Fred Goerner’s 1991 letter to Life magazine’s Barnes: Hooven created Nikumaroro theory, not Gillespie

In my Oct. 26 post, we saw Fred Goerner’s rather moderately toned March 1, 1990 letter to TIGHAR’s Ric Gillespie, in which he gently warned the TIGHAR boss that the media would not long tolerate his false claims about Amelia Earhart’s alleged July 1937 landing on Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro).  Of course Goerner, who died in 1994, couldn’t imagine the depths that our media would eventually plumb in their enthusiasm and commitment to disseminating anything that continues to keep the public stupid about the Earhart disappearance.  

Fourteen years after Time magazine ripped The Search for Amelia Earhart as a book that “barely hangs together” and urged its readers not to waste their time on “conspiracy theories” about Japan’s pre-war atrocities, Goerner still didn’t fully comprehend the media’s deceitful Earhart agenda.  But in his letter to Life magazine’s Ed Barnes, he adamantly insisted that Life should table any notions they had about promoting Gillespie’s Nikumaroro fantasies.

A previously unpublished photo of Navy enlisted man Fred Goerner (center) circa 1943, with two unidentified buddies.  (Photo courtesy Lance Goerner.)

The below letter is most instructive, especially for those unfamiliar with the true history of Earhart research, and clearly illuminates the salient details of the Nikumaroro fallacy.  The fact that Goerner was ignored by Life leaves no doubt about how far the media, in this case one of the pre-eminent news magazines of the day, will go to support the bogus over the true in the Earhart case. 

Whatever Barnes thought of Goerner’s letter — and I’ve seen nothing hinting at that — Life published Gillespie’s self-aggrandizing propaganda piece in its April 1992 edition, countering the TIGHAR falsehoods only with a small, easily overlooked boxed insert that quoted a few experts who exposed Gillespie’s claims as pure kaka.  Here’s Goerner’s letter, as relevant today as it was in 1991: 

FREDERICK ALLAN GOERNER
Twenty-four Presidio Terrace
San Francisco, California 94118

October 11, 1991

Mr. Ed Barnes
Life Magazine
Time/Life Building
ROOM 447
Rockefeller Center
New York, N.Y. 10020

Dear Mr. Barnes,

It is with some trepidation that I provide this information to you.

I stand behind the evidence I am presenting to you herewith, but I make it clear that I prefer not to be brought into what I consider to be the bogus claims of Dr. [sic] Gillespie, Ms. Thrasher and the organization known as TIGHAR: The International Group For Historic Aircraft Recovery.

You may use my name only if it is absolutely needed for verisimilitude.

First, I believe it is important for you to know that the McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro) Islands theory is not the property of or the result of the work of Gillespie and TIGHAR [all bolded emphasis mine, capitalization emphasis Goerner’s throughout].

The work is the result of the efforts of Professor Frederick Hooven of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.  Hooven conducted a series of computer studies on the Earhart matter at Dartmouth, and I urged him in 1982 to write a paper regarding his conclusions that I might present to the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., at the time I was participating in an Earhart symposium at NASM in 1982.

Undated photo of the late Fred Hooven, the noted engineer, inventor and creator of the Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) landing theory.  To this observer’s knowledge, Hooven, who later abandoned the Nikumaroro landing idea after closely studying the history of the island and its many inhabitants, has never been publicly acknowledged by Ric Gillespie as the progenitor of the Nikumaroro “hypothesis,” as Gillespie calls it. 

Professor Hooven did so prepare the paper, and I presented it to Ms . Claudia Oakes, who was then Associate curator at NASM and who had arranged the symposium.  A copy of Hooven ‘s work is herewith attached.

I should here inform you that Frederick Hooven, among many, many impressive accomplishments, was the inventor of a low frequency air direction finder that was used for several decades aboard commercial and military aircraft.  Hooven and the then U.S. Army Air Corps allowed one of those (then new) direction finders to be installed aboard Earhart’s plane, and Hooven met directly with Amelia Earhart. Because of pressures from her friend, Eugene Vidal, and a division of Bendix Radio, Earhart removed the Hooven device and replaced it with an older null-type, high­ frequency direction finding device then used by the U.S. Navy.

