First of all, it is a pleasure to meet you (I am a researcher by nature too)....welcome to the board!!!
You ask very good questions. You should know that there is a very tight control of information among baptized JWs. As an unbaptized student, you have the freedom to check out non-JW sources, despite being discouraged from doing so, because you have not made a commitment yet. Your study conductor is repeatedly warned or discouraged against reading material critical of the JWs, or spend much time reading non-JW sources on the Bible, or bringing up embarassing points from old literature, or follow a line of thought that is thought to be "apostate". If you asked about the expectations of Armageddon in 1925 and 1975 (or any of their other false prophecies), the old teaching that Jehovah lived in the Pleiades, the teaching in the Finished Mystery book that Behemoth and Leviathan were the steam engine and locomotive, the flip flops on organ transplants and vaccinations, the evidence demonstrating that Jerusalem did not fall in 607 BC, the misquoting and misrepresentation of secular sources in the Creation book, the false evidence used to support the claim that earthquakes have increased since 1914, etc. etc., you would receive a similar response. These are things that JWs aren't supposed to know about, or at least dwell time thinking about.
Just a few months ago, the Kingdom Ministry reiterated the official view that the organization "provides what is needed so that all of God's people may be 'fitly united in the same mind and in the same line of thought' " and Christians should shun "foolish questionings and strife" by using "their thinking ability" in a way that supports the organization's preaching work, rather than detracting from it. Thus, it does not approve of JWs who pursue "an independent group study of Biblical Hebrew and Greek so as to analyze the accuracy of the New World Translation," or get together to "explore scientific subjects related to the Bible", or create "Web sites and chat rooms for the purpose of exchanging and debating their views", or act in any other way to "supplement what is provided at our Christian meetings and our literature" (Kingdom Ministry, September 2007, p. 3).
Now that I have vented, my question is Why?? Why do they keep information from their members?
Because it would stumble their faith. Simple as that. They want unity of thought among the flock. It could stumble others if some people knew about their past, or expressed views that supplement or contradict what the organization teaches. Everything is supposed to be done to support the organization, the "faithful and discreet slave" class.
Why do they lie about it and try to cover it up?
Because what else can you do to keep information from others, when there is free access to it on the internet.
If they are beating Satan at his own game using his instruments, the UN, to be able to proclaim the good news world wide, why do they feel they have to hide it?
Because they strenuously condemned other religions for doing the same thing. They know that having an association with the UN organization (even as an NGO) would make them, according to their own rules, part of Babylon the Great. They have previously argued that keeping free from any entanglements with the UN proves that they are not part of Babylon the Great:
*** w53 9/15 p. 565 par. 2 Posthaste "to the Mountains!" ***
But we can flee from Christendom spiritually by abandoning her worldly, untheocratic system of things and thus get out of her danger zone, leaving her to her fate and having no part with her in her adulterous connections with the United Nations and any other political and commercial system of this old world. Only then can we be free to declare the day of vengeance of our God against Christendom and all the rest of this Babylonish world. There is only one place to go for safe refuge, and that is under Jehovah’s theocratic new system of things in company with his New World society.
*** sl chap. 18 pp. 339-340 par. 30 On Whose Side Are We When World Distress Climaxes? ***
The 138 members of the United Nations organization know that Jehovah’s Christian witnesses are no part of Christendom, no, no part of harlotrous Babylon the Great as a whole. They know that Jehovah’s witnesses have not messed themselves up with the dirty politics of this world and have not tried to ride the symbolic scarlet-colored "wild beast" having seven heads and ten horns.
*** w87 9/1 pp. 27-28 par. 15 Trust in Jehovah—Not in "a Conspiracy!" ***
In total disregard of this world-important fact, the nations inside the United Nations settled upon the year 1986 as their International Year of Peace. But Jehovah’s Witnesses are by no means caught off guard in this connection. When the foretold proclamation of "peace and security" is finally made, they will not join political adherents and friendly associates of "Babylon the Great" in the feasting over such a phenomenal feat at this late date in the history of the worldly nations. They advocate no conspiracy with the United Nations or other peace media. (Isaiah 8:12) As a countermeasure, they say in the words of Isaiah 8:20: "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn." (New International Version) And giving the reason for their immovable position, they say: "For God is with us!" (Isaiah 8:10) Bluntly, that means that Jehovah God is taking no part in the political measures adopted by the nations in behalf of "peace and security" but, rather, is unequivocally against them.
