July 9 Earhart special to feature bogus photo claims

On Wednesday morning, July 5, I awoke to the long-anticipated news that an unclassified photo found at the National Archives in College Park, Md., by researcher Les Kinney that reflected Jaluit Harbor in the Marshall Islands, date possibly late 1930s but not known, would indeed be the centerpiece of the History Channel’s July 9 special, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”  NBC News apparently had the TV network news exclusive on this story, but others were soon also breathlessly touting the photo, as if it were truly the Holy Grail in the Earhart case.  To see the initial NBC video and story, please click here.

This would be great news if the claim that Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan and the Earhart Electra are in the photo were true, because we know that the doomed fliers were in the Marshalls, were taken to Jaluit and later to Kwajalein and Saipan, where they died in Japanese hands.  Several researchers and authors, whose work can be easily found on this site, have presented mountains of evidence to this effect.  But this photo isn’t “evidence” of anything except that Koshu was at Jaluit Harbor (large ship in right background) when it was taken, and might have had an unidentifiable airplane on its stern.   Interesting, but hardly what our “experts” are telling us.  In fact, this photo does little except discredit the truth, which, in my view, is the goal of this current exercise, along with ratings and making money, of course.

This is the photo of Jaluit Harbor, possibly circa 1930s, put forward by Les Kinney, Morningstar Entertainment, the History Channel and their confederates as the smoking gun in the Earhart case.  It is noteworthy only in that these claims are among the most ridiculous in the history of Earhart research, even surpassing some of the incredible whoppers we’ve heard from Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR.  The question we should ask is why this photo, and why now?  Stay tuned to this space for answers to these and other small “mysteries” in the Earhart case. 

Earhart and Noonan are absolutely not in the photo, and it’s incredible that anyone could believe they are.  Zoom in and you can see the upper half of a white man with black hair on the far left of the group on the dock.  Kinney and an “expert” say it’s Noonan, but the features, the nose, the hairline are all wrong, and any intelligent analysis rules him out.  The so-called experts are either incompetent or lying, and we all know that some paid experts will say anything.  Nobody in the photo remotely resembles Earhart, inasmuch as anyone’s facial features can be determined at all.

Furthermore, where are the Japanese military personnel who would have been close and in control of the American spies after their pickup at Mili Atoll?  Where is the tension one would expect in such a photo?  It simply doesn’t exist; the group on the dock appears to be out for a Sunday stroll, or awaiting someone’s arrival from one of the ships in the harbor.  None of it computes, unless one understands what the real game is here, and even this olfactorily challenged writer can smell a rat when it stinks this badly.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; this photo offers none and fails completely.  Does anyone except Les Kinney really think that Earhart and Noonan are in this photo?  This photo will be totally rejected by virtually everyone who knows what Amelia and Fred Noonan looked like, and its use on this program will do nothing except to discredit the truth as we know it.  Our ideological enemies — and we all know who they are — will label its proponents as delusional fanatics.

I will have much more to say about the odious claims being made about this photo, as well as other irresponsible assertions that will also be advanced by the History Channel on July 9.  I’ll post my review following the airing of “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.”