WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has ordered the declassification and public release of all government records about aviator Amelia Earhart, noting that her disappearance in 1937 as she attempted to fly around the world has “captivated millions.”
Trump called her fate an “interesting story” and said people have been asking him about declassifying and making public everything the government has on her. Trump returned to office earlier this year promising to declassify and release government records on several high-profile figures, though Earhart's was not among the names mentioned.
The Republican president's administration since has released thousands of pages of records about President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. All were assassinated during the 1960s and the files revealed no blockbuster information.
Both the FBI and the National Archives and Records Administration already have released batches of documents about Earhart. Some who have doggedly researched her disappearance nearly 90 years ago doubt there is much more the government has on her that it can release.
Earhart was an aviation pioneer and first woman to pilot a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. She disappeared in the South Pacific while trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
“Amelia made it almost three quarters around the World before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions. I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.”
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of her attempt to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. She had radioed that she was running low on fuel. The Navy searched but found no trace.
The U.S. government’s official position has been that Earhart and Noonan went down with their plane. She was declared legally dead in 1939.
Since then, theories have abounded, with some veering into the absurd, including abduction by aliens, or Earhart living in New Jersey under an alias. Others speculate she and Noonan were executed by the Japanese or died as castaways on an island.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, who has studied Earhart for decades, doubted that much more information on the famed aviator remains to be released. He cited the document dumps by the FBI and the National Archives.
“There's nothing still classified by the U.S. government on Amelia Earhart,” Gillespie said in a telephone interview.
But Mindi Love Pendergraft, executive director of the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum, said in an email that Trump's action “is sure to pique the interest of those dedicated to uncovering the mystery of Earhart's disappearance.”
“If these records shed any light on Earhart's fate, it is a welcome action for Earhart historians and enthusiasts,” she said.