20. The US government conspired to keep Earhart’s capture a secret
The capture of Earhart by the Japanese and her subsequent death in custody, possibly by execution, required the US government to classify the events as top secret, a designation it retains more than 80 years later. According to some conspiracy theorists, Admiral Chester Nimitz knew of Earhart’s dying on Saipan and so informed a reporter in 1945 or 1946. Others claim US Marine Generals Vandergrift and Watson also confirmed Earhart’s death on Saipan in the late 1960s, without presenting physical evidence to support their assertions. The assertions themselves indicate the United States government participated in a conspiracy to prevent the truth of Earhart’s fate from reaching the public, and continues to do so.
An argument put forward by many conspiracy theorists postulates the fact the aircraft remains lost more than 80 years later proves Earhart did not crash into the sea. They believe its absence is proof of its deliberate destruction by the Japanese. Modern search technology otherwise should have located the wreckage by now. The argument is preposterous. The search area is huge, the waters deep, and the bottom littered with detritus from World War II. Locating the sunken Electra without an accurate crash location is virtually impossible, other than by happy accident. The US government’s official position on the Earhart disappearance is the airplane ran out of fuel and crashed, an exact location unknown, in the general vicinity of Howland Island.
