Rorschach: Men get arrested. Dogs get put down.
Daniel Dreiberg: What happened to us, Rorschach?
Rorschach: You quit.
Rorschach: I'm not locked in here with you! You're locked in here with ME!
Rorschach: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tyre tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll whisper 'no'.
Rorschach: You forgot how we do things, Daniel. You've gotten too soft. Too trusting. Especially with women.
Dan Dreiberg: No, listen, I am through with that! God, who do you think you are, Rorschach? You live off people by insulting them and nobody complains because they think you're a damn lunatic! I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, man.
Rorschach: Daniel? You are a good friend.
Rorschach: Watchmen. One of us died tonight. Somebody knows why. Somebody knows.
Dr. Manhattan: I have walked across the surface of the Sun. I have witnessed events so tiny and so fast, they can hardly be said to have occurred at all. But you, Adrian, are just a man. The world's smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.
Adrian Veidt: It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems.
Edward Blake: No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for them to handle.
Jon Osterman: Why would I save a world I no longer have any stake in?
Laurie Juspeczyk: Do it for me.
Adrian Veidt: It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems.
Rorschach: Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon. That's always been the difference between us, Dan.
Edward Blake: God damn I love working on American soil, Dan. Ain't had this much fun since Woodward and Bernstein. Congress is pushing through some new bill that's gonna outlaw masks. Our days are numbered. Till then it's like you always say, we're society's only protection.
Dan Dreiberg: From what?
Edward Blake: You kidding me? From themselves.
Answer: The short answer is that they weren't really trying to. Ozymandias later revealed, and monopolised on, his costumed identity, Comedian was officially endorsed by the U.S.A. Government at the time so his real identity would have been public record, the first Silk Spectre publicly revealed her identity after retiring, though there is no evidence that the current Silk Spectre has. There is no evidence (even in the graphic novel) that anyone tried to hide their identity to the extent that other comic-book heroes like Batman/Superman do. The only exception being Rorschach where even his follow costumes don't know his real identity until they bust him out of prison.
Sanguis