I
guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
Joe
Cerniglia recently advised me that Mike Campbell, an “Earhart researcher” who
believes that AE and Noonan wound up on Saipan, had posted an anti-TIGHAR piece
on the web, and I was silly enough to take a look at it; it’s at http://earharttruth.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/oct-24-rossella-lorenzi-tighars-best-friend/.
Here’s
what Mike had to say:
Oct. 24: Rossella
Lorenzi, TIGHAR’s best friend
The
establishment’s latest fusillade against the truth in the Earhart disappearance
appeared in the Discovery News online news site on Oct. 11, and was soon picked
up by other outlets including FOX News. Ironically filed under the
heading “U.S. History,” the story, headlined “Amelia Earhart Plane Search to
Resume Next Year,” was an update to the May 29 story, “Amelia Earhart’s Plane
Revealed in Sonar,” by Discovery News senior correspondent Rossella Lorenzi,
which I discussed in my June 2 post. Lorenzi, whose enthusiastic shilling for
Ric Gillespie and TIGHAR dates back to at least 2009, has penned a wide
assortment of propaganda pieces for TIGHAR and become perhaps its leading
apologist. Among her recent stories in support of this farcical Earhart
search are such gems as “Earhart’s Final Resting Place Believed Found,” “Amelia
Earhart’s Plane? New Sonar Imagery Raises Hopes,” and “Pieces of Amelia
Earhart’s plane located?”
In her Oct. 11
story, the TIGHAR mouthpiece breathlessly announces, “The search for Amelia
Earhart’s long-lost aircraft will resume next year in the waters off
Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of
Kiribati where the legendary pilot may have died as a castaway. … Called
Niku VIII, the new expedition is expected to cost as much as $3 million. It
will rely on two Hawaiian Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) manned
submersibles, Pisces IV and Pisces V, each carrying a pilot and two TIGHAR
observers.” The effort is planned to span 30 days, beginning in mid-August
2014, Lorenzi added.
Will someone
please tell me, after 10 fruitless trips to Nikumaroro and millions of wasted
dollars, just precisely WHO in their ever-loving right minds is going to fork
over $3 million so that Gillespie can return to Nikumaroro for yet another
monumental waste of time and treasure? Is anyone out there really stupid and
well heeled enough to invest in this ridiculous project? Did I hear someone
whisper, “U.S. government”?
Is Rossella
Lorenzi really unaware of the massive and overwhelming evidence that’s been
collected since Fred Goerner’s first trip to Saipan in June 1960, and presented
in such books as Goerner’s The Search for Amelia Earhart; Vincent V.
Loomis’ Amelia Earhart: The Final Story; Thomas E.
Devine’s Eyewitness: The Ameliia Earhart Incident; and
others including Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last? We can’t really
know, since she never mentions Saipan as even a remotely possible solution
to the apparently irresolvable Earhart conundrum.
I couldn’t take
it anymore, and decided to write to this woman, whose name is becoming a
familiar piece of TIGHAR’s ongoing Earhart charade, to see if she might respond
to a small dose of common sense. Here is my email missive of Oct. 14:
Dear Rossella,
I just saw your
Oct. 14 Discovery News piece promoting TIGHAR’s next installment
in their longstanding disinformation campaign in the Amelia Earhart
matter. How many times does Gillespie have to return to Nikumororo and find
nothing before you will decide to stop writing about this ridiculous charade,
or is there no limit to your propaganda efforts? Your constant advocacy of
TIGHAR either betrays your total lack of knowledge or your utter
dishonesty, in either event the result is the same — your readers are badly
misinformed and misled
If you are truly
interested in the truth about the Earhart case, I encourage you to go to
my website below and begin your real education, but first read this piece,
which continues its run on Veterans News Now as one of its most popular stories
ever:
“The
truth in the Earhart ‘mystery’ is a sacred cow”
Rossella,
there is no excuse for such mendacity in our media, and someday all of us
will answer for every false utterance of our lives. The truth about what happened
to Amelia on Saipan is obvious to all but the agenda driven and the ignorant,
which unfortunately outnumber those of us who can actually read. You have
made yourself part of what appears to be a permanent problem in the Earhart
search, and I hope you’re satisfied that thanks to you and others of your
ilk, the truth about Amelia’s fate is now considered to be an irresolvable
historical puzzle. That way people like Gillespie can continue their phony
searches and make a nice living along the way. Truth be damned.
