President Donald Trump this week directed the FBI to immediately search its Washington, D.C. and New York offices for any files related to the 1937 disappearance of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, law enforcement sources told CNN.
FBI employees received an internal message Tuesday evening marked “high importance,” instructing them to examine “any areas where papers or physical media records may be stored, to include both open or closed cases, for records responsive to Amelia Earhart.”
The order, described as a “priority request from the Executive Office of the President,” set a Wednesday deadline for compliance and came during an ongoing federal government shutdown.
The directive follows Trump’s recent Truth Social post announcing his intention to “declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.”
Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, vanished while attempting to circumnavigate the globe with navigator Fred Noonan. After a 16-day search, the pair were declared lost at sea.
According to the Associated Press, Trump’s call to declassify Earhart-related materials mirrors his previous orders to release files concerning the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
While historians doubt new revelations will emerge after decades of existing research, supporters of the declassification say the move could help dispel lingering conspiracy theories about Earhart’s fate, long one of America’s most enduring mysteries.
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