Reineck appeals to Bill Clinton in 1997 letter

In more than 36 years on the Earhart story, it’s not uncommon to hear the uninformed, naive and even well intentioned ask whether others or I have sent letters to current or past presidents laying out the stark, undeniable facts in the Earhart case and appealing — even demanding — that the truth be finally publicly released and the so-called “great aviation mystery” finally be put to rest.

Firmly convinced of the sacred cow status of the truth in the Earhart matter and equally certain that any such letter would be immediately picked off by screeners and never be seen by anyone higher than a GS-12, I’ve not bothered wasting my time.  Others, however, could not be so dissuaded.  Retired Air Force Col. Rollin Reineck, well known to readers here, was especially active in this regard, and actually drew a response from an official at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense to a letter he wrote to Bill Clinton in June 1997.  For more details on this, see my Aug. 16, 2021 post, “Reineck’s 1997 Earhart plea to Bill Clinton rejected: ‘Our tax dollars at work in Washington.’ ”

Reineck’s June 1997 letter appeared in the March 1998 edition of the Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters and is presented below in its original format; inserted photos are mine.  You can get a larger, clearer image by left clicking on each page.

General Alexander A. Vandegrift, eighteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, confirmed Amelia Earhart’s death on Saipan in an August 1971 letter to Fred Goerner. Vandegrift wrote that he learned from Marine General Tommy Watson, who commanded the 2nd Marine Division during the assault on Saipan and died in 1966, that “Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan.” (U.S. Marine Corps photo.)

(Editor’s note: No. 8, the Earhart-at-Weihsien, China civilian internment camp claim by Reineck was later proven to be absolutely false by Earhart researchers Ron Bright and Patrick Gaston.  The telegram was actually sent from the Weihsien Camp by a man named Ahmad Kamal, a close personal friend of George Putnam.)  For a complete rundown, please see my Jan. 3, 2017 post, “Weihsien Telegram: Another sensation that fizzled.”

For much more on Rollin Reineck’s attempts to break down the stone walls Washington long ago erected around the Earhart case, please see my Jan. 28, 2020 post, “Rollin Reineck’s 1990s Earhart work bears fruit: Hawaii senator pledges to open secret Earhart files,” and “Senator Inouye’s Earhart legislation would ‘declassify any records that have been classified’” of Feb. 11, 2020.