Glen...hope you were not serious thinking there is something deliberate by government to mislead you. The option is that NEIC/USGS not post earthquakes for, say a year, and not post quakes at all unless they can guarantee that no one will revisit the locations in the future (see my and John's posts on the thread below). The burden is on the researcher using catalogues to know the problems with the catalogues, and there are lots of them. Lowell Whiteside was an expert on catalogues. Too bad he does not post here any more.
Chris