The only way to see them would be in our library headquarters in Brooklyn NY. And at that they are not open to the public.
The elder wasn't honest, at least he could have said that the publications are no longer officially available to the public.
I was thinking the same thing myself, sowhatnow. And it's not only a problem that research now is impossible but their new ideas are not logical, make no sense and so loosely based on the bible that it's hard to make any JW see sense.
With this March 2015 Watchtower it makes a lot of their past publications questionable. Their parables are now being simplified and just about all the secondary fulfillments/anti-types are out the door. This means that we don't know what from the past they will be retaining. The end result means that the dubbies can only rely on all current publications. This has to be their intended result and makes our job more difficult. Any time we bring up anything from the past they will ignore it.
We need a new strategy.