Predictably,
Lorenzi didn’t reply. A few days later, after a friend and Earhart
enthusiast in Pennsylvania also wrote to her to take a small shot, and
incorrectly stated that she worked for FOX News, Lorenzi corrected him and told
him she didn’t take his or my attacks personally, copying me on her reply. Of
course I couldn’t miss this opportunity to add another log to the fire, which I
did Oct. 18:
Dear Rosella,
I never thought
you worked for FOX, and my email to you was not meant as a personal attack, but
to inform you about the truth in the Earhart case. This truth, easily
found and discerned in many books including Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, isn’t
a matter of opinion, but has been the subject of a massive government
disinformation effort practically since the day she was lost. Ric
Gillespie and TIGHAR, whether or not they actually believe the thirdhand,
long-debunked ideas they propagate with the help of a compliant
media, have been the government-media establishment’s selected agents
of disinformation since 1989, when they first began to make their false claims,
claims that were accepted as “reasonable” by the majority of a gullible,
uninformed American public. You must know this, but if you
don’t, I ask that you do some homework and READ the information
provided to you in the link I sent, and by reading my book as well, which is
attached gratis in PDF format that can be easily downloaded into a kindle.
The overwhelming evidence that places Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in the
Marshalls and Saipan cannot simply be rejected out of hand as simple
“folklore” as Gillespie has so nonchalantly suggested. For all
reasonable people I’ve met, the big picture truth in the Earhart
disappearance isn’t even debatable.
Now that she has
a PDF copy of Amelia Earhart: The
Truth at Last, Rossella has no more excuses, and cannot say she didn’t know
any better in her reportage of the Earhart case. The use of lawyerly wriggle
words designed to impart an image of objectivity in news stories doesn’t excuse
the blatant, incredibly slanted approach to TIGHAR’s 25-year Earhart
fundraising campaign taken by Lorenzi and many other so-called journalists in
the establishment media. I await Rossella’s response, but not with bated
breath.
Well,
I kind of like Mike in a quirky sort of way, and appreciate the fact that
despite all his vituperation he occasionally gives evidence of having some
critical faculties, so I foolishly thought to give him some advice:
Tom
King says:
You know, you
just MIGHT get a bit more attention to your opinions if you’d acknowledge them
as such, rather than presenting them as unquestionable “truth.” Whatever you
believe, they’re not “truth;” they’re more or less substantiated hypotheses.
The same, of course, is true of TIGHAR’s hypothesis — which we continue to try
to test, rather than trying to bludgeon the world into acceptance. Some people
— even, perhaps, people with three million bucks — find our approach preferable
and worthy of support.
Now, I expect
that if you respond to this, you’ll just point out that I’m a member of TIGHAR
and work on the Earhart project, and therefore, you’re convinced, have been
drinking Gillespie’s Cool-Aid. Go to it.
One
of Mike’s correspondents, Douglas Mills, began the response:
Tom -
Please SPARE US
all of your Nikumaroro (HOAX) hypotheses. It’s really getting old and so many
of us are TRUELY ILL from it!
You, Ric
Gillespie and THE GOVERNMENT cannot face the TRUTH – SHAME on YOU’S!
I
thought maybe that would be the end of it, but couldn’t resist saying….
Ah, THERE’s a
mature, fact-based response.
It
wasn’t the only one. Billxam2013 added:
Most people do
not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
Testing and documentation are two very different things.
I
thought that was fairly sensible, so I replied:
Well, believable
testing requires documentation, but sadly I have to agree with you about why
people listen, or don’t.
Meanwhile,
Frank Benjamin weighed in:
It is difficult
for me to understand how Dr. King can confuse honorable eye-witness reports
such as Admiral Chester Nimitz and the three USMC generals with what he and Mr.
Gillespie are doing out on Gardiner Island. Ms Earhart came down in the
Marshalls and died on Saipan. That’s the end of the story, and it is not a
matter of opinion.
That
struck me as so wonderfully stupid that I couldn’t resist being drawn back in,
saying:
Frank — You might
try reading the paper that some of us wrote, posted on Academia.edu, about the
Saipan hypothesis. What I found most interesting in writing it was the
extensive psychological literature on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony
— NOT because those testifying are dishonorable, and quite unconnected from
their military rank, but simply because the brain works in strange ways to fill
in gaps in our knowledge, account for things we don’t understand, and respond
to questions. But since you’re convinced that your opinion is the end of the
story, I don’t suppose there’s any point.
