Short Analysis

The Ethics of Lying
in the Public Interest
Reflections on the “Just Lie”

LYNN PASQUERELLA AND
ALFRED G. KILLILEA

Abstract

There is perhaps no more controversial issue in assessing the limits of political and
administrative discretion than whether it is ever ethical for an official to lie in the
public interest. While cringing at the thought of legitimating mendacity by public
officials, recall the admonition of Michael Walzer that “no one succeeds in politics
without getting their hands dirty.” This article looks first at the defense of official
deception as classically articulated by Machiavelli and Walzer. It then examines the
case against lying presented by Sissela Bok and Maureen Ramsay, with a focus on
Ramsay’s arguments against the “just lie” theory. The article defends the feasibility
of the theory by applying its standards to a case based on administrative experience
where recourse to deception appears to have achieved a good result.

There is perhaps no more controversial issue in assessing the limits of political and
administrative discretion than whether it is ever ethical for an official to lie in the
public interest. While citizens commonly think of politicians as by nature challenged
by truth-telling, very few would want to concede that officials have, on occasion, the
right to deceive. The burden of lies Americans bear from Vietnam, Watergate, Irangate,
Monicagate, and, possibly, Iraqgate makes them want to erect a firewall against
even the temptation for officials to think it is ever legitimate to lie.

However, there are compelling examples of special circumstances that seem to
require an official to deceive if the public interest is not to be seriously jeopardized.
Consider the enormous about-face President Richard M. Nixon executed in impos-
ing wage and price restraints in 1971, a policy he claimed was against everything he
stood for. Nixon was forced to announce a freeze on prices and wages on August 15,
1971, due to spiraling inflation. Suppose that on the eve of issuing his emergency
order he had been asked by a reporter whether he intended to impose such restraints.
If Nixon had answered yes, he would immediately have provoked a frenzy of price
rises causing a significant rise in inflation, the very opposite of his policy goals. If he
had answered “no comment,” his response would have had the same effect, since

Public Integrity, Summer 2005, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 261–273.
© 2005 ASPA. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1099-9922/2005 $9.50 + 0.00.

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

262 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

everyone would have concluded that he had something to hide. So he would have
had to answer with the only choice available to him, which was no.

Nixon could have been criticized for feeding the cynicism about honesty in gov-
ernment when he promptly acted to impose the restraints he had said he would not
impose. One may argue that a democracy cannot survive with such deception of the
public (Bok 1989). It is now clear that Nixon was rather practiced in deceiving when
it was expedient, and his threshold for defining “expedient” was very low indeed.
However, one must still consider whether the deception here would not be a valid
example of the need to deceive to protect the same democratic system that abhors
deception of the public. It is unlikely that Nixon’s deception on the price freeze
issue would have been roundly criticized because it was obviously necessary and the
populace would eventually have understood the reasons why it was necessary.

This article will begin by considering the reasons for approving deception by
officials in a democracy and the arguments against any deceptiveness whatsoever by
public officials. In response to the denial of the practicality of the “just lie” theory, it
will then argue that the theory can in fact be effective because it can be utilized to
achieve a mid-ground between those who miss the corrosive effects on democracy
of a cavalier tolerance of mendacity and the impracticality, even danger, of an abso-
lute condemnation of deception. The feasibility of the just lie theory will be demon-
strated by applying its standards to a case where recourse to deception appears to
have achieved a good result. Throughout this endeavor, the article will consider
whether lying in some form can be defended in terms of ethics, not law. The authors
are interested in whether public philosophy ought to make certain exceptions to its
taboos against lying, not whether the legal system ought to make such exceptions.

The Case for Deception

Almost all commentators on official lying trace the roots of this practice to
Machiavelli. Plato is spared paternity of the great lie presumably because he thought
the myths told by his Philosopher King were not really deceptions but stories that
portrayed truths that simple minds could grasp only through fictitious facts.
Machiavelli countenanced more outright deception. He was not a skeptic about
whether humans can know the truth, but he was a profound skeptic about whether
humans in power can say the truth. Machiavelli did not advise deception for reasons
of mere expediency but for reasons of necessity:

a prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honor his word when it places him at a disad-
vantage and when the reasons for which he made his promise no longer exist. If all
men were good, this precept would not be good; but because men are wretched
creatures who would not keep their word to you, you need not keep your word to
them. (1981, pp. 99–100)

Machiavelli saw politics as a deadly serious pursuit. The prince who wants to
achieve something, even (indeed especially) if it is in the interest of the people, has
so many forces aligned against any change that he cannot afford to abide by the rules
of ethics that apply in private life. When a person of power tries to change the status
quo, Machiavelli warned, the people who will be harmed, even if they are a small
minority, can usually stave off the change because they are more organized, more
motivated, more aware of the advantage they will be losing. Those who will gain,

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 263

especially if they are poor and downtrodden, will support the change only half-
heartedly, for they have not experienced the fruits of the change and are dubious that
there will be any real difference. Anyone who doubts the currency of this 500-year-
old argument need only consider the campaigns of the National Rifle Association
against gun control and the insurance industry against universal health care.

