HESS FILES SEALED UNTIL 2017

Rudolf Hess, Adol Hitler's deputy, crash-landed his Messerschmitt in afield outside
Glasgow in May 1941. He was taken into custody and never released, dying (supposedly by
his own hand) in Berlin's Spandau Prison on August 17, 1987. Hess took his secrets to the
grave. In the August 24 London Independent on Sunday, historian Phillip Knightley, asks,
"Why, more than 50 years after the war, are the Foreign Office files on Hess still closed and
due to remain so until 2017?"

Mr. Knightley writes that when President Roosevelt was briefed by Winston Churchill on the
affair, he responded, "I wonder what's really behing the story?" "We know some of it",
Mr. Knightley replies. "Hess was on a peace mission. With or without Hitler's blessing - there is
no agreement with this - he planned to meet with British leaders, persuade them that it was
madness for Britain and Germany to continue to fight each other ans convince them they
should unite against the Soviet Union." Mr. Knightley is convinced there was considerable
high-level support in Britain in May 1941 (before the Soviet Union or the I.S. entered the war)
for peace and "the fact remains that there must be something murky in the Bristish
archives to embargo them for so long."