The words were scary and intriguing at the same time: “A pattern of deliberate obfuscation.” In order to make my way through what that phrase could mean, I decided I needed to start with defining each individual word: Pattern : any regularly repeated or reoccurring arrangement, design or sequence. Deliberate : done consciously and intentionally; characterized by or resulting from careful and thorough consideration. Obfuscation : the act of making something less clear and less easy to understand, especially intentionally; the action of making something obscure, unclear or unintelligible; t o throw into shadow. Putting those definitions together, perhaps this is what the phrase likely means: a repeated intentional effort to make things unclear so that people are not aware of what is actually going on. By the way, I originally saw the phrase in an investigative journalism piece. The journalists concluded, after they had investigated an enterpr...