Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:
- President Donald Trump ordered the declassification and release of all government records related to Amelia Earhart.
- Since her disappearance in July 1937, many have sought clues as to what became of the famous aviator.
- Some experts have suggested that it is unlikely that classified Earhart documents would contain new information on the remains of her and her plane, or that any such documents exist at all.
This story is a collaboration with Popular Mechanics.
President Donald Trump announced on September 26 that he has ordered the declassification and release of the files the public has long been clamoring, whose secrecy has fueled countless conspiracy theories—the Amelia Earhart files.
“I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart, such an interesting story, and would I consider declassifying and releasing everything about her, in particular, her last, fatal flight!” the president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Trump was alluding to Earhart’s attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. The effort ended abruptly on July 2, 1937 when her Lockheed Electra 10E—containing both Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan—disappeared somewhere southwest of the Nukumanu Islands. Noting that the disappearance has “captivated millions” in the decades since, he announced that he would order his administration to “release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.”
Countless hours have already been committed to trying to determine where precisely Earhart’s plane went down for the final time, by both scholars and amateurs alike. Some launched privately-funded expeditions to search for the wreckage of the plane, others sought out eyewitness accounts which suggested that either Earhart, Noonan, or both had actually survived after their disappearance. Interested parties have pored over every page of publicly available information on Earhart, leaving no stone unturned. Could newly declassified documents, whose scope and size is as of this writing unknown, have anything new to offer those hoping to solve the mystery of Earhart's disappearance?
At least one expert suggests that it is unlikely.
Jeff Morris is the project manager for Nauticos, a deep-sea exploration and historical research company currently focused on trying to find the wreckage of Earhart’s plane. According to Popular Mechanics, the company previously attempted to trace Earhart’s final moments using the same radio systems Earhart’s Lockheed and the U.S. Coast Guard’s cutter Itasca used to correspond on the day they vanished.
Morris “spent many months in the National Archives digging through every record group that could have any relevance to Earhart’s flight,” Nauticos told Popular Mechanics in a statement, and during that research “did not uncover or hear of other records that were classified or hidden.”
Morris’ research spanned not just Treasury and Navy records, but those of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS—an espionage organization that precedes our modern CIA. For some time, conspiracy theories have persisted that Amelia Earhart’s flight may have actually been a spy mission, and that she may have been captured and killed by the Japanese. Thus far, no credible evidence has emerged to support these theories, which rely entirely on speculation and inference. For his part, Morris “found no conversations or presidential records in the upper echelons of the Navy or the Treasury Department that would indicate there was something other than a woman who wanted to fly around the world.”
So, while some may be hoping this declassification move could finally provide something concrete for the espionage conspiracy theory to stand on, Morris is fairly confident it won’t. In fact, Nauticos’ stance is that “there is no set of records related to Amelia Earhart that is truly classified.” If sensitive information within these files was being withheld by the government, it was not to do with Amelia Earhart herself, but rather “specific information about the United States or how the United States collected information in the past that may affect a relationship with another country.”
It is entirely possible some newly released document could offer a breakthrough for one of the intrepid Earhart expeditioners, but it is more likely to provide some interesting little trivia for scholars instead. As Morris says, “there is no ‘there’ there.”
After all, this would not be the first time that the FBI released a trove of Earhart documents. The public is already free to peruse more than 50 pages worth of FBI documents pertaining to the pilot, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While these files contain inferences of various hallmarks of Earhart theories, like civilians claiming to have “picked up” radio broadcasts from Earhart’s Lockheed, or island residents claiming to have spotted “caucasians” who could have been a surviving Earhart or Noonan, they mostly showcase the FBI’s response to such fringe suggestions.
For example, the collection includes a letter from then-director J. Edgar Hoover to a concerned citizen who claimed to have picked up radio signals from Earhart, thanking them for their tip, but advising them that the FBI “has no facilities to aid in a search, or render the assistance which you request in your letter.” And though these documents do suggest that the “local gossip” pertaining to the possibility of Noonan’s survival was taken into serious consideration, there is no evidence that anything materialized beyond gossip.
Still, as Trump acknowledged in his social media post, the story of the disappearance has captivated “millions,” so it is perhaps unsurprising that he has been “asked by many people,” if there is more to the story.
For some, the quest to find Earhart’s final location is not a matter of what remains unknown, but rather what they believe some people already know—and are actively hiding. Aviator and political mega-donor Timothy Mellon, for example, provided $1 million to the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery back in 2012 to fund a search for Earhart’s plane, which the BBC reports proved to be a fruitless search. They noted:
A year later, Mr. Mellon filed a lawsuit against the organization in which he claimed the plane already had been discovered before he gave them the money. A judge ruled against him, however, noting that Mr. Mellon’s own experts were unable to prove the plane had been found.
For those who find themselves in a similar predicament—confident the plane has been found, but simply unable to prove it—perhaps there is hope that these new documents could offer just the evidence they need.
Ultimately, there may be “no ‘there’ there” in terms of locating the plane, but there may still be something fascinating within the files for historians. Morris suggested that if there were Earhart-related documents still to be released, “they would be personal correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart or something of that sort—something that would have been kept away from the public eye due to its personal nature.” Items like these would not bring us any closer to solving a mystery, but they could bring us a richer understanding not just of the famous woman in the plane, but of the pivotal figures who played a part in her life here on the ground.
Michale Natale is a News Editor for the Hearst Enthusiast Group. As a writer and researcher, he has produced written and audio-visual content for more than fifteen years, spanning historical periods from the dawn of early man to the Golden Age of Hollywood. His stories for the Enthusiast Group have involved coordinating with organizations like the National Parks Service and the Secret Service, and travelling to notable historical sites and archaeological digs, from excavations of America’ earliest colonies to the former homes of Edgar Allan Poe.