As you will note, Professor Hooven’s 1982 conclusions have been taken without attribution by TIGHAR.  The very odd thing is that Hooven reached a conclusion before his death in 1985 (see attached obit) that NEITHER Gardner (Nikumaroro) or McKean could have been the landing places of the Earhart plane.  His thinking was based upon a thorough research we conducted regarding the histories of both of these islands.

The initial Hooven research (represented by the paper presented to NASM) reached Gillespie and TIGHAR in this manner.

A gentleman named Hardon McDonald Wade, Jr., of Atlanta, Georgia became deeply interested in the Earhart mystery.  He contacted me and learned about the Hooven paper.  I wrote to Claudia Oakes at NASM on his behalf, and he was given a copy of Hooven’s work.  Shortly thereafter Mr. Wade began to try to raise funds for an expedition to McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro ) Islands. He, too, presented the Hooven material without attribution.

Mr. Wade formed a partnership with a Mr. Thomas Willi of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and the two of them continued to attempt to raise funds.  Finally, it was announced in the press (see attached item) that Wade and Willi had failed in their efforts to raise sufficient funds for the venture.

There was acrimony between Wade and Willi.  According to Wade, he, Wade, “Kicked Willi out of the nest because he was trying to claim my work as his own.”  This despite the fact the material belonged to Hooven.

Mr. Willi then formed a relationship with a gentleman named Thomas Gannon and they took the Hooven material without attribution to Dr. Gillespie and TIGHAR.

Dr. Gillespie telephoned to me in the spring of 1989 and told me of plans for a soon to be accomplished visit to both McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro) Islands.

I in turn told him it was NOT ethical to use Hooven’s material without attribution, and I also told Gillespie that Hooven and I had long since reached the conclusion that McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro ) could not have been a landing place for the Earhart plane.  I explained in detail the facts we had learned about both of the islands.

Mr. Gillespie admitted that he was aware of Hooven’s connection to the material, but he did not explain why he was not crediting Hooven other than to say that he, Gillespie, and TIGHAR had conducted additional research which firmed the conjecture about McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro).

I further pointed out to Gillespie that the chart in TIGHAR ‘s prospectus which showed the Pan Am direction finder bearings intersecting in the vicinity of McKean and Gardner Islands were identical to those of Hooven with the exception that one 201 degrees bearing from Wake Island and the 157 degrees bearing from Howland Island had been erased.  He stated this was done because the material “was not relevant to the McKean/Gardner Island scenario.”

Capt. John Lambrecht (right) and his brother, Marine Maj. Pete Lambrecht, aboard the aircraft carrier Makassar Straight, in an undated World War II-era photo.  As a lieutenant assigned to the battleship U.S.S. Colorado in 1937, Lambrecht overflew Nikumaroro just days after the Earhart disappearance and saw no signs of the missing fliers or the Electra.

I told Gillespie that it was TOTALLY relevant because high frequency direction finder bearings circa 1937 were not considered to be accurate to within five degrees.  The 201 degrees bearing showed that inaccuracy and the 157 degrees bearing taken from Howland Island showed the direction finder operator could not tell from which side of the loop he was receiving the signal.  It could be 157 and it could be 337.  It was unethical of TIGHAR not to make that clear.

I detailed the following information Professor Hooven and I had developed to Gillespie in 1989 both by telephone and letter.

We had personally contacted the three pilots from U.S.S. COLORADO who had overflown McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro) Island in July, 1937, one week after the Earhart disappearance.

No sign of life or wreckage was seen on either of the tiny islands (McKean is less than 1 mile long and 1 mile wide). Gardner (Nikumaroro) is only 3.8 miles long and 1.1 miles wide at its broadest end.

