Despite the June 2012 publication of Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, with its extensive revelations of multiple examples of media malfeasance by so-called Earhart experts in its final chapter, “The Establishment’s Contempt for the Truth,” I’ve found that convincing more than a few discerning individuals of the U.S. establishment’s determination to continue its 76-plus year cover-up – some might say, “suppression” — of the truth in the Earhart disappearance, is extremely difficult. Many I encounter believe my lack of progress with the mainstream media — which amounts to a virtual total blackout of this book – owes more to my lack of a polished approach than to any overt or covert policy of our media gatekeepers. Twenty-six years on this story argue that they couldn’t be more mistaken.
Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. commander in chief Pacific Fleet during World War II, is spinning in his grave these days.
A recent incident at the National Museum of the Pacific War, which houses the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg. Texas, provides a clear window into the way the establishment views the truth in the Earhart disappearance – with utter, abject contempt. Regular readers of this blog may remember my Year in Review posting on Jan. 1, 2014, wherein I recalled my shock and dismay at the Admiral Nimitz Foundation Museum Store ‘s outrageous rejection of Truth at Last nearly a year earlier. I had much to learn when I confidently called the bookstore to request that my book, a direct descendent of Fred Goerner’s 1966 classic, The Search for Amelia Earhart, be reviewed for inclusion in the bookstore’s inventory.
A few minutes after I got off the phone with the store manager, I received an e-mail informing me that the book’s “subject matter is not part of our mission of WWII in the Pacific Theater at this museum.” My appeals to Laura Nelson, the museum’s executive assistant, and Joe Cavanaugh, the museum’s director, asking for reconsidation of the manager’s decision, were rudely ignored. Maj. Glenn MacDonald (U.S. Army, retired), editor-in-chief of the popular rank-and-file military-oriented site, www.militarycorruption.com, chronicled the Nimitz Museum travesty with this story, which was also blown off without comment by the Nimitz Museum’s enlightened leadership.
Now we have this latest incident, which only reinforces what I’ve known for so long. A friend from Maryland, who prefers anonymity, recently visited the museum, which, in February 2014, unveiled a new, “historic statue of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.” My friend, an Earhart researcher, hoped to ask the president and CEO of the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, retired Marine Gen. Michael W. Hagee, why the museum’s bookstore refuses to carry Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last. He might have more realistically hoped that pigs might fly over the complex as he drove away completely disillusioned.
Hagee refused to meet with this man, an accomplished professional educator in his 70s, but sent an underling to briefly engage him. In answer to his question, the low-level Nimitz employee told him that Nimitz’s immortal words to Goerner, “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” which once adorned a conspicuous archway in the museum, are now considered suspect because Fred Goerner was “probably lying” about what Nimitz told him. At that point, my friend didn’t bother to ask why Truth at Last was on the museum’s list of forbidden tomes.
This is the incredible pass we have come to, from those who claim to be keepers of the flame of freedom in our military-history shrines. These despicable people demand reverence and honor from those who visit, but they dishonor the very namesake of their museum. Can it get any worse than that? The “pan-institutional aversion to the truth” that I describe in the final chapter of Truth at Last is alive and well, not only throughout the media, but even in our institutions that pretend to be defenders of Americans’ life and liberty. Does anyone out there care anymore?