Machiavelli has shocked moralists over the centuries by how candidly and casu-
ally he reaches dark conclusions: “But one must know how to colour one’s actions
and to be a great liar and deceiver” (1981,
100). However, Machiavelli does not see the
political leader who lies as a monster or as
necessarily at odds with the interests of the
people. He follows the sentence just quoted
with what he considered a reassuring obser-
vation: “Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver
will always find someone ready to be deceived.” Machiavelli seems to think that the
outrage of political leaders lying to their citizens is greatly diminished by one overrid-
ing reality—most citizens do not want to know the truth. We would like to think that
Machiavelli is simply self-serving in this discouraging conclusion or at the least that it
applied only in his time of greater illiteracy and lack of experience with democracy.

But political experience again gives at least partial validation to Machiavelli’s
undemocratic observations. The electorate makes contradictory demands on candi-
dates to the extent that most are compelled at least to stretch the truth in promising
more services and no new taxes. Plain-speaking truth-tellers very seldom go far in a
democracy. People rant about Congress as an institution and rank the veracity of
politicians below that of used-car salespersons, but every two years we return more
than 90 percent of the incumbents to Congress. The shock expressed about the exple-
tives and racial slurs heard on the Nixon White House tapes seems to confirm
Machiavelli’s point that citizens in general want to believe the best about their rulers
and do not make it difficult for rulers to create appearances or outright deceptions.
Machiavelli would find it odd that people are shocked by his defending the telling of
lies by those in power. To push the case even further, Machiavelli might argue that
because leaders are responsible not only for their own well-being but also that of
their citizens, they have not only the opportunity and right but also an obligation to
become convincing liars.

In addition, it is necessary to appreciate that Machiavelli did not invite his prince
to just do whatever he wanted to. He told the prince not to take the people’s property,
for that would make him hated, and hatred would inevitably lead to his downfall.
This is no small restraint upon the prince, since many princes have seen enriching
themselves at the people’s expense to be a central part of their job description.
Machiavelli, however, is intent on how leaders can preserve and increase their power,
and not on how they can feather their own nests.

However, even taking into account the burdens and dangers the prince faced, and
seeing how many of Machiavelli’s insights still hold true today, the central flaw in
this daring departure from the virtues traditionally expected of leaders must still be
noted. That flaw is the lack of any braking mechanism on official deception and
crime such that there might be some proportionality between what is given up and
what is gained by official deceit and bloodletting. Machiavelli makes a strong case
for exempting the prince from some of the moral strictures that apply to individuals.

“But one must know how to colour one’s

actions and to be a great liar and

deceiver.” —Machiavelli

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

264 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

He does not deny the validity of the strictures and even says that the prince “should
not deviate from the good, if that is possible” (Machiavelli 1981, 100–101). By
ending this sentence with the qualification “but he should know how to do evil, if
that is necessary,” however, Machiavelli reminds us how unqualified the encounter
with evil may be. When Machiavelli describes how Agathocles rose to become the

king of Syracuse by killing every one of the
senators and richest citizens of the city, he
displays a grudging admiration for how thor-
oughly and quickly Agathocles put an end
to problems from rivals, even while he
blanches at the scale of his cruelty. Leav-
ing aside the important practical question
of whether violence on that scale terminates
or creates enemies, it should be realized that
Machiavelli at times meanders far from the

model of the prince who deviates from “what ought to be” with surgical deceit and
public approbation.