Captain John Lambrecht, USN (Ret.), (who was the senior Navy aviator aboard COLORADO in 1937 and overflew both McKean and Gardner (Nikumaroro) one week after the disappearance, sent me his reports and they indicated “signs of recent habitation” had been observed on Gardner (Nikumaroro).  Captain Lambrecht told me the “signs of recent habitation” were the crumbling walls of what appeared to have been buildings.

Gillespie and TIGHAR have chosen to interpret “signs of recent habitation” (despite Lambrecht’s explanation) as “an Earhart survival camp.”

In October, 1937 (see Maude statement and pages from OF ISLANDS AND MEN), three months after the Earhart disappearance, Henry E. Maude and a team of British surveyors landed on Gardner (Nikumaroro) and conducted a full investigation of the island and lagoon.  Nothing was found that would link Earhart and Noonan to the island.  The same was true at McKean Island.

In 1938, a joint New Zealand and British team (known as NZPAS, New Zealand Pacific Air Survey), headed by E.A. Gibson, M.W. Hay, R.A. Wimbish, Jim Henderon and Jack Faton, landed on Gardner (Nikumaroro) conducted a full survey.  They surveyed for an airfield, and they cleared obstructions in the lagoon.

The survey, the brainchild of sir Ralph Cochrane and E.A. Gibson, had twin purposes: To prepare the islands for defense purposes in the event of a Pacific War.  To claim the islands for Britain for possible later use for trans-Pacific commercial aviation [sic].  I obtained the information from the New Zealand National Archives and from Mr. Ian Driscoll the author of the book AIRLINE published in New Zealand.

The 1938 NZPAS survey found nothing that would indicate Earhart and Noonan had ever been on Gardner (Nikumaroro).

In 1939 Henry Maude returned to Gardner (Nikumaroro) with the first contingent of Gilbert Islands settlers. Gardner  was  then  continually  inhabited  until 1964.  A village was built on the island on the area which had been surveyed for the airfield.  Thousands of coconut palms were planted.  Even a post office was established.  During all of this activity, nothing that would connect Earhart and Noonan to the island was found and nothing was reported.

In 1939, the U.S. Navy ship U.S.S. BUSHNELL surveyed Gardner Island for U.S. defense purposes.  This survey also included aerial photos and mosaics of the island. Nothing concerning Earhart or Noonan was found or reported.

This photo of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ric Gillespie appeared nationally in all manner of media sites and publications in the spring of 2012, in advance of TIGHAR’s 10th trip to Nikumaroro in July 2102.  With this photo-op, the feds abandoned all pretense that they are interested in the truth about Amelia’s disappearance, and let it be known to all discerning individuals that they are still actively involved in misinforming and misleading the public, always directing us toward false solutions. Which of these two would you trust the most — or perhaps more appropriately, the least?

In 1943, the U.S. Coast Guard built a Loran navigation station on Gardner.  Vehicles, construction equipment and building materials were brought ashore.  This facility operated until well after the end of World War II.  It is unclear the exact date the Coast Guard departed, but it appears to have been in 1947.  Nothing concerning Earhart and Noonan was found.  Coast Guard personnel, who served on Gardner during that period, report that every inch of the island was explored again and again because there was little else to do save the evening movie.  Nothing concerning Earhart and Noonan was found or reported.

Though Gardner was abandoned by its Gilbert Islands settlers in 1964, the island was surveyed in the 1960s and again in the 1970s with respect to the operation of the Pacific Missile Testing Range and NASA operations.  Gardner has also been visited by a Smithsonian Institution expedition interested in the bird population of the island.  Gardner has also been visited by private yachts from time to time, including visitors who sailed down from Canton Island to the north.

It is because of the information listed above that Professor Hooven and I reached the conclusion that Gardner (Nikumaroro) could not have been the Earhart/Noonan landing place.

Despite knowing all of this, Dr. Gillespie and TIGHAR spent more than $200,000 (by Gillespie’s statements to the media) on the 1989 visit to Gardner (Nikumaroro), and according to reports is spending more than $400,000 of contributors’ money on the current endeavor.

One may legitimately ask WHY and also ask can Gillespie and TIGHAR afford to come back empty handed?