Meanwhile Les Kinney piled on:
Dr. King, I have
been investigating the Earhart mystery for over thirty years. I am a retired
federal agent and have amassed a sizeable amount of data and circumstantial
evidence that leads me to believe Earhart met her demise on Saipan. I have recently
found one piece of documentary evidence that strongly suggests that Earhart,
during her capture stage, was held by the Japanese in the Marshall Islands.
Mike Campbell, in
The Truth At Last, presents an
overwhelming amount of material that would lead most critical readers to
believe Earhart was captured by the Japanese. If I recall, you critiqued “The
Truth At Last,” on Amazon and blithely penned a jocular review that in reality
attempted to discredit Campbell’s Saipan thesis.
Now, the reason
so few professional researchers haven’t embraced the Nikumaroro theory revolves
around the following: The overwhelming number of witnesses to the Saipan theory
and the complete lack of credible evidence unearthed on Nikumaroro; the fact
that three open cockpit US aircraft flew at 50 to 500 feet over this sliver on
an island for 30 minutes within ten days of Earhart’s disappearance and saw no
evidence of castaways. The only possible explanation why Earhart didn’t come
out and wave to the pilots was: 1) she was looking for her shoes; 2) she was
applying freckle cream to look nice for the pilots.
TIGHAR has
apparently decided the archeological approach is the only method of solving the
Earhart mystery. Yet, in your academic thesis of the Saipan hypothesis, which you
have cited in this blog, you chose to ignore the one piece of credible
archeological information at Saipan – the gravesite unearthed on orders of
Captain Tracy Griswold, USMC, by Private’s Henson and Burks. These two Marines
positively identified Griswold from a photo lineup that would have been
admissible in court. Henson and Burks further corroborated Griswold’s identify
from comments made at the gravesite.
In other words,
Dr. King, you have “cherry picked” the worst and least meaningful of “Saipan evidence
and then distorted the plausibility of this evidence. In your critique of hard
evidence, you mention the grave site dug up by Don Kothera of the Cleveland
Group in 1968, and the bone fragments they collected. You go on to state,
“Considering the disturbance of such sites during the Japanese development of
the island and the presences of 20th century cemeteries that then had
experienced considerable bombardment and other disturbances during the 1944
invasion, the presence of human bones almost anywhere is no surprise.”
That’s true, Dr.
King, but you knew from the Kothera and Goerner’s books, the gravesite
unearthed by Kothera’s Cleveland Group was not residual ground material but a
grave dug to waist level or deeper. If you would have conducted proper research
on this grave site, you would have determined, the residual evidence found at
this location was topical, i.e. shell casings, eyeglasses – bones fragments
were found much deeper. You also would have known Kothera collected only bone
fragments and that the larger skeletal remains were missing. You also knew this
was the same gravesite discussed by the two Marines Burks and Henson, who in
fact had unearthed the major skeletal remains from this grave in July 1944. You
also knew the Griswold grave digging episode was the central theme of both the
Goerner and Kothera books.
For an essay that
was supposed to represent a scholarly unbiased report on the Saipan theory, you
mention none of this. Yet, you expended considerable effort explaining how
unreliable human memory can be, citing ad infinitum numerous examples in
several hundred words to make your argument. Boy, it’s a shame all those
hundreds of witnesses cited in Mike Campbell’s book really didn’t see what they
thought they saw.
I
replied:
OK, I should have
known better than to get started down this road, but — one more time:
1. I am not trying to discredit your efforts or
Mike Campbell’s — the point of my original post was to suggest that Mike does
himself a disservice by presenting his/your hypothesis as “truth,” which
automatically turns off people like Rossella, who are exposed to nutty
portrayals of “truth” all the time about everything from Bosnian pyramids to
alien abductions.