It is precisely this lack of self-consciousness of how extreme one may become in
venturing from what is moral that seems to drive the theory of “dirty hands” articu-
lated by Michael Walzer, the main contemporary theorist who defends the necessity
of official breaking of moral codes. He agrees with Machiavelli that an effective
political leader must learn how not to be good: “nor do most of us believe that those
who govern us are innocent . . . even the best of them” (Walzer 1973, 161). Walzer
has no illusions about the virtue of democratic leaders: “the men who act for us and
in our name are necessarily hustlers and liars.” He is convinced that we would not
want to be governed by people who consistently took the uncompromising “absolut-
ist” position, but he worries about leaders who accept the utilitarian calculation
unreflectively with no sense of guilt about the moral norms they have broken. He
attempts to reject the stiff and unworkable absolutist position without denying the
reality of the moral dilemma and a loss of innocence. Walzer describes the case of a
good man who is compelled to order the torture of a prisoner in order to learn where
bombs are hidden that will take the lives of many people. He rejects the utilitarian’s
too smooth acceptance of this torture, for it trivializes the wrong of the crime:

when he ordered the prisoner tortured, he committed a moral crime and he accepted a
moral burden. Now he is a guilty man. His willingness to acknowledge and bear (and
perhaps to repent and do penance for) his guilt is evidence, and it is the only evidence
he can offer us, both that he is not too good for politics and that he is good enough.
Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him. If he were a
moral man and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were a politician and
nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean. (1973, 167–168)

Walzer criticizes Machiavelli not for arguing that “when the act accuses, the re-
sult excuses” (1973, 167–168) or for insisting that good leaders must learn to do bad
deeds. Walzer finds fault with Machiavelli because “he does not specify the state of
mind appropriate to a man with dirty hands.” There is no account of the actor’s
anguish. “A Machiavellian hero has no inwardness.”

Walzer faults Max Weber’s tragic hero, who does evil to achieve good, because
he surrenders his soul. Weber’s hero in “Politics as a Vocation” has inwardness, but

“Here is the moral politician: it is by

his dirty hands that we know him. If he

were a moral man and nothing else, his

hands would not be dirty; if he were a

politician and nothing else, he would

pretend that they were clean.” —Walzer

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 265

leaves the problem of dirty hands entirely within the individual conscience. Walzer
insists that morality is social and the tragic hero’s suffering needs to be socially
expressed: “We don’t want to be ruled by men who have lost their souls. A politician
with dirty hands needs a soul, and it is best for us all if he has some hope of personal
salvation, however that is conceived” (1973, 177–178).

Walzer settles on Camus’s main characters in the play “The Just Assassins” as his
model of innocent criminals. Because the assassins accept their execution for their
dirty deeds, they (and we) are forced “at least to imagine a punishment or a penance
that fits the crime and to examine closely the nature of the crime” (1973, 179–
180).Walzer is admirable in his quest for political actors who are loath to compro-
mise but nevertheless do and then are willing to assuage their guilt by punishment.
Yet, as he himself acknowledges, “in most cases of dirty hands moral rules are bro-
ken for reasons of state, and no one provides the punishment.” Because moral rules
are not usually enforced against Walzer’s reluctant rule-breakers, “the dilemma of
dirty hands seems to exclude questions of degree.” Walzer stresses the importance of
punishment to maintain moral equilibrium, but punishment is only internal to the
actor with dirty hands and there are no guidelines for assessing guilt. Readers are
left with a crude and ineffective check: “I suspect we shall not abolish lying at all,
but we might see to it that fewer lies were told if we contrived to deny power and
glory to the greatest liars.”

Walzer makes a remarkable contribution in helping to straddle a mid-course be-
tween uncompromising absolutism and a political world with no moral imperatives.
He encourages political actors to take the taboos against lying very seriously, but in
the end he abandons the taboos in a search for criteria by which to gauge temptations
and offenses. This incompleteness in Walzer’s theory seems to call out for the kind
of guidance provided by the just lie theory, which appears to centrally address the
problem that the dirty hands theory, as he acknowledges, does not: “questions of
degree.” At the very least, the just lie theory may help society to identify Walzer’s
“greatest liars” and gauge the excesses of their lies.

The remainder of this article weighs the attack on the just lie theory by Maureen
Ramsay and seeks to apply the theory to a provocative case study. The analysis of
Ramsay’s arguments suggests that the just lie theory has more utility and appropri-
ateness than commonly supposed. The clarity and insight gained from applying the
theory to the case study seems to bolster this conclusion.

