportation secretary Jeffrey B. Mullan suspended the Big Dig's top engineer yesterday, less than a week after the engineer said that he and his colleagues were instructed years ago not to leave a paper trail documenting safety concerns within the tunnels.

Mullan said he would immediately assemble an outside team to lead a 10-day review of the conduct of engineer Helmut Ernst and other transportation officials in the aftermath of a Feb. 8 incident in which a 110-pound light fixture crashed from the ceiling of the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel.

[. . .]

In an interview with the Globe published Sunday, Ernst said he had been trained not to write down problems inside the Big Dig tunnels following the 2006 ceiling collapse that killed Milena Del Valle, which resulted in costly litigation and embarrassing publicity for the state.

A Globe reporter asked why he did not put anything about the light fixture incident in writing.

“We have been trained not to, after all the depositions in the ceiling collapse case,'' he said. “We just meet and talk about it. You go across the hall and talk about it. What's the point of putting it in writing? Things happen every day. You don't need a record. You need time to operate, too.''

No. 2 -- Telling someone you're bluffing tends to diminish the effectiveness of the bluff:

Republicans said tense negotiations over raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit at the White House ended when President Obama stormed out of the meeting with a stern warning to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.): “Don't call my bluff.”

[. . .]

“That's when he got very agitated, seemingly, and said that he had sat there long enough, and that no other president — Ronald Reagan wouldn't sit here like this — and that he's reached the point where something's got to give,” Cantor said, describing the president's reaction.

“He said to me,

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