After the 1989 trip, Gillespie tried to tell the media that a “battery” he had found COULD have come from the Earhart plane.  Mary DeWitt, who was a member of the 1989 group, says there were old batteries all over the island.  No surprise given the number of vehicles on the island over the years and the long occupation.  Gillespie ceased to push the “battery.”

Then Mr. Gillespie attempted to convince the media that a cigarette lighter he had found on the beach belonged to Fred Noonan because Noonan was a smoker.  When it was pointed out that hundreds of thousands of U.S. service personnel carried such lighters during World War II, Gillespie ceased to push the “Noonan cigarette lighter.”

Then Mr. Gillespie attempted to float a bit of metal (with a serial number) as part of Earhart’s radio equipment.  I have no idea what happened to that gambit other than Gillespie no longer mentioned it to the media.

Finally, last year Gillespie began to trumpet a piece of metal as having come from a navigation bookcase or cabinet aboard the Earhart plane.  According to Ms. DeWitt, the bit of metal was found in the first hour ashore in 1989, and it was part of a catchment for rain in one of the buildings.  It was not found by Gillespie but by the representative of the Kiribati government, who placed no significance upon it whatsoever.

It is clear to me that no one currently in the media has the background or possesses the information to challenge the incredible offerings of Gillespie and TIGHAR.  There is a great lure to the Earhart mystery, and without either the information or the time to investigate, most reporters have simply reported Gillespie’s offerings because they make a good story.

Life magazine’s Ed Barnes, the recipient of this letter from Fred Goerner, warning Barnes and Life about the false claims of Ric Gillespie and TIGHAR.  Goerner’s advice went  unheeded, and Gillespie was given carte blanche to write his own super-propaganda piece in Life’s April 1992 issue.

Gillespie has hung most of his speculations upon a story which AP reported in 1961.  It concerns one Floyd Kilts of San Diego, who stipulated he served briefly with the Coast Guard on Gardner (Nikumaroro) Island. (See attached original AP offering.)

Because we (CBS) were involved in the Earhart investigation in 1961, we dug into Kilts ‘ contentions.  Bill Dorais, one of our reporters, learned it was fourth- or fifth-hand hearsay.  Kilts could not remember exactly who had told him or who had told the person who told him.  It could not even be given the dignity of naming it a rumor.  A motion picture had been screened at the Coast Guard facility (it was undoubtedly FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM which was thinly disguised Earhart fiction) which alleged Earhart might have gone down near Gardner.  The FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM plot has Earhart heading for “Gull Island.”  There is a Hull Island in the vicinity of Gardner (Nikumaroro), and that had begun conjecture about the Phoenix Islands.

Subsequent investigation indicated that NO FEMALE SKELETON wearing WOMEN’S SHOES was ever found on the beach at Gardner.  The man stated by Kilts as the “white planter” was actually a gentleman named G.B. Gallagher (see Maude material) who directed the settlement and who died on Gardner Island (and is buried there) in 1941.

The Suva, Fiji governmental history archivist replied that NO skeleton was ever reported found on a Gardner Island beach, and in 1968, while filming the documentary THE BATTLE FOR TARAWA, I spoke with the Deputy Director of the Gilbert, Ellice and Phoenix Islands government at Tarawa, Mr. P.G. Roberts.  He said there was a legend among the Gilbert Islands people that the skeleton of a Polynesian man was found at Gardner, but this was definitely pre-1937.

The TIGHAR claim that the woman’s skeleton had women’s shoes of “Amelia Earhart’s size” is total fiction (see Maude letter.)  Such a find would have been broadcast throughout the Pacific.  It would have been a sensation.

You should ask Gillespie and TIGHAR where the evidence is that shoes of Earhart’s size were found.  The truth is Earhart DID NOT WEAR WOMEN’S SHOE WHEN SHE WAS FLYING.  She wore men’s low-heel brogans, see photos taken the morning before the final takeoff from Lae, New Guinea July 2, 1937.

We at CBS dismissed Kilts ‘ story in 1961, and I mentioned it derisively in my 1966 book THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA EARHART.  For Gillespie and TIGHAR to spend such large amounts of tax-free donated funds upon such evidence beggars the wildest kind of fiction.