Maureen Ramsay on the Flaws of the Just Lie Theory

The most substantial recent commentary on lying by public officials is found in a
chapter authored by Maureen Ramsay in The Politics of Lying: Implications for
Democracy (Cliffe, Ramsay, and Bartlett 2000). Before we turn to Ramsay, how-
ever, Sissela Bok’s earlier work on lying should be noted. Bok attempted to demon-
strate that Michael Walzer’s anguish is misplaced and unnecessary, for there is
virtually no basis for officials in a democracy to deceive. In her classic challenge to
almost all forms of deception, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, Bok
rejects Machiavelli’s and Walzer’s realist argument that politics inevitably demands
deception. She graphically describes the naive self-serving motivations of all liars
and of government officials in particular. She depicts the short-sightedness of se-
lective truth-tellers and persuasively recounts how their moral exceptions become

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

266 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

precedents for themselves and others. While realists think that being charged with
the well-being of so many people sometimes entitles the prince to lie, Bok sees the
obverse: “Political lies, so often assumed to be trivial by those who tell them, rarely
are. They cannot be trivial when they affect so many people and when they are so
peculiarly likely to be imitated, used to retaliate, and spread from a few to many”
(Bok 1989, 175).

Bok is not as absolute as Augustine or Kant in condemning every instance of
mendacity. She allows for white lies that are completely harmless and acknowl-
edges that extraordinary crises may require officials to deceive citizens. In cases
such as withholding information about early signs of an epidemic in order to prevent
a panic, Bok concludes that one may be justified in lying because the deception “can

be acknowledged and defended as soon as
the threat is over” (1989, 178). But she also
asserts that “such cases are so rare that they
hardly exist for practical purposes.” Her sum-
mary standard for recourse to deception is
that it must be agreed to in advance: “only
those deceptive practices which can be

openly debated and consented to in advance are justifiable in a democracy” (181).
Bok would extend her deep skepticism about the motives of deceptive officials to
the remarkable extent that she asks: “Would we not, on balance, prefer to run the
risk of failing to rise to a crisis honestly explained to us, from which the government
might have saved us through manipulation?” (180).

This sacrifice of security for honesty by Bok is all the more dramatic when it is
considered that the crisis to which she is referring is the one that loomed before
World War II. What seems to allow her to downplay the extraordinary price of hon-
esty in an unmet crisis is the assumption that the government is usually not as pressed
as it claims to be and does not need to have recourse to deception. She argues that
lies on sensitive topics, such as the intention to impose wage and price restraints,
can be avoided by having an established policy that officials will not comment on
matters dealing with the economy, national security, and other delicate areas.

As discussed at greater length elsewhere (Pasquerella, Killilea, and Vocino 1996,
1–4), Bok’s attempt to protect democracy by avoiding official lying is totally counter-
productive. The only reason that lies are not told in her strategy for government
communications is that nothing is told. She would have a regime avoid speculation
about its refusal to comment on an issue by keeping the people regularly in the dark
about all policies on all sensitive issues, the very information that a citizenry re-
quires in order to live in a democracy. Perhaps because of Bok’s conspicuous failure
to accommodate the hard realities of politics and a consistent refusal to lie, Maureen
Ramsay seeks to avoid lying by wishing away the hard political realities.

In The Politics of Lying, Ramsay takes on the task of providing a normative evalu-
ation of the justification for lying in politics. Ramsay begins with the definition of a
lie as a statement intended to deceive others and considers two types of Machiavel-
lian arguments in support of lying in the general interest. The first is a straightfor-
ward consequentialist argument maintaining that deliberately giving false or
misleading information sometimes brings about the best results. The second is based
on an appeal to the Machiavellian perception of human nature. Since other politi-
cians are deceptive, retaliatory lies are both necessary and justified for success in

At the very least, the just lie theory may

help society to identify Walzer’s

“greatest liars” and gauge the excesses

of their lies.

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 267

politics. In focusing on a consequentialist defense of lying in politics, Ramsay re-
jects the realist claims that politics is outside of the moral realm. For Ramsay, there
is nothing special about politics that would justify applying different evaluative cri-
teria to political actions or require a transcendence of ordinary morality. However,
she argues, even if we accept consequentialism as the appropriate theory by which
to judge acts of deception and secrecy in politics, these acts will be difficult to jus-
tify, especially in a democratic political order.

Still, there are many who insist that national security sometimes mandates lies
and deceit. When the national interest is at stake, there is a legitimate end that might
justify the use of a means that in other circumstances would not be justified. This
just lie theory, Ramsay claims, is analogous to the just war theory. There are legiti-
mate and illegitimate uses of a lie in the same
way that there are legitimate and illegitimate
uses of force when it comes to conflicts be-
tween nations. Ramsay reminds us that ac-
cording to the theory of just war, wars are
justified if they are pursued for a just cause
and when they are carried out using just
means. Under the just war theory, force may
be used only to correct a grave public evil. The injustice suffered by one party must
significantly outweigh that suffered by the other.

