Thousands of pages of documents related to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance are now public — part of a push for transparency ordered earlier this year — but experts say the release is unlikely to solve one of aviation’s most famous mysteries.
On Sept. 26, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, sharing that he was “ordering (his) administration to declassify and release all government records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.”
This first batch — more than 4,600 pages in 53 files — was published online Nov. 14 and includes a picture of Earhart, radio logs, weather reports, search-and-rescue documents, and decades of memos and newspaper clippings focused on Earhart’s final hours and the hunt that followed.
In a press release, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the “files will shine light on the disappearance of a beloved American aviator who has been at the center of public inquisition for decades.”
Why now?
The new postings follow other high-profile document releases ordered by the administration in recent months. Files related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were released in March and July, respectively.
The National Archives website says it is coordinating with other federal agencies “to ensure that any remaining records are identified and transferred to the National Archives as soon as possible.”
What’s actually new?
Many of the memos — including an account of a man claiming Earhart was buried on Saipan or a woman who claimed to be communicating through telepathy with Earhart — reflect long-standing conspiracies.
According to The New York Times, Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a nonprofit based in Pennsylvania, said that most of the documents released by the government were already available.
He said that he was not aware of any key government documents that had not been accessible before Friday. “It’s all out there,” he said.
The prevailing view, as was said by the government in its official report, is that Earhart’s plane likely ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific Ocean as she and Fred Noonan, who was her navigator, were headed to Howland Island, a small coral atoll in the southwestern Pacific, to refuel.
New files will continue to be published as they complete declassification review, per the National Archives.