I am herewith attaching copies of letters from Henry Made to Dr. [sic] Gillespie and to me.  I am also sending a copy of a letter from me to Maude in which the specific questions are asked.

Professor Maude is a former Fellow at the Pacific History Center at the Australia National University at Canberra.  He and his wife, Honor, are the leading scholars in the world with respect to the Central Pacific Islands and in particular Gardner (Nikumaroro) Island.  It was Professor Maude who led the expedition there in October 1937.

In order to convey the impression that its Earhart coverage was impartial and objective, Life included this small sidebar, titled “An Opposing View.”  It is a statement by Frank Shelling, former head of the P-3 Aircraft Structures Branch at the U.S. Navy Aviation Depot in Alameda, Calif. “Gillespie’s case doesn’t stand up,” Shelling wrote. . . . “That fragment did not come from an Electra.”

I do not know what Gillespie will do when he does not find the plane at Gardner on the current visit there.  Will he dig up some pitiful remains?  There are plenty there: Polynesians, Gilbertese, Gallagher are buried there and maybe more.  He does not have permission to invade those graves, but he must bring something back.  Knowing what I do about the past gambits of Gillespie and TIGHAR, I would not put ANYTHING past him.  Certainly he will come back with more bits of metal or perhaps the soles of some shoes which “may have belonged to Noonan.”  It is not beyond my belief that Gillespie will attempt to salt the mine in some way.

I am going to reserve the information concerning Earhart’s and Noonan’s dental charts until I see what develops.  I will not be a party to any chicanery or attempts to prolong this nonsense.

It should be obvious to you that I have no vested interest in any of this.  My book THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA EARHART has been out of print since 1970, and I have not attempted to insinuate my name into the media where this subject is concerned since that time.  I have answered questions posed to me by members of the media, and I will continue to do so.  For instance, I am providing this same material to my friend, Bill German, who is Executive Editor of the San Francisco CHRONICLE newspaper.

It is possible that I will one day write another book which details the incredible array of characters who have struggled to make capital of the Earhart disappearance in the last twenty years, including the yo-yos who have tried to claim that she was until 1984 alive and well and living in New Jersey. Wow!  Barnum lives.

By the way, the recent claim of a photo showing Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody is baloney as well.  I immediately recognized the photo as one taken in Honolulu in March, 1937, at the time Earhart cracked up her plane on the first attempted flight around-the-world.  I am also herewith enclosing the story from Florida about how and when the photo was taken.  By the way, Joseph Gervais and Rollin Reineck, who attempted to float the “in captivity” photo are the same gentlemen who claim Earhart was living in New Jersey until 1984 under the name Irene Bolam.  Irene Bolam, by the way, sued Gervais in 1970 and collected an out-of-court settlement.

I have been informed that Gervais and Reineck have tried to counter TIGHAR publicity with the bogus photograph because they are trying to sell an Earhart script in Hollywood.  It’s one batch of crap battling another pile of same.

Beware, Mr. Barnes, this is a real journalistic tar baby.

As Professor Maude puts it, “In Australia, we call it bull.”

Sincerely,

       Fred

Goerner was not a racist, but he was a bit of an old-school reporter, so if you’re not real clear on what he meant by calling the Earhart story “a real journalistic tar baby” in closing his letter to Barnes, it’s understandable.  Webster’s New World defines the term “tar baby” as “a difficult, abstract problem that worsens as one attempts to handle it,” which certainly captures the essence of the Earhart story.

Goerner’s letter, written in good faith with the best of intentions, was obviously ignored en masse by Life magazine’s decision makers, and probably by Barnes himself.  The Gillespie-penned piece published by Life did much to launch Gillespie to international recognition as the world’s most visible Earhart “expert,” despite the fact that he’s never found anything that would justify such a claim.  The charade and pretense continue to this day.  This and many other incidents offer us clear evidence that the government-media establishment was and continues to be actively involved in misinforming the American public about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.  No other conclusion is possible.