In addition, the just lie theory holds that only duly constituted public authorities
may use deadly force or wage war, and it must be done with the right intention. That
is, the force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose. There
must also be a reasonable chance of success. It is not permissible to wage war if this
involves engaging in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are
necessary to achieve success. There must also be no other means available to settle
the conflict. Force may be used only after all peaceful alternatives have been ex-
hausted. Finally, the overall destruction that will arise from the use of force must be
outweighed by the good to be achieved.

Ramsay points out that when this is applied to lying, the justice of a lie would
depend on the cause for which it is undertaken, whether there were other means
available to achieve this end, whether the harm caused by the lie is outweighed by
the good achieved, and whether there is a reasonable chance of success in achieving
the end through these means. Moreover, the means would have to be justified, not
only because politicians would be acting in our name and in our interests, but be-
cause the public would have to consent to the deception in advance in order to com-
ply with democratic principles.

This criticism of the just lie approach hinges on the following claims: (1) There is
no consensus on what constitutes a just end, (2) there is no agreement on the con-
cepts of a national or public interest and the amount of value that attaches to these
concepts, and (3) it cannot be assumed that the citizenry would consent to being
deceived in order to promote the national interest, even if it could be defined. Once
we move from abstract definitions, Ramsay argues, the concepts of national and
public interest prove too amorphous to justify government secrecy and deception.
She admits that “All would agree that vital national interests are involved when
there is a direct and acute attack on the physical survival of citizens, when basic
democratic institutions are fundamentally and severely threatened, when there is

Once we move from abstract

definitions, Ramsay argues, the

concepts of national and public

interest prove too amorphous to justify

government secrecy and deception.

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

268 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

imminent danger of national collapse or economic ruin” (Cliffe, Ramsay, and Bartlett
2000, 31). Yet she maintains that the concept of national security has no generally
acceptable meaning. Its failure to provide a clear standard by which to justify decep-
tion adds to the looseness of the concept of just cause, which in turn provides oppor-

tunities for politicians to use the concept for
private gain. Ramsay’s criticism extends to
the concept of the public interest. Since there
is no consensus on how the public interest
might be defined, the concept is weakened
as a justificatory tool for assessing the mo-
rality of political theory.

Nevertheless, Ramsay herself uses the concepts of national and public interest
in her arguments against lying when she says that telling lies about policy or with-
holding information can work against both of those interests (Cliffe, Ramsay, and
Bartlett 2000, 38). It should be obvious that she is not entitled to reject the con-
cepts of national and public interest as useless on the grounds of their vagueness
when used to justify lying, but then to use them as justifications for truth-telling
and full disclosure. If it is their vagueness that eliminates them from proper use,
then using them to justify any course of action, including the ones Ramsay wants
to defend, is wrong.

Admittedly, the concepts of national and public interest are not static. However,
the instability of such concepts is not a sufficient justification for jettisoning them.
Concepts can be heuristic for purposes of creating and implementing policies. To
use Ramsay’s approach in other areas of ethical decision-making would surely un-
dermine higher goods. For instance, consider a notable example in the area of medi-
cal ethics. A young woman who is dying from leukemia faces the question of whether
to have a platelet transfusion during the last days of her life in the likely event that
she begins to hemorrhage. She has decided that she does not want any heroic mea-
sures taken to prolong her life when the burdens of treatment outweigh the benefits,
so she refuses the transfusion on the grounds that it would only serve to prolong
suffering. At that point, her doctor asks her to consider the possibility that the hem-
orrhage might occur in her neck, with the result that she would choke to death on her
own blood. The patient decides that if this were to occur, she would want a transfu-
sion. Thus, the same act is considered a heroic measure under one set of circum-
stances and ordinary treatment under another. The fact that there is no general
consensus about what constitutes heroic measures and that using this concept might
lead to divergent courses of action depending upon the context does not mean that
the concept should be abandoned as useless. To do so would undermine the higher
good in this case, which is the relief of suffering. While vague and open to interpre-
tation, the concept of heroic measures is nonetheless useful in determining the cor-
rect course of action. Likewise, in the realm of politics, the concepts of national and
public interest may be loose, but to refuse to apply them undermines a higher good
at times.

