US National Archives releases Amelia Earhart records
Numerous records related to the disappearance of famous aviator Amelia Earhart in the Pacific in 1937 have been released by the US National Archives following President Donald Trump’s recent order to declassify and release all such material held by the government.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the release of 4,624 pages of documents, including the logbooks of US military ships involved in the air and sea search for Earhart.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were last seen on July 2, 1937, as they took off in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra plane from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island, about 4,000 km away, for a circumnavigation of the world.
Radio contact with the plane was lost hours later after Earhart, 39, reported she was low on fuel.
A major sea search, the most comprehensive at the time, failed.
Earhart’s fate remains one of the most enduring mysteries of the past 88 years.
The Trump administration’s sudden interest in Earhart and the president’s order on Sept. 26 to declassify and release records about her come as Earhart faces mounting criticism for withholding files on the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Earhart’s new material was released two days after a congressional panel released thousands of documents that raised new questions about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.
U.S. Navy and Coast Guard reports on the search for Earhart were accompanied by various memos, newspaper clippings, letters, and telegrams.
The correspondence included a letter from a woman who claimed to have deduced through telepathy that Earhart was still alive, a letter from a man who insisted she was buried in Spain, and a series of government telegrams and memos that discounted rumors that Earhart had been captured and executed by Japanese forces.
The National Archives said more records will be digitized and released on an ongoing basis.
The fate of Earhart and Noonan remains an open question. But researchers from the International Historic Aircraft Recovery Group have pieced together evidence that suggests the couple died as shipwrecked passengers on the tiny Nikumaroro atoll in the Kiribati archipelago in the western Pacific.
A series of searches on this island turned up a jar of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, pieces of clothing, human bone fragments, and a pocket knife like the one Earhart carried.
A piece of aluminum believed to have come from the plane was also seized.
In addition, TIGHAR said a sonar image taken just off the coast of the remote atoll revealed what may have been a wing or part of the fuselage of Earhart’s plane.
Nearly 80,000 records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released under Trump’s orders in March.
