Jim Golden and the elusive “Hard Copy”

In my March 2, 2015 post, “Jim Golden’s legacy of honor in the Earhart saga,” readers were introduced to the late, great Jim Golden, a committed friend of the truth in the Earhart disappearance, whose encouragement and friendship meant so much to me. 

Up until the early 2000s, within Bill Prymak’s 75-member Amelia Earhart Society, before the group of loosely affiliated researchers began losing people to the grim reaper and began its descent into oblivion as a viable entity, Golden enjoyed a special status as an iconic character, a mystery man who, some suspected, might have possessed unique knowledge about the Earhart disappearance.  

I don’t recall exactly the first time I heard his name, but I’ll never forget the reverent tones of respect that often punctuated references to Golden, and I determined to try to meet him and respectfully ask him to share what he could of his Earhart knowledge.  In the late spring of 2008, I contacted Golden, and much to my surprise, he welcomed my questions and soon we became friends, bound by our mutual interest in the Earhart case. 

Jim Golden, Washington, D.C., circa 1975.  As a highly placed U.S. Justice Department official, Golden joined Fred Goerner in the newsman’s unsuccessful search for the elusive, top-secret files that would finally break open the Earhart case.  During his amazing career, Golden led Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s Secret Service detail and directed the personal security of Howard Hughes in Las Vegas.

From his Las Vegas home, Golden recalled his days on Kwajalein, where he was a 19-year-old enlisted Marine photographer in the intelligence section of the 4th Marine Division.  There he learned that Marine Intelligence personnel were sent into the Marshalls to interview natives about their knowledge of the two American fliers who landed or crash-landed there before the war.  Golden initially contacted Fred Goerner after reading The Search for Amelia Earhart in 1966, offering his help in the Earhart investigation, and together they pursued the elusive, top-secret Earhart files in obscure government locales across the nation.  

Among the still-classified secrets he shared with Fred Goerner was the early revelation that Amelia and Fred Noonan were brought to the islands of Roi-Namur, Kwajalein Atoll by air from Jaluit Atoll by the Japanese in 1937, a fact he learned from Marine officers during the American invasion of Kwajalein in January 1944.  His fascinating career included eight years as a Secret Service agent assigned to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and chief of security for Howard Hughes in Las Vegas.  

Prymak’s lengthy article, titled “The Search for the Elusive ‘Hard Copy’ Continues: Maybe, just maybe via Jim GOLDEN?” drew heavily from a number of letters between Fred Goerner and Golden, mainly from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, found in Goerner’s files at the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas, and appeared in the May 1997 issue of the Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters.  

This is the first of two parts, and is presented in its original format.  As always, you can left click on each of the four pages for a larger, clearer view. 

End of Part I.  Comments?