The second part of Ramsay’s argument focuses on her notion that “even if se-
crecy and deception could be justified to protect a vital interest, the costs in terms of
the toll they take on democratic principles alone could be said to outweigh their
benefits” (Cliffe, Ramsay, and Bartlett 2000, 35). Ramsay contends that the use of
lies, concealment, and deceit contradicts the basic principles of democratic society

In the realm of politics, the concepts of

national and public interest may be

loose, but to refuse to apply them

undermines a higher good at times.

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 269

based on accountability, participation, consent, and representation. Is universal truth-
telling a necessary condition of a fully functioning democracy? Politicians cannot
possibly reveal all of the information that they have at their fingertips. Yet, Ramsay
argues, “The idea that politicians can justifiably withhold information from the pub-
lic, even if this is to achieve a worthwhile
and agreed upon political goal renders the
requirement of accountability meaningless”
(36). Patently, this does not follow. Politi-
cians who withhold information for a just
cause are still accountable for using the de-
ception as a last resort, for their judgments
that the good that is brought about will out-
weigh the harm, and for calculating a rea-
sonable chance of success.

Ramsay is correct in emphasizing that a
consideration of the harm brought about must include the impact on the democratic
principles of consent and participation, and the likelihood of undermining trust. The
right to know, she suggests, is at the basis of democratic accountability and essential
to both effective participation on the part of citizens and representation on the part
of public administrators. Thus, deception places these values at risk. This does not
mean that the conditions of a just lie cannot be met. In some cases, the ones that
involve a vital national interest, the assumption can be made that the public would
have consented in advance to the deception employed. But even in cases where no
such assumption can be made, the acts of deception might still be justified if done to
avert some graver evil and the good consequences outweigh the bad consequences
of thwarting democratic principles.

In the several examples that Ramsay and her colleagues cite, involving cases like
Watergate and lying about the Vietnam War, the deception was not intended to pro-
mote the national or public interest but to promote personal ambition and protect the
interests of the policymakers. There was no just end being sought after, and the
means used resulted in disproportionate harm. For this reason, these examples are
self-serving. If lying is never justified in the public interest, then the arguments
Ramsay raises about the vagueness of the concepts employed in the just lie doctrine
are irrelevant. In order to avoid begging the question, she must take seriously the
possibility that the benefits of secrecy and deception might outweigh the costs in
both extraordinary and everyday political situations. What follows is an analysis of
one such situation.

Applying the Just Lie Theory

Given how thoroughly and negatively Maureen Ramsay criticizes the practicality of
applying the just lie theory, now consider whether the theory could be useful in
analyzing an actual case of deception by a public administrator. The case is pre-
sented by Harold Gortner in his book Ethics for Public Managers (1991). In it he
describes the experience of David Weathers, a GM-15 contract administrator in the
Department of Energy in the Carter administration. Weathers oversaw contracts re-
lating to preparation for future crises and efforts to achieve energy self–sufficiency.
He was the steward of highly sensitive, top-secret data that had been yielded very

Politicians who withhold information

for a just cause are still accountable

for using the deception as a last resort,

for their judgments that the good that

is brought about will outweigh the

harm, and for calculating a reasonable

chance of success.

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

270 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

reluctantly by corporations in the energy industry. The companies feared that their
data on energy reserves and production might be leaked to a competitor or to a
private party who could make large profits on the stock market. The government had
assured the industry that the information would be secure. The secret computer codes
to the data would be known only to “a few people in the department, the White
House, and by those contractors who were currently utilizing the information”
(Gortner 1991, 3). Improper divulging of these codes “carried a very heavy penalty.”

Weathers discovered that someone on the White House staff had apparently given
the access code to a consultant who was not under contract to the Energy Depart-
ment. “The fact of illegal activity was clear; Dave’s problem was to correct the
effects of the illegal activity in a way that would allow the program to continue and,
at the same time, protect his career” (Gortner 1991, 3). Weathers’s supervisor was
not approachable with problems. In the past he had berated and given negative evalu-
ations to people who brought difficulties to him. Weathers was convinced that the
politically appointed superiors above his boss would be no more supportive or re-
sponsive and would use him as a scapegoat to avoid responsibility. Weathers could
not announce the breach of security publicly because he did not have enough evi-
dence against the consultant. Also, “any public announcement would destroy the
possibility of gaining further cooperation from the energy companies—it would prove
their worst fears were fulfilled.” Weathers deeply believed in the program and wanted
it to advance to its important goal.

