Earlier today, I had my fourth article published at National Review Online this year. This time the subject was Amelia Earhart and our unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories.
The article grew from this blog post I originally wrote on July 5th when a new photo purportedly showing Amelia, Fred Noonan and the Lockheed Electra surfaced. NRO was kind enough to acknowledge this blog at the end of the article.
I liked your article. I don't know if you had seen the documents I obtained with a FOIA lawsuit about the claims made that the Department of State had authenticated the image in the photo on Gardner that it showed the landing gear of the Electra. These documents are available on my website at:
ReplyDeletehttps://sites.google.com/site/fredie8799e/foia
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Despite these setbacks TIGHAR has relentlessly backed its Island Theory for 25 years and in 2012 TIGHAR claimed that a photograph taken in 1937 of Nikumaroro showed an object sticking out of the water that was none other than one of the Electra's landing gears. Not only that but Executive Director of TIGHAR Ric Gillespie claimed that independent experts from the US Department of State confirmed this. Gillespie stated in a TV press conference that the Department of State photo analyst said "there was no other explanation for it", however, official Department of State documents, obtained through a lawsuit to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request, led to a very interesting discovery. Not only did the US Government experts NOT back up Gillespie's claims that it was an Electra landing gear but they actually wrote that they "could not definitely say if it was or it was not an aircraft part"! Despite this fallacy the press conference aided TIGHAR in raising funds for a 2012 expedition to search the seabed in the vicinity of the object and came back with nothing. The object became known as "Nessie" which is ironic considering the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist either."
Huffington Post, November, 7, 2014
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Here is The Freedom Of Information Act law suit I filed against the U.S. Department of State to find out if Ric Gillespie's claim that independent photo interpreters at the DOS supported Ric's claim that "Nessie" was an Electra landing gear. The documents already received (more to come) show that they did not. See Department of State internal email.
Gillespie now says that he never claimed that the Department of State photo analysts backed up his claim that "Nessie" was Earhart's landing gear. Read Gillespie's written comments for the March 20, 2012 press conference, (Gillespie 1, 2, and 3) and compare those with what the Department of State people said in the email.
Gary LaPook