SINISTER CONSPIRACY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200480007-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 19, 1999
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: September 16, 1966
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

X I M E
se : CIA-RD b
CovoGuT CPYRGHT
sea during her round-the-world flight.
29 years ago-or was she a spy who_
newsy Ster, puts ltiestion for
he 9s ;onvinced wer. O.Dytous-
ly if. Earhart st diced ina plane
i t theory is that Earhart.d her vi a-
ge"rZ us ?leg of their trip-a 2,550-mile
leap to tiny (one square mile) Howland
Island, where no plane had evertnded
--before. Early on July 2, the Coast
Guars] critter Itasca, standing by at
I3pwland, received a series of messages
fr om Pilot Earhart reporting that she
tufe of her. position and that
! e, was running low on gas. Her last
g$sage, delivered in a broken and
c okea,,voice, was a plea for a fix on
r position. Too ~aLe Itasca failed to
er'e lie' 'U.S. Navy ailed. Financed
y CBS, the SScuipps trews ap~r ch ,
ie San Mateo F a 1t` `) tines and t e
ociated Press, he made foriclrips` t
the islands of the western Pacttfic to
gather evidence of evil-doing. : ffi7TWl ,
bagtu'l of airplane parts-dre gedout
Saipan harbor. These, he believes were
collection turned out .to be parts from a
Japanese plane. In 1964, Goerner got
a,flash,gf headlie~by producing seven
pounds of human bones and .37 teeth.
Thq flyers? Nope, declared a Berkeley
anthropologist-they belonged to some
?Detour lath, after scores of
thatltheomething, and with
she din 4 t directly toward Howland
Islgc?Jstead, acting on the request
of a highly placed U.S. official (Goer,
ner hints that it must have been
F.D.R.), shhcaded north toward Truk
Japaneseirfields and fleet-servicing fa-
cilities in the area. To make this detour
afl-ej the whole world knew the.Ily =..
a secretly outfitted with special
;.h.; as far as anybody else knew,
oerner writes, the plane could do
my 150-165 m.p.h.
After sizing up Truk, Earhart headed
or Howland. Goerner guesses that she
soon got hopelessly lost in a tropical
storm and turned the Electra north,
nd west, away from her destination.'
ly calculating the Electra's speed and
uel consumption, Goerner figures that
he plane must have crash-landed near
he beach of Mili atoll. in the south-
pastern Marshall Islands. It was from
hat place, he says, that Earhart cranked
ut S 0 S messages on the plane's
mergency radio. This, Goerner be-
er of radio operators reported pick.-
ng up messages from the downed plane
it about this time.
Goerner estimates that twelve days
aterra Japanese fishing boat reached
h u}}Ve. They were taken aboard
t later tfansferred either to the Jana-
-seaplane tender Karnoi or to the
rve'. ship` Koshu, which was known
ben the region. From his talks with
ti,
v%% Goerner concludes that the tly-
swe ttken, first to Jaluit, then Kwa-
ilein a ally to Saipan, Japan's
iihtary q uarters in the Pacific; a
umber of alp say that they saw
_ -_ .: K9 Ham,
y'\ four-eenngtine ockheed Electra is an
1 'J`del: CIAL RDPgy
r ea
/ J
525EIINEIFWlfH 'SANE PART" IN SAIPAN
A #alizing theory.
-a and a woman who resembled
, on nn and Earhart. Goerner quotes
1-ye sources as saying that Earhart
paably died of dysentery and that
TNeonan was beheaded, but he does not
docur;iient the fact. Nevertheless he
writes:- "The kind of questioning and
hardships they endured can be jr
agined. Death may have been a re-
lease they both desired."
No Secret. If Goerner's story is cor-
rect, w tsit that neither the U.S. nor
the JJVanese government will confirm
what -he wants to know.
T i s sinister conspiracy in Wash-
inton, Goerner hints, aimed at keep-
iiings hushed up, even so many
After the event. And the Japanese
.ttalk, he adds" because they fear
;an admission complicity would
1be Pacific isl that b came -part.
Chat farfetchcedion will be news
o the Japanese. "
Along the wy, :Goerner does infect
the reader with 'sonie__nagging points.
He has found two I.S. Marines who
claim that they exhumed the flyers'
bodies in Saipan in1944, and says that
the remains were either secretly re-
interred or are taeay in the possession
of the Arruesl Ffgccs Institute of Pa-
thology. And he quotes no less a person-
age than Admiral Chester A. Nimitz,
.who told Goerner in March 1965: "1
want- to tell you Earhart and her navi-
gator did go down in the Marshalls
and were picked up by the Japanese."
Alas, Nimitz told him no more than
that; he died last February.
Readers who take Goerner's word
for everything will have to take it on
faith. For example, those special en-
gines that'ay such an important part
in Goerne 's_ close cut puzzler were no
secret_at-all. On.Aday after 1?arhart's
plane went down, the New York Times
reported that the Electra was equipped
wlthi two o the- quest Wasp engines,
AUDRE M
lalf~666 Mft M over
THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA EA
by Fred Goerner.' 326 pages.u
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