Weathers had no success in approaching the contractor to try to get him to admit
to having the information. The conversation became a nasty confrontation, with the
contractor denying the allegation and threatening hierarchical and political retalia-
tion if Weathers did anything. He was now more convinced that this person had the
information and even more worried about how the data might be misused.

On the fifth day of the crisis, Weathers reported that the problem was “solved.”
Bidding on a new set of contracts had just ended, and the contractor had bid on one
of the smaller jobs. Although his bid was a few thousand dollars above that of a
competitor, Weathers gave him the contract. This is how he explained his curious
decision:

Public administration, just like politics, is sometimes “the art of the possible.” If the
contractor accepts that contract (and he did), he will have to sign the same disclaimer
that everyone else does. If he uses any of the information in the data banks in an
improper way, I can and will nail him to the wall. It also gives me additional time to
verify my strong suspicion of his cheating; therefore I can go after him for an illegal
act if it proves necessary. . . . It may not be the prettiest solution in the world, but I
believe that it meets the test of working in the public interest. I am satisfied that I have
done the best I can in this situation. (Gortner 1991, 4)

Even though a contract administrator is not always obligated to accept the lowest
bid, Weathers is clearly being deceptive here, for he has no substantive reason not to
award the contract to the lowest bidder. Indeed, what he does know of the winning
bidder is that he is utterly unprofessional and a knave. Weathers’s award of the con-
tract is a lie, for he is, in fact, not awarding it to the lowest bidder or the most
appropriate recipient. It is a lie he finds defensible because it sacrifices one public
interest in order to achieve a much higher public interest. His lie does not result in
personal gain, and he seems convinced that a disinterested observer like Gortner

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 271

would approve his moral calculus. What is striking about this case of deception by a
public administrator is how removed it is from the analyses of Machiavelli, Walzer,
Bok, and Ramsay. Weathers has none of the self-promotion Machiavelli would ex-
pect, the guilt that Walzer demands, the slippery habit of deception that Bok antici-
pates, or the manipulation of the public interest that Ramsay envisions. While he is
prepared to take calculated risks for the public, he is not the suffering servant of
Weber. He seems to be an official dedicated to public goals and to achieving what is
“possible.” He is not indifferent to his own interests and seems adept at smoothly
balancing personal and public ends. Since he appears convinced that his deception
in this case is justified, his experience provides a test of the just lie theory and whether
it has more feasibility and appropriateness than Ramsay thinks it does.

As we have noted above, Ramsay, in extrapolating from Thomas Aquinas’s just
war theory, argues that for a lie to be just it would need to be motivated by a just
cause, no other means to the goal could be
available, the harm of the lie must be out-
weighed by the good achieved, and there
would need to be a good chance of success
for the stratagem. Ramsay is convinced that
all of these standards, and particularly the is-
sue of the public interest, are “too amorphous
to provide clear criteria to justify government
secrecy and deception” (Cliffe, Ramsay, and
Bartlett 2000, 30). However, when we apply
the just lie criteria to the Weathers case, they
seem to work well as guidelines and to support his own assumption that his deception
was justified. Taking the first criterion of the just lie, motivation, there is no doubt that
Weathers’s actions are well motivated and that he is pursuing a just cause. It is true that
he is concerned about the reputation of his department and his own career, but these
issues are sidelights to his driving commitment to protect and foster the energy policy.
Where is the impossible haziness and self-serving manipulation that Ramsay thought
eviscerates any appeal to the just lie theory? One does not need to broker a generally
acceptable definition of the public interest to conclude that Weathers is acting on be-
half of a public goal that is important and at risk in this case study. The fact that some
official deceivers will seek to spin the concept of public interest to cover self–serving
misdeeds does not mean that the concept is devoid of meaning and that we cannot
affirm that an official like Weathers is pursuing the public interest when that is obvi-
ously the case. Ramsay shows that standards for the just lie can be manipulated, not
that they are invalid and inappropriate in all cases.

Weathers’s actions are supported by the other just lie criteria as well. The means
he utilizes to corral the errant contractor are certainly proportionate to the threat the
contractor poses. Indeed, much of Weathers’s satisfaction at the end of the case derives
from his conviction that no other means were available to protect the energy policy
and that the contractor fortunately put himself in a place where he could be controlled.
Weathers does deceive in ignoring a lower bid that presents no other basis for disquali-
fication. But the harm suffered by the lower bidder is not major, since it is a small
contract and the bids were close in costs. Weathers might also argue that if he is not
able to control the errant contractor and the project blows up, the lowest bidder might
never get to perform his services. If we approve of Weathers’s actions, a major reason

The fact that some official deceivers

will seek to spin the concept of public

interest to cover self-serving misdeeds

does not mean that the concept is

devoid of meaning and that we cannot

affirm that an official like Weathers is

pursuing the public interest when that

is obviously the case.

