The erudite news analyst David Martin (DCDave.com) has been alone among all media operatives large and small in recognizing and supporting the truth from the beginning of the fading media flap that erupted July 5 when NBC News announced that an unclassified Office of Naval Intelligence photo found at the National Archives in College Park, Md., by former federal investigator Les Kinney might be the smoking gun in the Earhart disappearance.

Bringing you up to date, the photo was the centerpiece of the two-hour July 9 History Channel propaganda exercise, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”  I lost no time in becoming the first to publicly denounce the false claims made by Kinney and  Morningstar Entertainment operatives who descended upon network airwaves to promote the coming History Channel program.  Later July 5, I published “July 9 Earhart special to feature bogus photo claims.”  Two days later, Martin, who shared my pessimism about a documentary predicated on such a shaky foundation as the ONI Jaluit photo, published “Press Touts Dubious Earhart Photo.”  Meanwhile, the media had already begun their blanket denunciations of the photo claims, seemingly on cue.

A day after posting my July 12 review of the History Channel special, “History’s ‘Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence’: Underhanded attack on the Marshalls-Saipan truth,” which included  this report from The Guardian online that claimed the  photograph had been found in a Japanese travel “book” that allegedly was published in Japanese–held Palau on 10 October 1935, Martin published “Earhart Photo Story Apparently Debunked.”

Now Martin has added his own perspective to my July 28 article that discussed the Marshallese government’s statement that the ONI photo could not have been taken in 1935, as claimed by the Japanese blogger, “Marshalls release is latest twist in photo travesty” with his “ ‘Earhart Photo’ Debunker Debunked?” published on Martin’s website Aug. 2, following forthwith:

“ ‘Earhart Photo’ Debunker Debunked?”

Perhaps everyone should have been a bit more skeptical when the British Guardian came out with its article with the confident sweeping headline, “Blogger discredits claim Amelia Earhart was taken prisoner by Japan.”  (Bold emphasis Campbell’s throughout.)  As we noted in our previous article in which we accepted the “discovery” of the photo in a 1935 Japanese travel book as valid, the apparent discrediting of the photo did absolutely nothing to undermine the wealth of evidence that Earhart was, indeed, captured by the Japanese, in spite of The Guardian’s major overselling of the new purported evidence: “But serious doubts now surround the film’s premise after a Tokyo-based blogger unearthed the same photograph in the archives of the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library.” (Italics emphasis added.)

A recent photo of news analyst and world traveler David Martin at Jeju (Cheju) Island, South Korea.  (Photo courtesy David Martin.)

The Guardian did go to some length to give the discovery quite an appearance of authenticity.  They provided links to the travel book including the photo and page numbers.  In addition, they gave us these quotes from the blogger himself:

Kota Yamano, a military history blogger who unearthed the Japanese photograph, said it took him just 30 minutes to effectively debunk the documentary’s central claim.

“I have never believed the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, so I decided to find out for myself,” Yamano told the Guardian.  “I was sure that the same photo must be on record in Japan.”

Yamano ran an online search using the keyword “Jaluit atoll” and a decade-long timeframe starting in 1930.

“The photo was the 10th item that came up,” he said.  “I was really happy when I saw it.  I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared.  That’s the first thing they should have done.”

The initial impression one gets—the impression that The Guardian clearly wanted us to take with us—is that this Yamano is quite an enterprising researcher.  But the impression does not bear close scrutiny well.

Yamano claims that the motivation for his effort was the belief that the Japanese military did not capture Earhart.  The main problem of the supposed evidence presented by the photo is that it is not strong enough to convince any skeptical person that it actually shows Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan in the custody of the Japanese.  The natural reaction of a predisposed doubter is simply to reject the photo out of hand.

The second paragraph in the Yamano quote, then, amounts to a non sequitur.  From the outset, what could conducting a search for a copy of the photograph presented in the History Channel program have to do with anything?  It really looks like a waste of time.  Did Yamano have some premonition that he might find evidence that would apparently prove that the photograph had been taken well before Earhart’s disappearance?  Going in, the endeavor looks like a wild goose chase.

To read the rest of Dave Martin’s analysis, see “Earhart Photo Debunker Debunked?”

For Dave Martin’s reviews on both editions of  The Truth at Last, as well as a summary of that evidence and the press (and Wikipedia) treatment of it, see “Hillary Clinton and the Amelia Earhart Cover-up,” “Amelia Earhart Truth Versus the Establishment,” and “Wikipedia’s Greatest Misses.”