As Jihadists began to fill the gap left by the US-supported overthrow of dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and his regime, a four-person team of State Department intelligence analysts was assigned to analyze a pet project of Hillary Clinton's State Department -- the 1937 disappearance of pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, according to newly released Clinton emails.
The analysts, from the well-regarded Bureau of Intelligence and Research, conducted their work before a November 2011 meeting with the head of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a private group which promotes a detailed but controversial theory that Earhart and Noonan landed on a remote South Pacific island and survived for some time (The other major theory is that the aviators ran out of gas and ended up on the bottom of the ocean. Others claim that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese military and executed.)
The State Department intel analysts included a top expert on aircraft wrecks and reviewed recently discovered archival photos allegedly showing part of Earhart's plane on the island's reef after its disappearance.
"(W)e (the State Department) may have assisted them in a big new development. In short I think we may have found the plane location..." senior State official Kurt Campbell emailed Clinton on Feb. 17, 2012. The email appears part of an effort by the then-Assist. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs to encourage Clinton to throw her support behind a State Department event marking the 75th anniversary of Earhart's disappearance and, in effect, promoting TIGHAR and its activities.
Clinton decided to back the event, despite worries from the head of the National Air and Space Museum -- a retired Marine general -- that his experts might "question the credibility of the expedition." The released email records those concerns.
At the March 2012 event, Secretary Clinton described her admiration for Earhart (with a shout-out for TIGHAR) and described her youthful disappointment at being told by NASA that women need not apply for astronaut jobs. "But I knew that there were women, like the ones we just recognized, who, if given the chance, would certainly be able to live up to their own God-given potential and lead the way for others. And in part, that was because there was this woman, Amelia Earhart, who, when it was really hard, decided she was going to break all kinds of limits – social limits, gravity limits, distance limits. NASA may have said I couldn’t go into space, but nobody was there to tell Amelia Earhart she couldn’t do what she chose to do."
"Hillary Clinton has jumped on the Amelia Earhart bandwagon..." reported the Washington Post concerning Clinton's comments. "The Secretary of State headlined the event to publicize an expedition this summer by researchers from... (TIGHAR), who believe they’ll find Earhart’s plane in the ocean off a remote island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati."
Unfortunately, TIGHAR's expedition that summer failed to find Earhart's plane or reveal any conclusive evidence concerning her fate.
Meantime in Libya, the security situation continued to deteriorate. State Department intelligence -- despite repeated warnings and requests from U.S. officials in the country for additional security -- apparently failed to predict a terrorist strike against U.S. diplomatic facilities there. The attack came in September 2012, leaving four Americans dead in Benghazi.
TIGHAR continues to seek funds for additional expeditions to the South Pacific. We don't know whether they still get support from the State Department.