2. But since you’ve brought these things up….
a. “The reason so few professional researchers
haven’t embraced the Nikumaroro theory…”
“Professional”
researchers meaning those who make a profession of searching for Earhart, I
take it? I.e. you, Mike, and your colleagues?
b. “The overwhelming number of witnesses to the
Saipan theory…”
IF one takes all
the witnesses (first, second, and third-hand) at face value, and pays no
attention to the factors (discussed in our Saipan paper) that may have
influenced them, then yes, they’re pretty overwhelming. But I don’t see any
reason to be so uncritical.
c. “the complete lack of credible evidence
unearthed on Nikumaroro…”
Well, since you
state that “lack” as a fact, I guess it must be true. Funny, we who’ve been
digging up and studying the evidence find it at last mildly “credible.”
d. “… three open cockpit US aircraft flew at 50
to 500 feet over this sliver on an island for 30 minutes within ten days of
Earhart’s disappearance and saw no evidence of castaways.”
Have you looked
at the “aerial tour of Nikumaroro” on the TIGHAR website? Where the helicopter
flies at the same altitude as the search planes and you have to look real
closely to see a large man in a white tee shirt on the beach? The same chopper
flew over me, jumping up and down and waving my hat, near the Seven Site, and
nobody saw me. It’s a hard environment in which to see things on the ground.
e. “The only possible explanation why Earhart
didn’t come out and wave to the pilots was: 1) she was looking for her shoes;
2) she was applying freckle cream to look nice for the pilots.”
I’m glad you know
what “the only possible explanation” is. I can think of several other
possibilities, but never mind; it’s all speculation.
f. “…you chose to ignore the one piece of
credible archeological information at Saipan – the gravesite unearthed on
orders of Captain Tracy Griswold, USMC, by Private’s Henson and Burks. These
two Marines positively identified Griswold from a photo lineup that would have
been admissible in court. Henson and Burks further corroborated Griswold’s
identify from comments made at the gravesite.”
Well, I didn’t
exactly ignore it; I just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. If I’m
recalling the story correctly, Henson and Burks were ordered by Griswold to dig
up a grave; and Griswold allegedly spoke the words “Amelia Earhart” to them,
but years later Griswold denied it. Does that mean that they were digging up
Amelia, or does it mean they were digging up somebody else and Griswold was
playing with their heads? Or does it mean something else? I don’t know.
g. “… you knew from the Kothera and Goerner’s
books, the gravesite unearthed by Kothera’s Cleveland Group was not residual
ground material but a grave dug to waist level or deeper. If you would have
conducted proper research on this grave site, you would have determined, the
residual evidence found at this location was topical, i.e. shell casings,
eyeglasses – bones fragments were found much deeper.”
First, I
appreciate the fact that you’ve actually read our paper. Thanks for that. Now,
I don’t know very much about the stratigraphic relationships among things in
Kothera’s excavations because the data aren’t presented in the kind of detail
that one usually finds in reports of archaeological excavations, but supposing
you’re correct that the bones were found in a grave that was deeper than the
stratum of disturbed stuff resulting from the bombardment and leveling of
Garapan — OK, so they came from a grave. Does that make it Earhart’s grave? I
don’t see why, though maybe it was. Again, what you have is an hypothesis, not
“truth.” Having lived on Saipan (where I found human bones in my flower beds)
and excavated archaeological sites there, I know that there are lots and lots
and lots of graves, marked and unmarked, resulting from thousands of years of
human history, all over the island but especially on the leeward side in and
around places like Garapan.
h. “You also would have known Kothera collected
only bone fragments and that the larger skeletal remains were missing.”
I’ve excavated
maybe a thousand graves in my career, in Micronesia and on the U.S. mainland,
and read hundreds of archaeological site reports. I can assure you that finding
only fragmentary remains in a grave is not uncommon, on Saipan or pretty much
anyplace else. A lot of things can chew up a grave.
i. “You also knew this was the same gravesite
discussed by the two Marines Burks and Henson, who in fact had unearthed the
major skeletal remains from this grave in July 1944.”
Maybe. See above.
j. “You also knew
the Griswold grave digging episode was the central theme of both the Goerner
and Kothera books.”
Well, I don’t
know about it being THE central theme, particularly of Goerner’s book, but it
was certainly A major theme. So does that make it Earhart’s grave? I’m missing
your connection.