Lynn Pasquerella and Alfred G. Killilea

272 • P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005

is that what he achieves is certainly proportionate to the minor wound he inflicts on the
bidding process and his sense of fairness.

Finally, Weathers’s deception is approved by a consideration of its chance of
success. He has good reason to think that his unfair awarding of a minor contract
will, in fact, control the threatening contractor. This is the criterion of the just lie that
Ramsay seems to consider the least controversial, and ironically it may be the one
that is the most questionable in supporting Weathers. He still has a rogue loose in the
White House, and the secrecy of the codes has already been breached once. His
strategic failure to reveal his suspicions about the first breach could be used against
him should there be another breakdown in secrecy. If an investigation were to take
place, it might center on him rather than the actual culprit. Nevertheless, Weathers
has a reasonable enough chance of success for us to say that his deception here is
consistent with both reason and justice.

Conclusion

Machiavelli and Michael Walzer make strong cases that there are times when public
officials are compelled to lie to defend the public interest. Machiavelli sees decep-
tion as an inevitable part of politics and statesmanship. He may be faulted, however,
for setting no conditions or limits on official lying. Walzer seeks a limit to lying in
the guilt and punishment a deceiving official should endure for protecting the public
by devious means. His theory for responding to the issue of “dirty hands” is attrac-
tive in recognizing both the necessity of political means that veer from the moral
standards of private life and the importance of upholding those moral standards and
paying a price for violating them. However, the punishment has to be self-imposed
and Walzer offers no criteria that might limit extreme or unnecessary deception and
connivance by public officials. Sissela Bok and Maureen Ramsay also renege on a
quest for such criteria by claiming that official lying is almost never appropriate or
necessary. Bok relies on an impractical avoidance of comment by officials to shun
lying, and Ramsay is convinced that all the criteria in support of the just lie theory
are inevitably amorphous and self-serving. She seems to miss the key point that the
just lie theory attempts to set moral and not legal standards. In her criticisms of
Walzer’s theory and the just lie theory, Ramsay is too literal, legalistic, and one–
dimensional. She misses the need to find not a resolution but a balance between the
public and the private, between moral sanctity and effective, tolerable compromise.
An application of the just lie criteria to the case study of the defensible deception of
David Weathers demonstrates the utility of these criteria in assessing the ethics of
lies by public servants in at least some cases. The just lie theory does not help an
official who is looking for excuses, but for a person like Weathers, who is genuinely
seeking to do the right thing, it can provide guidance in an impure world as to how
one should act so as to come to Weathers’s conclusion: “I have done the best I can in
this situation.”

REFERENCES
Bok, Sissela. 1989. Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life. New York:

Vintage.
Cliffe, Lionel, Maureen Ramsay, and Dave Bartlett. 2000. “The Politics of Lying.” In

Implications for Democracy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

The Ethics of Lying in the Public Interest

P U B L I C I N T E G R I T Y SUMMER 2005 • 273

Gortner, Harold F. 1991. Ethics for Public Managers. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1981. The Prince. London: Penguin.
Pasquerella, Lynn, Alfred G. Killilea, and Michael Vocino, eds. 1996. Ethical Dilem-

mas in Public Administration. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Walzer, Michael. 1973. “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands.” Philosophy

and Public Affairs 2, no. 2:160–180.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Lynn Pasquerella is associate dean of the Graduate School and professor of philosophy at
the University of Rhode Island. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (A.B.) and
Brown University (Ph.D.), a past recipient of URI’s Teaching Excellence Award, and has
published extensively in the areas of theoretical and applied ethics, public policy, medi-
cal ethics, and the philosophy of law. In 1998, she was honored by Change Magazine and
the American Association of Higher Education as a “Young Leader of the Academy.”

Alfred G. Killilea is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, co-
director of the John Hazen White, Sr. Center for Ethics and Public Service, and director
of the Mentor/Tutor Internship. He received his A.B. degree from the University of Notre
Dame and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He co-authored, with
Lynn Pasquerella and Michael Vocino, Ethical Dilemmas in Public Administration.