A foreign intelligence service kidnaps an American resident from a New York subway and flies him to a Caribbean dictatorship. The victim is an FBI informant and a CIA source. The FBI investigates and confirms the broad outline of the kidnapping. The CIA possesses operational files on both the victim and the foreign intelligence service that conducted the kidnapping. Yet no prosecution occurs, no diplomatic crisis results, and the CIA file remains classified seventy years later. The standard explanation is Cold War realpolitik — the dictatorship was a strategic ally. But consider a more specific structural reason why the CIA, in particular, would resist disclosure even decades after the Cold War ended. What institutional fact about the CIA's relationship to both the victim and the perpetrating intelligence service creates a disclosure problem that persists regardless of geopolitical context?