The US National Archives on Friday released thousands of pages of records related to the 1937 disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart, following President Donald Trump’s directive to declassify all government-held material on the case.
The release includes 4,624 pages of documents, among them log books from US military vessels that took part in the extensive air-and-sea search for Earhart. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard announced the disclosure.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished on July 2, 1937, after departing Papua New Guinea in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra bound for Howland Island, 2,500 miles away. Radio contact was lost hours later after Earhart, then 39, reported running low on fuel. Despite a massive naval search—the largest of its time—the pair were never found, leaving one of history’s most enduring mysteries.
The Trump administration’s sudden focus on Earhart came amid criticism over withheld files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The Earhart release followed just two days after Congress published thousands of documents raising new questions about Trump’s ties to the late financier.
The newly declassified material includes Navy and Coast Guard reports, memos, telegrams, and clippings. Among them are eccentric claims: a woman asserting through “mental telepathy” that Earhart was alive, a man insisting she was buried in Spain, and government communications dismissing rumors she had been captured and executed by Japanese forces.
Researchers from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) believe Earhart and Noonan may have died as castaways on Nikumaroro, a remote coral atoll in the Kiribati islands. Expeditions there uncovered artifacts including a jar of 1930s anti-freckle cream, clothing fragments, human bones, a pocket knife, and a patch of aluminum thought to be from her plane. Sonar scans also revealed shapes resembling aircraft wreckage just offshore.
The National Archives said more records will be digitized and released on a rolling basis. The disclosure follows Trump’s earlier order in March to release 80,000 records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.