CIA Reading Room 07208420: WAS AMELIA EARHART REALLY A SPY_ _ THE GREATEST BLOG IN HISTORY

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10/9/25, 2:09 PM Was Amelia Earhart Really a Spy? I The Greatest Blog in History APPROVED FOR RELEASE � DISAPPEARANCE OF AMELIA EARHART 2025 REVIEW (U) Was Amelia Earhart Really a Spy? Posted on July 16, 2025 by (U) American History is filled with mysteries, both great and small. Some are rather esoteric and of interest primarily to historians, librarians, archivists, and the like. Others, however, capture public attention and have remarkable staying power. One such perennial topic is the fate of aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, whose plane vanished as they were trying to land on tiny, remote Howland Island in the South Pacific in 1937. Interest in this nearly 90-year- old mystery has never completely faded, and renewed speculation over Earhart's doomed flight has flared up periodically, such as when a photograph surfaced in 2017 purportedly showing the pair on Jaluit Atoll, in the Marshall Islands quickly dismissed by a Japanese researcher who found the photo in a Japanese-language travel guide published in 1935, two years prior to the ill-fated flight. 4044. The purported photo of Amelia Earhart sitting on the dock at daluit Atoll, camera, 1937; actual photo appeared in a1.935Japanese-language hook w United States. arshall Islands, back to the n she was still in the (U) Numerous theories exist, ranging from the somewhat plausible (she was captured by the Japanese and died of dysentery while in captivity) to the totally outlandish (she survived the flight and changed her identity) and everything in between. However, for those of us in the Intelligence Community perhaps the most interesting question is whether or not Earhart was on an intelligence collection mission at the time her plane disappeared. To cut to the chase, a review of both Agency and open-source information prompts the conclusion that she was not on an intelligence mission, for the following reasons: 1/4 10/9/25, 2:09 PM Was Amelia Earhart Really a Spy? I The Greatest Blog in History 1) No extant information in Agency records even hints at such a possibility, despite considerable interest from members of Congress and the public, who have repeatedly made FOIA requests about the fate of Earhart and Noonan. Fred Goerner, a San Francisco-based radio reporter for KCBS, was arguably the most determined proponent of the theory Earhart was a spy. In 1965, he, along with fellow reporter Ross Game from the Napa Register, came to Washington, DC "to dig up information on the Amelia Earhart story." The following year, Goerner published The Search for Amelia Earhart, which postulated that Earhart and Noonan were on a spy mission approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and executed while in Japanese captivity on Saipan. Goerner further charged that the Navy, which he believed was stonewalling him on information, was "fronting, at any cost, for the CIA." Not surprisingly, CIA Office of Legislative Counsel records from 1965 to 1967 indicate requests for information on the