Which
brought out sonnyauld, who said:
Mr. King,
As Ric
Gillespie’s publicity man, I would expect nothing less than the bile you spewed
above. Those of you there at TIGHAR must be feeling the heat from the Truth, if
you are over here attacking it. You continue to perpetrate your opinions on
Amelia’s disappearance on the public, raising obscene amounts of money for yet
another trek. And yes, these ARE your opinions, since you have not uncovered
one single shred of actual proof of Amelia’s crashing on Gardner Island in all
of the many, many trips you have made to the island. All you have “uncovered”
are “…this MIGHT be Amelia’s shoe; this MIGHT be a bookcase from Amelia’s
plane; this MIGHT be Amelia’s cosmetic jar because she had freckles….” Give me
a break! I understand your need to attack Mike and the Truth, but until you can
unequivocally come up with undisputed evidence of her crashing on Gardner,
please refrain from attacking other more likely alternate scenarios of the real
Truth: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan died on Saipan at the hands of the enemy.
And
billxam2013 added:
I have to agree
with sonnyauld. I’ve re-listened to my
interview with Mike and gone back over the book and what is being called “so
called evidence” by some horribly misguided people which takes a far more
physical form than any other small bits of rubbish found on a beach somewhere.
In the end, no
matter how hard I try to take a pragmatic view of each point of view I keep
coming back to the exact same conclusion. Amelia Earhart died on Saipan by the
hands of the Japanese. Apparently Mr. King wants us to assume that every single
eyewitness from the natives on several different islands to our military
personnel all have flawed memories which I find more than absurd.
What this is all
about is perception. A bit of rubbish on a beach or several hundred witnesses.
I will put my faith in the witnesses.
Sorry, Mr. King
all you are doing is digging yourself a hole that someone is going to push you
into when it’s deep enough. Use the same critical eye as a jurist does. I did.
I
tried again:
Like I said — you
have it all figured out, and we’re all just shills for Gillespie. But the
accumulation and analysis of “might be’s” is how science works. Hurricane Sandy
might have been evidence of global climate change, so might the content of
Greenland ice cores, and so on. It’s very rare for a single piece of evidence
to be slam-bang definitive, but if that’s the only thing you can accept as
evidence, so be it. I don’t “need” to “attack” anyone, and don’t think I did;
my suggestion to Mike was that he have a better chance of being attended to by
people like Rosella if he’d recognize that he, and you, ARE propounding
opinions, not certain, verified “truth.” If that to you is an “attack,” it
seems to me you have a mighty big chip on your shoulder. But that’s your
problem, not mine, so I’ll happily refrain from bothering you further.
This
brought a response from “earharttruth,” who I think is Mike Campbell:
Junk science,
phony academia, smoke and mirrors, a compliant and corrupt media, and an
ignorant, apathetic and uninformed public have combined to create one of the
most universally accepted false narratives in American culture, rivaled only by
the continuing promotion of the absurd Warren Report lies in the JFK hit. No
one should have to state that the truth is not a matter of opinion. Conspicuous
in her silence is the subject of this discussion, Rossella Lorenzi. Has she
stooped to read even a chapter of Truth at Last?
I
couldn’t quite let that pass:
Well, I wasn’t
going to add anything more to this thread, but that’s just too good a set-up.
To begin with, “truth is not a matter of opinion?” Supposing that there is an
absolute truth, as arguably there is with regard to Earhart’s fate, how can it
NOT be a matter of opinion? People obviously have opinions about it; someone is
presumably right (or no one is), but until there’s unequivocal proof, it’s a
matter of opinion. And though I share some of your skepticism about the Warren
report, just calling it “absurd” doesn’t make it so. Nor does calling what I do
“junk science” make it so. As for phony academia — well, hell, you’ve caught
me; I didn’t really go to college all those years and get those degrees and
publish all that stuff; I’ve just made it all up and conned everyone but you;
damn, you’re GOOD!
Point is, when to
make your hypothesis believable you have to posit that those otherwise inclined
are engaging in junk science, trading in phony academia, puffing smoke and
waving mirrors with the complicity of a corrupted media — well, that simply
puts several points against you in the credibility department.
As for Rossella —
this was my original point: for someone like Rossella, who deals day in and day
out with crazy stories about stuff from the past and must sort wheat from chaff
based, often, on little but gut instinct, I can guarantee that a title like
“The Truth” is something she’ll shy away from, because she knows all too well
how slippery “truth” is.
Look, I think
that some of you guys have done some good research, and I think it deserves
attention. My initial post was about how you might increase the likelihood that
those not already of your persuasion would pay such attention, and your
reaction, expectably I suppose, has been to kill the messenger. OK, I’m dead;
enjoy yourselves.
And
I suppose they are.
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